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SLEEPING WITH THE STARLIGHT FILLING MY ROOMS FELT LIKE I'D BEEN MISSING SOMETHING MY ENTIRE LIFE.
When I woke up around noon I felt better rested than I have since I was a young child. Back pain; eliminated. And of course, I checked my phone to find that Chrissy sent the finer details of her plane ticket to Volterra. She would be arriving around six in the evening.
Slipping into the clothes I found inside the suitcase placed inside my room already, I got myself ready for the day.
My wear was of nothing more than a simple t-shirt and shorts built for the summer weather. It dawned on me after I exited the room that I stood out like a sore thumb. The people roaming the halls wore black; head to toe in midnight darkness. It felt nearly impure for them to do so, like something was genuinely wrong with them.
But I said nothing about it aloud. The guard stationed outside my door, Afton, made no regards to me as we walked. I didn't know where I was going, and that must have been obvious as I went in circles almost five times before I saw anything new in the corridor.
Yet what I saw wasn't all that interesting to me. Just a few paintings I'd seen before in museums all over the United States. They have their own flair when you're looking directly into their souls, but I'm not bothered with the arts these days.
Another weird thing about the people in the halls: they don't seem to notice my presence at all. When I mean don't notice, I mean they can't seem to perceive that I even exist in the same corridor as them. Which is strange, considering that yesterday the world and people around me seemed hypersensitive to my very existence. Every step, every uneven breath. Now I feel invisible.
I roamed for another hour or so, guessing that it was good enough exercise for the day, before heading back into the comfort of my new (and soon to be old) room.
To my surprise, when I came back into the area there was a little black velvet box sitting on the edge of the finely crafted nightstand. A letter protrudes from under the trinket-holder; freshly placed.
Having some semblance of manners kept from my childhood, I open up the letter first.
Quick and straight to the point. Hastily, I unlocked the velvet box and took out what appeared to be a necklace. It was a golden crest in the shape of the letter V with black... diamonds... layered into the metal. How much had this thing cost?
