Blacktail Deer Plateau cruel to be kind

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The participants have indicated the following reason(s) for this warning: TW: suicidal ideations

Summer was nearly at its apex, yet there was nothing but ice within her.

Cold, brittle bones, ready to shatter at the slightest touch. A heart frozen over, and veins and capillaries wintry tendrils. One eye of cool amber, the other of midnight indigo.

And still, still as if one locked within the confines of a glacier.

She had eyes for her remaining daughters, but barely. Watched them play, watched them grow, offering a tiny smile or an approving nod when she had to. When she could.

But her will to live was slipping from her like water from interlaced fingers.

Drink. . .and find it spilling down the front, and she hapless to keep the thoughts at bay.

Think. . .yet every musing found her spiraling into self-loathing and what-ifs.

Sink. . .

Which was all she wanted to do, and she laid upon the bank of the plateau, watching Whitefish River whirl by. She could fling herself down; a blow to the head from one of the stones, rising jagged above the rapids. . . She'd feel nothing. Ever again.

That was good.

She made to rise, and her muscles stiffened, body warring with mind. For even as the psyche plummeted, as the corporeal turned cold—the heart still beat, and the base instinct to survive carried on.