it's something like a little girl standing in the middle of an arid gulch, a wide swath cut from ancient glaciers and waterways. there's something about the silence there, everything the color of lightly softened leather. the sun hot on her neck, a heightened sense of her surroundings. quiet. wide columns of hard sand and clay rising upward on either side like monuments to something terrifying and hidden. dust gently caroms off boulders and loose brush, swirling downward into the canyon in wide, gentle sweeps. the wind still, she closes her eyes, raises her head skyward, a soft contentedness reflected in her lax brow and placid, smooth features. the sun bakes through her eyelids, the world taking on an orange hue and a roundness that dances left, right, left, right.

then noise, almost imperceptible at first. ears straining hard against centuries of nothing. a soft whoosh, whoosh, that gathers with it the fury and dormant anger of land scorned by time. and then a cold rush of blood to the extremities... spreading now, quicker, driven by fear and longing for the quiet of the afternoon. pupils dilated, back arched in guarded anticipation, eyes tunneling forward, forward, always forward, burrowing into the bedrock to find the noise. the skin pulls taut white against her knuckles, her chin now flush on her chest, the smoothness gone from her face, a helpless yearning away from the noise. the world lost its orange hue, round replaced by sharp, defined taken by amorphous. the blood pops warm and loud in her ears, and the sun is gone. it's come around now, gathering steam, pulling up roots and rock and loose earth. it's close, she can feel it, her heart leaping furiously now, closer, closer, closer, closer.

head now raised, she holds up the palm of her hand, extended outward toward the noise, breathes deep and closes her eyes.

yup

what happens next?