You were never one to engage in conflict, always calm. But this time was different. The crash made it different. Mari had been on your back all day. You had just wanted her to stop talking. Just for a minute. So you screamed.

There would be evenings, bundled up in a corner upon the sun falling beneath the horizon, where your eyes remained glued on the fire. Laughter would bubble up in your chest - because how fucking crazy was this? How did you all get here?

It was a quiet night on the eve of which you slipped from Natalie's arms In a sleep-riddled daze, feeling as though what thread-thin grasp on reality you had was being pulled away.

Your feet feel cold, so cold as you exit the cabin door. You're unsure what it was that possessed you to wander into the night, but sleep wouldn't come.

Among eerily snow-coated tree branches and ear ringing silence, you wander into a source of light. The soft crunch of snow beneath you melts into hardwood flooring, the harsh pinch of pointe shoes covering your previously bare feet.

You look down at your body in horror, the white feathery ensemble - presumably the white swan - was bejeweled in a way that eluded to you bleeding from the torso.

Your limbs are not your own as a harsh tug in your gut pulls you onto stage, faced with an audience of empty seating. You feel yourself begin to move with an eerie grace that only a marionette could possess. Each port de bras and arabesque; each unwilling jeté and changement only serves to progressively worsen the cold in you.

You hear yourself finally release a piercing shriek as your body is yanked into a pirouette - one 360 turn, and then another, leg swinging out to pick up momentum with each perfect spin - and then it all goes black. It's hours before you regain consciousness, body aching with aftereffects of hypothermia, back in the cabin.

"This is my fault," Natalie mutters hoarsely as she sits with you upstairs, your shaking body emerged in the makeshift metal tub of hot water. "I should've woken up sooner."