i may never sleep tonight

The lady sniffed, flared nostrils at the apex of her height. She had been roaming forever. Of course, it was all very exciting, finally the flora littering the groundwork beneath her consisted of something other than a mere slab of rock. Ah, but it was a good deal cooler in this ambiance, the very air feeling more moist than anything she'd ever experienced before. The world seemed to hum around her, a faint roar in the depths of her ears, threatening to grow.

The night sky was a stretch of velvet, soft and dark in the back of her mind. And yet, there was still plenty of light everywhere, bursts flashing in the bugs, shafts piercing through the leaves of the trees. Trees taller than any she'd seen before, and so many more hues. Even within the wood alone, it was a rich rainbow of ebony. But, what was that noise?

With the beat of her heart increasing, she pushed through the fronds of the vegetation established before her and paused, her breath hitched in her throat. There was rarely a time when she was ever consciously aware of her breath being taken away by something beautiful, besides herself of course - but this was one of those moments. The sheer amount of water, crashing a mere leap before her, would take anyone's breath away. The moonlight seemed to be crystallized in each drop of water, and the droplets crashed into each other in perfect chaos. The result sent flares of light off every time she blinked, and she found it hard to look at the great expanse of water too closely. So she turned her attentions south, the way the water flowed away from it's point of impact with the earth. Curiously, it quieted quickly, settling into the way she expected water to act - like a smooth snake slithering through the trench it'd dug into the ground. She stood a few heights above where the ground truly leveled off, and from her vantage point she could see just over the tops of a few trees off in the distance. That was the way she liked it - a queen ought to be tall. All the better to judge you with.

And just like that, she was back in her youth, a memory's ensnaring hold engulfing her. She closed her eyes and drank in the cool, wet air. She rooted herself to the rock outcropping she stood upon. She tuned into the crash of the waterfall beside her. And she remembered.

Everything.