The wind howled through the empty bleachers, carrying the scent of dry earth and sun-scorched metal. Desert Flannel stood alone, bathed in the orange glow of the dying sun, the echoes of past victories swirling around her like ghosts. A child once, standing on this very field, watching the world with eyes too sharp, too knowing for someone so small. A girl who ran faster than her pain, who leaped higher than her sorrow, who spun the wheel of fate with calloused hands and blistered heels. Every sport bent to her will. Every finish line was just another step toward survival.

And yet, even the swiftest falter.

The present was a different kind of battlefield. The stadium was behind her, left in a haze of sweat and cheers, exchanged for a smaller, stranger arena. A lonely bowling alley with a dim neon glow, where the scent of oil and stale popcorn clung to the air. Desert Flannel cracked her knuckles, staring down the polished lanes with a mix of apprehension and quiet determination. This, she had been told, was a challenge unlike any other.

A sport where she could fail.

Her fingers flexed against the smooth weight of the ball, its presence foreign in her hands—too round, too heavy in the wrong way. It lacked the controlled chaos of a sprint, the bone-rattling impact of a tackle, the sharp, measured grace of a vault. It demanded patience, calculation—qualities she had never needed before. She took a step forward, inhaled the scent of wax and old wood, and released.

The ball rolled, lazy and meandering, as if it, too, questioned its purpose. It wobbled, uncertain. Then, with a final, pitiful spin, it veered off course and tumbled into the gutter.

Silence.

Desert Flannel stared. Then, she laughed. Loud and unrestrained, the kind of laugh that cracked through the air like a whip, that startled the dust from forgotten corners. A sound that belonged not to an athlete, nor a competitor, but simply to someone alive. She bent over, hands on her knees, shaking with mirth at the sheer absurdity of it all.