Sophia
I sat there, still trembling, the sheets tangled around my legs like chains.
My breath came shallow, and I pressed a hand to my chest as if I could calm the frantic beating of my heart. The dream lingered in my mind with a clarity that could not be dismissed, sharper than memory, more haunting than fantasy.
The girl was me.
I knew it with a certainty that made my bones ache.
That wide-eyed child with her small hands grasping desperately for her mother’s warmth, that had been my reality, my past. And the woman, her gentle smile and patient hands teaching me, guiding me, loving me in quiet ways despite everything…she was my mother.
My mother.
I whispered the word in my mind over and over, tasting it like something forbidden and holy at once. For so long, I had lived with a ga
