I stare at the girl in shock. She's here. She's real. Maybe I'm not crazy. But than I notice something about her that frightens me. There's a dagger with dried blood on it's edges hanging from her pant-loop. That gentleness in her eyes looks even more feirce than before. Angry, instead of protective.

My breath catches. Her words "And so it begins..." rings through my head. I decide to give her the benefit of the doubt, but I wonder if that's naïve.

"Who are you..?" I ask, not willing to follow this strange girl, even if her words seem understanding.

"Tara," she replies, shaking my hand hastily, as if saying, "Yeah, I have a name. I bet you have one, too. Isn't that neat? Now let's ditch this place before we die!" "We should go, before FireHead comes back to the Wonderful World of the Living." She grabs my left hand and turns around, looking like she's ready to run.

"I think it was "The Land of The Living," I correct. She just sighs and looks at the ceiling until her dark brown- or is it black- eyes settle on me.

"Right... Sorry... Trapped in Crazyland here, and that's what we should be concerned about right now. Can we get back to running for our lives?"

I jerk my hand away, suddenly scared of this girl, then it's me who grabs her arm. "Not before you tell me who you are," I challenge, pausing for only a split second, trying to remember how I got here. I restate my question: "Who you really are."

She looks down, like she's deciding what to say to me. Finnally, she decides, "A friend. It took me a very long time to come to that, so that is who I am." She pauses. "Who I really am." I notice how fast she's breathing, but I cannot tell whether that's from running or worrying. I guess that it's the latter. "Are you coming?" she urges.

All I can do is nod my head, Yes. Yes, I am ready to leave. To live. Ready to not be trapped.

"Good," she sighs. Grabbing my hand again, she says C'mon, like an order from a general.

We run through the halls, in an endless maze of corridors. Occasionally, she'll stop and say which way to go, but otherwise she's silent, and running effortlessly. I decide that she has obviously been here before, but I wonder how.

When she breathes the word "finally", I'm surprised when we reach an enclosed wall. Except... upon closer look, there is a small, maybe two or three foot high door in the white stone wall.

Tara shoves her fingers into the crevise between the right side of the door and the wall. Her nails are too short to wedge in it, so she has difficulty opening it.

Meanwhile, I stand aside, watching a strange girl with fingertips larger than what she's trying to grab ahold of, open a tiny stone door that we are going to do Who-Knows-What-With. That is what my day is like.

Of course, I realize that this is a rescue from a prison, not just following a crazy girl to her rendezvous point. Although, it could be both...

Then I hear fingers snap. "Hey!" Tara's exclaim knocks me back into focus. "Alice, lets go!"

I'm suddenly excited. "Is that my name?" I ask.

She answers instantly, but it feels like minutes. Her answer is pretty anti-climatic. "No, I was referencing Lewis Caroll's 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'. I got the thing open, now let's make like a frigging tree and leave." Tara's halfway through the little door, on her hands and knees, going farther in, but I'm still weary of her.

What if this is another trick?

I honestly believe that she is reading my mind when she crawls back out. Brushing off her pale pink pants, she says, "Look, I know I may seem a bit... difficult... at times..." Her voice becomes softer again, and she's like how I remember her. "I'm just worried. I act this way when I'm concerned. Or when I meet someone new." She turns to the side, but looks like she's still talking to me. "I should probably work on that..." She turns back. "I understand that you don't know me, thus have no actual reason to trust me, but I truly just want to help you."

I believe Tara. There's an ancient sincerity in her tone that makes her seem like she justs wants to help. Like she has been in the same position as I am right now. That makes me feel like she understands what I'm going through.

Plus, I know that if I can't be brave enough to take this risk, I may as well never even hope for escape.

I sigh, closing my eyes momentarily. "I believe you." She smiles. "Thank you," I say, genuinely grateful.

Her smile grows larger. "Of course. And, you're welcome..." Her smile fades. "We should go. Before anyone sees that you're gone... It's now or never."

I say nothing, but crawl behind her, farther into that little door. After a minute or so of crawling, my curiousity gets the better of me.

"What's the knife for?" I ask. Probably a dumb first specific question to ask someone helping me escape, but I feel the need to gauge Tara's sanity.

She responds with a question instead. "Do you want me to attempt breaking two girls out of an asylum without a weapon?"

I shake my head, realize she can't see me, then say a quick and quiet no. Her medium-length, brown hair is a mess, and she keeps blowing her side bangs out of her view every see minutes.

"You don't talk much, do you hun?" she asks, right before taking a sharp left turn. She keeps crawling, giving me the impression that she doesn't care whether I answer or not. "I swear, I'm a lot nicer when I'm not in Ninja Mode..." she quips, trying to be humorous.

I suddenly understand Tara. The sarcasm and jokes are a façade, attempting to mask her fear, helping her be brave. But there's something else... A weariness that continues telling me that she hasn't got anything left to be afraid of.

"Just another right, then a few feet till we're out," she says, noticing my lack in communication. So we turn that right, crawl a few more feet, and she opens the vent using her dagger.

We crawl out into a large room, but it isn't white anymore. Most of it is black, but colorful marks are made along the walls. They look like surges of energy.

She trails her hands along the paths the two dimensional energy surges make, sniffling, like she crying.

I try to take in her outfit. She's wearing a black short-sleeves short, that has built in wrinkles around the collar. Her pants, stained with soot and blood, are a light pale pink color. She has black mary-jane flats on, but they're torn up and scuffed. Her skin is more pale than average, making her choppy brown hair greatly and dark pink lips contrast.

She looks like a child. Someone who's afraid, and you want to take care of her, like your little sister. She could be nothing more than a child. But there's something else in her, a demonic virtue. And an ancient feeling stems from her. Like she is older than time itself. She has a ferocity, like a mother would have. Is she a mother?

It's hard to think about her, going from fearing her, thinking of her like a child, like a relic, a mother, to almost anything you could classify a person as. Like she's multiple people at once.

"How old are you?" I ask. Question number two.

She laughs lightly, like she's been asked a thousand times. Perhaps she has. "Probably somewhere between six and older than any other living thing..."

That was helpful... "Like, reincarnation..?" I ask, curious. Well, maybe curious, I could be afraid. I don't know if I'm talking to a little girl, or an older woman, or someone crazy.

"No," she says. "I don't know how. I just know I am." After that, silence dominates the room yet again.

Question number three: "Are you afraid?" She hesitates, and it's like... I see something. I see her. "Tell me the truth. I can't trust you if you only answer what you think is best for me to hear." The words came out of my mouth so fast, I'm not sure how I knew them.

She smiles. "I'm an empathic psychopath; old habits die hard." She pauses again. "So they lock people up for being understanding. Call it insane when the emotions get tough. Right, that's a laugh, I'll tell you. And no, I'm not afraid. But I should be."

"You're hard..." I say, because just listening to her hurt. "I can't... You. I can't see..."

"Don't try to understand me," she says, taking a long, shaky breath. "Only a few other people were ever able to figure me out. Like I said: It took me a long time to realize who I am, and the only thing that stayed the same was "friend". You may see me Like a warrior, or a demon; a mother, or a child; I'll take care of someone as if they were my own child, but they will most likely end up doing the same for me, like I were theirs'. You may question whose side I am on; you may hate me; you may love me; but in the end, I am a friend. To describe me as something else, would be denying me the right to be myself. Otherwise, I am mother, I am child, I am queen, I am demon, I am war, I am peace. I am Infinite."

I don't even stay silent a second. "Am I the same?"

"...Yes."

I try to remain quiet as she trails her eyes and fingers up and down the wall. "...Why aren't you afraid?" I inquire.

"A long time of losing will do that to you. I've dined with the greatest beasts. I've found that nothing is as it seems. Treacherous demons? Cuppa tea. Family? People who think they know me? Certain death."