Sofia’s POV
The morning arrived whether I was ready for it or not.
This was the thing about mornings. They had no interest in your readiness. They came in through the curtains with the specific indifference of something that had places to be and had long since stopped asking permission and the best you could do was get up and meet them before they decided the day without you.
I got up.
I stood at the mirror.
I looked at myself for a long moment — the dark circles that the insufficient sleep had left, the particular quality of a face that had been through something and was still processing — and I made a decision that I had been making in various forms since I was seven years old and understood for the first time that the world was not going to arrange itself around my comfort.
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