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The howling wind lashed around her face. Her hair flashed and beat through the air like a torch fire as dirt particles wove erratic spirals into the sky. The whole landscape was in motion. Lifting, spinning, pulsing. Every few seconds an object took recognizable shape as it flew by — a tree here, a car there — only to be lost in the blur an instant later. He stood in front of her, apparently oblivious to the chaos that engulfed him. They faced each other in the midst of it all. Both maintaining the perfect facade of stillness as the world twirled around them like a slingshot. The air was thick with dust and rocks, any greenery having been stripped away long ago. Had it been hours? Days? Millennia? Neither could tell and neither particularly cared. Time was no longer meaningful. Everything was relative. He squinted as the maelstrom escalated. His cotton shirt snapped fiercely against his skin and an all-encompassing roar deafened his ears. She peered back, cords of hair whipping past her eyes. She made no movement. Her face was set like iron against the driving elements. A bead of sweat dribbled down his temple and was immediately sheared away by the wind. The moisture left a white streak across his face that turned dark as flying specks adhered to it. She observed this half-consciously, finding the whole situation rather humorous but not daring to part her lips for fear of having her teeth ground down by the sandblasting cyclone. "How is she doing this?" he thought. The terrible din pushed against his mind as if to overthrow it and he fought back silently without moving. She scarcely breathed, privately amazed at his control. "How is he doing this?" she thought. And so they continued in this manner, moment blurring into moment, thought into thought, and agony into agony. The earth eventually blew itself out of existence until all that was left were the swirling cosmos. Nebulae and constellations churned around them in a peculiar celestial vortex. He stared into her eyes and she into his. Suddenly all motion ceased and the incomprehensible blur of existence snapped into spontaneous focus. Spiraling galaxies froze in mid-spiral. Colliding asteroids remained locked in the instant of collision and dying stars never quite died. She looked at him surprised, and saw the dimple in the corner of his mouth. He smiled first.