Sometimes she was jostled sharply, as though the world around her were lurching and swaying.
But always the darkness remained.
She struggled against it more than once, trying to claw her way upward toward wakefulness, yet each attempt dissolved before she could reach the surface. It was like being trapped inside a dream that would not release her.
A dreadful dream.
In it she was alone.
Abandoned.
Calling for help that no one could hear.
Her limbs felt distant, unresponsive. Her thoughts moved slowly through the heavy black fog that surrounded her.
Occasionally voices drifted through the darkness.
Faint.
Muffled.
As though she were buried beneath pillows and the world outside could only reach her in fragments.
She tried to listen.
Tried to understand.
But the sounds slipped away before they could take shape.
Once she thought she heard someone laugh.
Once she thought someone spoke her name.
But it might have been imagination.
Time passed—though she had no sense of how much.
Then suddenly something changed.
Noise.
Sharp.
Urgent.
The voices were louder now—many voices at once. There was movement and confusion and what sounded very much like alarm.
The darkness loosened its hold slightly.
Just a little.
Elizabeth seized upon the opening.
She fought upward with everything she had left, pushing through the suffocating heaviness that dragged at her mind.
The effort felt enormous.
But slowly—painfully—the fog began to lift.
