LYRA
Two days passed faster than they should have.
The first six days had stretched. Each hour announcing itself. Each night lasting longer than the one before it. Time doing what time did when there was nothing inside it except cold and silence and a vote result sitting in your chest like something swallowed wrong.
But the last two days had been different.
The blanket changed things in a way I hadn't anticipated. It was not just the warmth, though the warmth was real and immediate and addressed the cold in a way my body received with something close to relief.
While the scent on it still lingered in the air and my heart without permission and couldn't uncatalogue now that it was surrounding me every night.
I had read the book.
Most of it. The parts I could follow easily and the parts that required slower reading and the parts where the language became old enough that I had to sit with individual sentences before they gave up their meaning.
