Straw.

“You can’t tell anyone,” he said.
She put the knife back in the cabinet. It was cold in the bedroom, and she was so tired she couldn’t breathe. She tried to speak, but she knew that he was watching. She tried to take a deep breath, but fatigue overtook her, and she fell to the floor, a single tear of blood slipping out of her emerald eyes. The green faded into cold as she lay there. He was watching her. She wanted him to come down and hold her. She wanted to make him pay for all the joy he had caused her. She wanted to call out to the sun, have it carry her away from this place, so she could sleep in a bed with satin pillows and fluffy white sheets and lacy curtains and a warm furnace. Because all that was here was straw and wheels and needles, always threatening her, making her bleed. She needed to leave. She didn’t want to leave. She hated him, but she needed him. All she would have without him was a lame foot and a worn-down scarlet dress. Here she was burning in the cold, bleeding from everywhere. Her emerald eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep as she slumbered away. Her hands hurt from the straw, her body limp from the dusty air. Her heart called out to the sun, to take her away, but he heard her and took her first. She smelled flowers, flowers and trees and grass, but she opened her bloodshot emerald eyes and all that she saw was straw. The straw came for her, covering her up, making her feel comfortably warm and painfully cold all at once. He grabbed her and took her away, away from satin pillows and cotton candy clouds and furnaces and flowers. He took her away to his castle under the grassy hills, and soon she had disappeared, her emerald eyes closing for the last time.