For a long while, Poppy felt like she was floating in darkness. Sometimes, she felt like she was on fire, but when that passed, it was just the darkness again. She was not sure what was going on. Occasionally, she thought she heard voices around her, but the warm cocoon of the inky blackness around her made it hard to make out what they were saying. But the times of fire were excruciating. It felt like her whole body was being remade, bones reknit, skin torn and placed back new. She desperately wanted to scream and cry but she couldn’t tell if she was making any noise; the darkness around her swallowed up any sound, the fire that burned her blocked any other feeling than pain.The times of fire and the times of darkness seemed to be pretty evenly spaced at the beginning, but eventually the feeling of being on fire lessened, and the darkness seemed a little less dark. Soon she just felt like she was floating in nothingness. And that was an extremely welcome sensation.
Last Updated : 2026-03-22 Read more