Miriam woke before dawn with her sheets twisted around her legs and her heart beating too fast.
For a moment, she didn't know where she was. The room felt close, the air thick. Heat lingered low in her body, coiled tight and restless, like something unsettled beneath her skin.
Then it came again.
Not strong. Not overwhelming.
Just… there.
A scent she didn't recognize. Not from the house. Not from the land she'd known all her life.
Miriam pressed her face into the pillow and breathed slowly through her nose, the way Mamm had taught her. In. Out. Count the breaths. Quiet the body.
The scent lingered at the edge of her awareness—foreign, unsettling—before fading, as if it had never been there at all.
Her chest ached with the effort of staying still.
This was not how mornings were meant to feel.
Mornings were quiet. Ordered. Anchored by prayer and routine, by the comfort of knowing what was expected of you.
This felt like waiting on the edge of something she couldn't see.
She dressed quickly and slipped from her room, careful not to wake her parents. The house was still, the kind of stillness that magnified every sound. The floor creaked beneath her bare feet, and she froze until the noise settled back into silence.
Outside, the air was cool and damp, the sky pale with early light. Miriam stepped onto the porch and wrapped her arms around herself, grounding in the chill, in the familiar boards beneath her feet.
For a few blessed minutes, nothing happened.
Then her senses sharpened again.
It was subtle at first—a tightening in her chest, a sudden awareness of the road stretching away from the house. Her gaze drifted there without her permission, her pulse kicking hard as warmth flared low in her belly.
She clenched her jaw.
Stop.
This was restlessness. Curiosity. Weakness of will.
"Miriam."
She startled, turning quickly.
Esther stood in the doorway, shawl draped neatly over her shoulders, hair already braided for the day. She looked as she always did—calm, composed, settled. A woman who had never seemed at odds with her own body.
"You're up early," Esther said gently.
"I couldn't sleep," Miriam admitted.
Esther stepped onto the porch beside her. "Nerves?"
Miriam hesitated, then nodded.
"That's understandable," Esther said. "This time before—before everything—it unsettles people."
Too much, Miriam thought. Too much feeling. Too much awareness.
Esther followed Miriam's gaze down the road and lowered her voice, though there was no one around to hear. "You've heard the warnings, haven't you?"
Miriam's stomach tightened. "What warnings?"
Esther hesitated, then said kindly, "About girls who struggle when they're given too much freedom."
"Struggle how?"
Esther smoothed the edge of her shawl, a habitual motion. "They lose their discipline. They stop guarding their thoughts. Their bodies."
The implication settled heavy between them.
"They say it's the darkening," Esther continued. "When a person lets instinct take precedence over obedience."
Miriam's chest tightened painfully.
The word had always been spoken like a prayer and a threat all at once.
"And what happens to them?" Miriam asked, though her voice felt distant, like it belonged to someone else.
Esther's expression softened. "The Church helps them," she said. "With prayer. With structure."
She hesitated. "Sometimes… with separation."
Sent away.
The words rang louder than Esther seemed to realize.
"I don't think that's what this time is meant for," Miriam said quietly.
Esther smiled, reassuring and certain. "It's meant to help us choose faith freely."
She paused, then added, "But faith comes more easily to some than others."
The church bell rang in the distance, clear and familiar. Esther straightened instinctively, the conversation already closing in her mind.
"You'll be fine," she said. "You've always been good. You don't have that… tendency."
The words struck deeper than anything else she had said.
Miriam nodded because it was expected.
The morning passed in a blur of chores and scripture. Miriam moved through it by habit alone, her thoughts circling a single forbidden word.
Darkening.
By midday, the heat beneath her skin had settled into something steadier—not gone, but watchful. Waiting.
That afternoon, she lingered in the barn longer than necessary. The familiar smells of hay, wood, and animals wrapped around her, grounding in a way the house no longer did. Here, her heightened awareness felt less dangerous. Less wrong.
She leaned against a stall door and closed her eyes.
And then it was there again.
That scent.
Not strong. Not close.
Just enough to make her breath catch.
It didn't belong to the animals or the barn. It was different—cleaner somehow, edged with something that made her body respond before her mind could follow.
Her fingers curled around the wood.
Heat flared sharp and low, her pulse jumping as if something had reached out and touched her.
She opened her eyes, heart racing, scanning the space around her.
Nothing. No one.
The scent faded, leaving behind a hollow ache that frightened her more than the heat itself.
Someone is here, something inside her insisted.
Or would be.
The thought made her stomach twist.
She pushed it away and returned to her work, hands shaking just slightly.
But the word followed her all the same.
Darkening.
And beneath it, a question she did not yet have the language to ask.
What if obedience was easy only for those who were never tested this way at all?