walk on the rewild side

He was sleeping. An early riser, she feared she might miss something, of what sort she didn't know. She slid on sweatpants, stepped into sandals, clicked open the door, entered the hallway, and realized she needed to grab the old-fashioned, no-tech room key. The sun wasn't up, but dawn's first blush hummed at the horizon, if you looked for it and if you wanted to imagine it. Sandals were a poor choice. Rocky terrain, darkness, poor footing, snakes, what-not. She didn't want to wander in the woods or below the cliff. Not because there were no paths or it was frosty but because she knew herself. She knew her own impulsiveness and her love affair with obsessiveness. She'd walk till she starved without thinking twice. So she found a rock, a huge boulder tilted back against the cliff wall, snug. A flat cold saddle to sit on. Is this what smokers crave, this exhalation? But smoking would despoil it. Was that a mourning dove or an owl? She didn't know the call of one from the other. Wide-spaced chirps of songbirds, not into it yet. An orchestra warming up. A rustle in the thicket to the right. None of it unexpected; none of it disturbing her reverie. Wrong. No reverie, no night-day-dawn fantasia. Something else dreamlike. She chuckled. Somebody else, some other author, would have her pondering what am I doing? what's going on? where am I going? but not her.