Your beautiful mouth was moving like a caterpillar. I reached out and tried to catch it.

When the darkness gets easier, you know you're sinking deeper, becoming dead yourself.

It happened like this. I was stolen from an airport. Taken from everything I knew, everything I was used to. Taken to sand and heat, dirt and danger. And he expected me to love him. This is my story. A letter from nowhere.

The land wants you here. I want you here," you called. "Don't you care about that at all?

I made it," you said, gruffly, "for you." You shoved it onto my finger. It was roughly carved, shaped from a lump of something colourful and cold...a ring made entirely from a gemstone. It was beautiful. It glinted emerald greens and blood reds over my skin, and had tiny flecks of gold catching the light. I couldn't stop staring at it. "Why?" I asked. You didn't answer that. Instead you touched the ring gently and looked piercingly at me, unsaid questions in your eyes.

It sounded weird to hear you talk so much; normally you only said a few words at a time. I'd never imagined that you'd have a story, too. Until that moment, you were just the kidnapper. You didn't have reasons for anything. You were stupid and evil and mentally ill. That was all. When you started talking, you started changing.

You told me once of the plants that lie dormant through the drought, that wait, half-dead, deep in the earth. The plants that wait for the rain. You said they'd wait for years, if they had to; that they'd almost kill themselves before they grew again. But as soon as those first drops of water fall, those plants begin to stretch and spread their roots. They travel up through the soil and sand to reach the surface. There's a chance for them again.