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She might have laughed at how readily they followed the ruse had she intended the test to remain un-passed.
So it turned that a few words printed on a card pointed them back from whence they’d come – the framed, the windowed, the doored – and locked her in her loneliness.
Instead, she comforted herself with the dream of an impossible friend who paused to breathe, followed the signs instead of the sign, and fumbled upon the invisible line that looped through the rusting ring.