All around her, darkness. 

It threatened to consume her, pull her down into its depths and crush her under its weight. Drown her in its suffocation. Overcome her in every possible way, filling every crevice she allowed it. 

Then for a moment, twinkles of light in the distance. But they died. They always died. 

The darkness grew greater around her, and she began to retreat, curling into a ball. At times, she thought herself the light, for how else would she know the darkness existed? At other times, she felt so overcome by nothingness, she felt certain she was a part of it, floating among the hundreds of other atoms squashed into it with her. 

If she was a light, it grew dimmer as she lost hope. She stopped scanning the darkness, unwilling to look for other pinpricks of light if they would only fade away. 

Her light grew dimmer, until one day her hope had dwindled to an almost non-existent state. "I'm one with the darkness," she repeated. The more times she said it, the more she believed it and the less overwhelming the darkness felt. 

Yet a part of her fought back. And when this part had dwindled into near nothingness, she rallied it together one more time. For the last time, she decided to look for light. Summoning her remaining strength, she turned her gaze outward, looking past the darkness, looking to the pinpricks of light in the distance. And as she focused on them, one grew brighter than the others. 

Blinking, she found herself next to it, overcome by its brilliance. Standing in its presence, she could see clearly how the darkness shrank from it, how its rays could be seen echoed far beyond its initial presence.