Though her eyes were open she couldn't think why her heart was pounding, mind empty, as if it were a ticking bomb.
She was sure she was awake but couldn't be. It was a nightmare of sorts, more vicious than most, more lucid.
Her body was on a black river that didn't flow. There were stars above, trees along the banks and from bizarre machines on wheels nearby there were lights as bright as the daytime sun but more white.
Turning back, she could see what she had emerged from... a box.
And now the doctor's words came back to her to play again. "Your reality isn't real."
Abruptly the scenery changed... Rock arose from the ground as if it reached for the sky, the peaks of what appeared to be mountains sculpted by the raindrops of an eternity.
They were green at the base, then brown hills and valleys, following dry creek beds and bare trees, the forests gathered by nature's wand.
Then there were the pathways that climbed the hills, wending this way and that, making tight turns which felt like a roller coaster ride for all the world.
Her eyes traced the line of the horizon and paused once again on the broad mountains towering above it. The jagged peaks of the snow-capped mountains caused a stirring in her soul.