Inside the room, the air was thick with warmth and a heavy silence. A bookshelf stood sentinel in the corner, its rows disciplined and neat. Catherine moved like a shadow across the floor, her fingertips ghosting over the spines of the leather-bound volumes.
She reached for a ghost she knew well.
Wuthering Heights. Emily Brontë, 1847. A classic, though to her, it felt more like a mirror.
"Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same," Catherine whispered. She traced the ink, the words bleeding into her own reality.
She retreated to a chair, sinking into the familiar embrace of the upholstery. She had read these pages a dozen times, yet the hunger remained. Or perhaps, it wasn't hunger—it was starvation. She hadn't stepped past the threshold of this house in three years. The world outside had become a foreign film she no longer cared to watch.
"Miss Catherine..."
