EMMALINE
The first thing that reaches me is the cold.
Not the gentle cool of an open window or a stone floor on a summer morning. This cold has teeth. It sinks through skin and muscle and settles directly into bone, and it is what pulls me back from the dark — not gently, not kindly, but with the blunt insistence of something that doesn’t care whether I want to return.
My head is the second thing. The pain lives behind my eyes and radiates outward in slow, nauseating pulses, and for a long moment I simply lie still and breathe through it, eyes closed, trying to locate myself in the dark behind my lids.
The ground beneath me is wrong. Too hard. Too cold. Grit and stone pressing into my cheek, my palms, the thin fabric of my dress offering nothing between my skin and whatever this floor
