[ IP ] She took what she thought was her last breath , and sank slowly ...

The ethereal blue of alien landscape glowed through the cracks in the blackened coral. 
 
 The lonely woman let herself sink into the only remnant of a forgotten past, ancient rocks and rubble the remainder of some all-power empire from long ago, a perfect time when no-one had The Sickness. 
 
 The air above was too polluted. The waters below were too. A single shark drifted by, limp tail swaying in the current, too tired to live. Muddy veins of dark poison bulged from the creature's skin, much like the scars all over the woman's body. 
 
 The woman- young, not old enough to be dying- tried to remember a time that never was, but could n't. This was it for her, a beautiful, inhabitable, landscape, free of the fine black mist and muggy purple fog that stretched over the earth like a muffling blanket of smoke. 
 
 The victim, poisoned by the people of a distant time, closed her eyes and felt the last of her breath escape in a trail of silver bubbles. 
 
 She let go.
