] [[౨ৎmusique ౨ৎ )]
Amani has always wondered—how did it feel to die? When the air in your lungs gave out, when your ribs caved inward like an abandoned house, when the weight of existence finally slipped from your shoulders like an over-worn coat. Was it quiet, like slipping beneath the surface of a still lake? Or violent, like a door torn from its hinges in a storm?
She has heard people say it feels like floating, like a dream pulling you under. But she remembers drowning in a way that never quite let go, the slow crawl of suffocation, the sharp edges of fear gnawing at the back of her throat.
Dying wasn’t the part that scared her. It was coming back. And yet, in a way Amani had died and come back. The feeling of falling lingered in her bones, like she had been dropped from somewhere high, her body still catching up with her soul. Her fingers curled against the cold stone floor, muscles slow to obey. Her breath hitched, sharp and uneven, like she had forgotten how to inhale.
Amani opened her eyes to flickering candlelight and shadows stretched too long, too wrong. The scent of wax and rust thick in the air. Footsteps—measured, deliberate. A voice.
“You’re awake.”
Her mind fought through the fog, piecing itself back together. She remembered the hollow weight in her chest before she disappeared. The way the world had blurred at the edges, how she had reached for something—someone—before everything turned inside out. She remembered something else, some sort of glowing light, masked faces, eyes staring straight at her skull. She was awake, but how come it didn’t feel like she was. She blinked, as her eyes finally registered the people in the room, Miles North in the room, he was alive, when everyone had assumed him dead and she was alive too. Perhaps, if her long nails had not dug into her skin, she would have thought she was dead, but she knew, she was not. Though, she remembered something completely different. Her eyes flickered to the rest of the students in the room, waiting for them to say something, but no one said a word, until finally someone had taken the lead–she didn’t remember who, her mind stuck in a state of fog, confusion and her headache large. See, the thing is, Amani has always been a sickly child, she had once been so sick that she wasn’t allowed to see anyone but the family until she turned 10 and she was given her pet creature in order to keep her stable and also drugs she took occasionally. Nevertheless, this feeling, this foggy feeling, is not something Amani has experienced in a while since she turned 20 and she did not really think she did anything to trigger a feeling of sickness, so she wondered, what exactly happened before they landed themselves in here? Then finally, she felt a sharp pain in her arm, and blood flowed through her and she coughed as Miles left the room. That made her feel better. “Great,” Amani said, trying to regain her voice admits this chaos. “Not only were we basically kidnapped, I had to be kidnapped with you guys,” She scoffed, believing the whole ‘they had passed a test thing’ Miles had said to be bullshxt, what exactly was happening? She turned to Lenore, anxiety still clouding her mind but she hid it, as she often did and said, “Well at least you’re here too,”