The fall leaves shifted restlessly across the water slickened pavement, the wind carried a bite that only partially was accounted for by the chill, and the clouds hung still in the sky in shapeless gray mass. The thickly lethargic drops that had fallen moments before halted and the air held an energy that was neither electric nor compelling, but subtle. Quiet.

It seemed something had halted the day she disappeared. Left for something else without a word. The day she had daydreamed of for hours upon hours in a dark room staring at the shadows of night while waiting for the allusive sleep. The day she could disappear.

She felt she had often played a role, one she had grown to regard with contempt. A second self which she could change and reform. For truth, she had learned, scares others. Even in a subconscious way. People looked at her differently purely because they did not understand. They could not, for they had not been through her life, and seen it through her eyes. Nor could they see the very entrapment that she had created for herself, and the opening which shrank every passing year.

It was not through anger, sadness, or any true emotion that drove her to leave, but a need. A basic hunger to escape, from the world she had created. The memories, the person, they could not change. But the very essence of her world could.

Still waters... the raindrops may ripple the quiet surface but undercurrents can not be disturbed.

She had wondered if it was cowardly. If it would hurt the ones she loved too much. But the realization of what she needed was stronger. She needed to disappear.