She had never felt this lonely. So empty, so bitter, and so cold. A million thoughts were swirling in her head. She sat among those giants who were just as bitter and as cold. She felt more sympathy from these silent beasts than she did from anyone else. Her tears tumbled out of her tired blue eyes and poured down her soft cheeks. Her dark hair was being tossed about her, sticking to her wet face.

Too exhausted from her grief to push away from her eyes, she sat there. She sat there among those beasts, breathing the bitter air. She felt at home. She felt more at home sitting in front of this huge vast emptiness than she did sitting in her own small, cozy room. She could scream out at the top of her lungs and not a single soul would hear her and if she made the slightest sound at home there was always a voice to correct her. She felt protected and loved with the beasts around her.

The beasts and the emptiness were two things she could depend on. Two things that would never abandon her like so many in her life had before. They never spoke, they only listened. They never preached to her about what would become of life. They were simply a reminder that whatever did become of her life, they would always be something constant. They would never walk out on her mother, like her father had. They would never abuse drugs and run away, like her brother had. And they would never shut her out of their lives, like her mother had. Through all the break-ups, through all the hard times and the good, the beasts were there.

She thought back to when she was young. How she had immediately fallen in love with the emptiness and the beasts. She would beg her mother to bring her back there. To sit among the beasts and simply be happy. Everything about it was beautiful. Seldom were the times her mother agreed to let her go or even acknowledged her asking to.

Her shoulders begin to shake and her head sinks into her lap. She is laughing out loud, yet tears stream down her face. The girl is alone, as usual, with her friends all around her. They are protecting her from her memories. From all the times she came and slept on them, cuddled into a crevice between two of them and tried to forget.

To forget the look on her mother's face as her father walked calmly out of their living room - and their lives. To forget the last words her brother said to her; "I got to get out of here, kid. I'll be alright. I love you - don't forget that." To forget the feeling of rejection every time her mother looked at her with disgust on her face.

It is odd that she is capable of feeling such love from things that are not even alive. Or how she can feel such closeness to something so infinite. She always has and always will love the beasts and the emptiness. She sometimes stops and watches how people carelessly stomp on the beasts and do not even glance at the emptiness and its beauty. She has grown to respect both of them for they have become her family.

She knows in her heart that life will go on and, in time, she will have her own family to whom she will show the beasts and the emptiness. She will let them see where she slept between the boulders in the sea wall many nights in her teenage life. She will show them the ocean that became her bedroom and her love. And she will teach them to watch over and love them like they have watched over and loved her. 1