The first sensation is dryness. My lips are cracked, my throat parched, my tongue thick and heavy in my mouth, as if I've swallowed cotton. Then the rest of my body wakes up, and something is wrong—terribly, inexplicably wrong.
Everything feels strange, too warm, too loose, like my bones have been replaced with something softer—something that doesn't quite belong to me.
My eyes open slowly, my eyelids aching, too heavy to lift more than a crack at first. I blink, forcing them wider, and morning light spills into the room—soft, golden, the kind of light that comes through expensive curtains in expensive hotels, filtered and gentle, meant to soothe.
The ceiling above me is unfamiliar. Wrong. The wrong shade of white, the wrong texture, the wrong distance from my face.
