Amnesia wasn't a route Hadleigh ever expected to take, but it was one she should be grateful for. Afterall, she was supposed to be dead.
For over twenty years, schemes to tear apart the lycanthrope kingdom have been put into place.
For over twenty y...
Was pain always supposed to be so peaceful? The first thought that seemed to burst through an unconscious mind in what seemed like - well, she didn't know. The girl didn't know how long she had been lying in a warm, soft bed, encased in silence accompanied by the occasional beep of something close beside her ear. Silence. Not the kind where sound seemed completely vacant from the world, absorbed by anything and everything. Not the kind she somehow knew was always present when it snowed. Rather, it was the kind of silence that was warm, safe, secure. And it was the security that let her breathe, let her feel the sharp pain that radiated through her side with each intake of air, that let her feel the peace that came with it. The distraction of any distressing or worrisome thought, wiped away by the presence of something more distracting, something physical.
However, peace, she realized, never lasted long. Not when a second thought entered her mind, one that she couldn't seem to answer. How did I get here? It plagued her. Nagged, and pushed, and pulled. She searched every corner of her mind, but soon, she came to find that there were no corners to search. No blankets to look under, no chairs to overturn. There was nothing. Only a blank slate, a sea of dark, an empty void of memory stared back at her as she tried to remember, who am I? Only a small voice echoed back, one singular remnant of memory, "Praesidio."
But what was it? It wasn't her name, was it? No. It didn't seem like a name, not for a person anyway. A place? Maybe. A message? A code? She had no way of knowing what the word Praesidio even meant. Was it even a word? No. No, it was a word. Something in her nagged again, pushed and pulled again, overturned the void in her mind again and again. Praesidio was a word. A place. A place! Praesidio was a place, hidden somewhere far away in the void. Somewhere, it was there, hidden in the murky waters, covered by a thick fog. Not a void. In a void, there is nothing, but in her - in her, there was something.
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Was it hours, minutes, or mere seconds that lay between the sound of each piercing beep? Unsure, and still stuck halfway between being unconscious and awake, the girl grew frustrated as she lost count after four - but four what? She wasn't sure of that. She wasn't sure of anything. She wasn't even sure if she would ever wake up. How long had she been lying there, wrapped in crispy sheets that seemed to warm her to the bone? She'd lost count of the times she had fallen asleep, only to awake yet again unable to open her eyes.
Everything seemed to buzz around her now. Despite the fact that she still couldn't stop the eternal kiss between her eyelids, it wasn't silent anymore. Were those birds chirping somewhere in the distance? A car passing in the street? The sound of a child's laugh? Footsteps - too loud to be outside whatever building she was holed up in - approaching. Click-clacketing along solid floor, echoing. Not wood, the sound wasn't deep enough, it had to be made out of something more solid. Tile, maybe? And the echo - for there to be so much of it, the footsteps had to be coming down a rather large corridor.
The footsteps stopped just outside the room. All was silent again, except for everything that wasn't. The beeping continued, cars kept passing somewhere off to the right. Birds still chirped, but the footsteps didn't move, not until a door creaked open and closed again. Then, the footsteps stopped right next to her head, between the source of the beeping and the soft pillow on which her head lay.
