The Real World

A cloud of steam enveloped the bridge. Susie couldn't see and the warm rush around her made her spin and look up to spy where the sky had gone.
She didn't know whether to keep holding onto the railing before her and hope the strange smoke passed or perhaps run to the edge of the steam and hopefully out into the world again.
Below her, in the real world, on the ground, passed by another train moving in the opposite direction. She heard a whistle and the clouds thickened around her. She screamed but she couldn't hear herself over the peeping whistle. She wondered if it was her own mouth producing that shrill note. So she let go of the rail and ran, back the way she had come, back to the things she knew.
In all things now her beliefs were shattered. In terror, her senses had failed her. She stepped were no platform rested and her foot tumbled into airy space. Her body followed after it.
Tripping and skidding, and even thudding, down the blue stairs of the railway bridge Susie landed, a grazed and bleeding mess, at the foot of the flight. Her eyes filled with water but she did not fully cry for she knew nobody was around to hear her. She tried to push herself up with her wrist, but it did not seem to work any more. Her feet were still above her, on the second step of the bridge. She moved to bring them down to the ground but a crunch caused her nerves to burn and a darkness to cover her eyes.
She awoke to dusk. The sun had crept below the treeline of the wood that the railway ran through. Her legs now rested on the dirt path that ran between the bridge and the farmland beyond Sort's Wood. She decided not to make the mistake of movement again and instead lay quietly and listened to the increasing hum of the summer night insects. A centipede crossed from the grass on the right side of the path to the left, passing inches from her nose. She neither screamed nor tried to move away from the unusual creature. The insect seemed to regard the fallen girl for a moment and then passed on to whatever hollow awaited him. As he reached the edge of the path though, he changed direction and followed its border towards the trees and on out of sight.
Susie then heard the sound of a nightjar nearby. She could hear this creature from her home but he was impossible to see, said her father, unless you were prepared to wait and watch for a very long time. A tawny owl spread its wings wide and smoothed its flight 10 feet along the route of the path. Two young squirrels fought noisily on the railway line before scampering around her and on up the path.
The little girl shifted her weight and found that her left arm and leg no longer throbbed. The arm even seemed to move a little. She propped herself up and placed her weight on her left side. The left leg held, though gingerly. She sat back on the railway step.
Then, a fox. Auburn light seemed to irradiate from it's body. It paid Susie little mind, though its ears were pricked. It turned, as if to cross the bridge, and saw the girl now calm and staring in wonder at the wild creature before her.
The two waited and watched each other, unmoving and in thrall, for that length of time a mind finds hard to quantify. A nightjar flew between the two figures and broke the gaze. The fox turned around and slowly padded off along the path through the woods. Susie gamely rose and limped on behind, into the veil of trees. Always, in the distance, she kept some sight of the auburn fox, until she shambled clear into a moonlit meadow. Then the fox was lost among long grasses.
Susie saw torchlight and heard people calling her name. Now she began to cry.