CLAIRE
I do not feel different when I wake up.
That is the first thing I notice, and it unsettles me more than pain would have. There is no ache, no dramatic pulse under my skin, no sense of something foreign moving through me. My body feels like it always has.
And yet, when I sit up, I know with quiet certainty that something fundamental has shifted.
The mark does not announce itself. It does not demand attention. It exists like gravity, invisible but impossible to ignore once you understand what it does. I press my fingers lightly against the place where it rests beneath my clothes, not checking for sensation but for reassurance that it is still there. It is.
That knowledge settles into me slowly as I move through the morning.
Ordinary actions layered over something t
