By morning, she was moving, though she did not remember deciding to. The night had left her cold and trembling, her body stiff with pain that refused to fade. Her muscles ached as if she had been torn apart and poorly sewn back together. Every breath still felt too sharp, too real, as though the air itself were scraping the inside of her lungs.
She pushed herself to her feet in the gray light before dawn. The sky was washed in pale color, empty and distant, and it made her chest ache in a way she could not explain. Once, she had lived beyond skies. Now this thin stretch of blue was all there was.
The fields around her were quiet. The grass where she had slept was brown and curled, drained of life as though something had passed through it and taken what it needed. She looked down at it and felt a stab of guilt.
She had not meant to do that.
She began to walk toward the village because there was nowhere else to go. Her steps were slow and uneven, her balance uncertain. Every few paces she had to stop and steady herself, waiting for the dizziness to pass. As she drew closer, she could hear the sounds of waking life. A rooster crowed. Someone laughed. A cart rattled along a stone road. Smoke drifted lazily upward from chimneys. It should have felt comforting.
Instead, something inside her tightened.
The air grew heavier the nearer she came. The grass at the roadside dulled from green to yellow. A row of wildflowers wilted as she passed, their petals falling silently to the dirt.
She stared at them in horror.
"Please," she whispered, though she did not know who she was begging. "I am not trying to do this."
At the edge of the village, a man carrying a basket of dirty vegetables noticed her. He slowed when he saw her, his expression shifting from mild curiosity to something deeper and more uneasy.
"Are you hurt?" he asked.
She wanted to say yes. She wanted to say she was broken in ways he could not imagine. Instead, all she managed was a soft, confused sound.
The man's grip tightened on his basket. His eyes flicked over her face, then away, as if looking at her for too long made him uncomfortable.
"You should not be out here," he said, though his voice lacked conviction. "You should go back where you came from."
"I do not know where that is…" she replied.
That was the truth.
He stepped back, then another step, and then turned and hurried down the road without looking back. A knot formed in her chest.
More people began to notice her. A woman paused in the middle of hanging laundry, staring with a furrowed brow. A child stopped running and began to cry for no clear reason. A dog pulled against its chains, growling low in its throat.
No one touched her.
No one wanted to be near her.
Whispers began to spread through the street, soft and urgent.
"There is something wrong with her."
"Do you feel it?"
"The air is strange…"
Fear moved through the village like a shadow. Doors closed. Curtains were drawn. Someone muttered a prayer. She stood there, alone in the open road, feeling smaller with every heartbeat.
"I am sorry," she whispered to no one.
Her legs gave way and she sank to her knees, pressing her hands into the dirt as if the earth might hold her together. A deep ache spread through her chest, sharp and hollow all at once. Loneliness settled over her like a weight.
She awkwardly lifted herself from the ground and turned away before anyone could gather the courage to approach her. She fled back toward the empty fields, toward the withered grass and quiet hills, where at least there were no eyes watching her like she was a threat.
Behind her, the village returned to its prayers.
They prayed to the gods who had cast her out. And far above, beyond the fragile sky, something ancient began to pay attention.