Melissa walked, quiet and low like a panther, for nearly an hour. The physical presence of the patio — the fighting, the talking, the flourishes of color and pattern — was gone.

The smell of citrus was everywhere. Lemons, limes and oranges garnished the sky; Melissa lay flat on her back, going fetal, trying to lose herself in the firestorm of foliage and scent.

Every fiber of her body resonated with something unquantifiable, and she got up onto her knees in the grove. Nauseated, she wrestled with vertigo. She was 1000 feet tall, a stretched forehead towering upward to a vantage point normally inaccessible and forbidden. Her head spun, and she shrugged her robe off. Naked, she paused, and tried to regain her balance, wobbling and kneeling, high as the sky and utterly vulnerable.

Abject before an orange tree, she prayed. She prayed for peace, calling up every available synonym for "silence." She prayed for deliverance, invoking a divine hand to throw her completely clear of consciousness. She prayed for annihilation.

Somewhere far away, God clapped His hands. Everything north of the universe disappeared, taking Melissa with it.