Sleepless: Chapter Seventeen

The Center of Attention [And Maybe the Universe]

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She hadn’t meant to let go. In a way, she hadn’t.

It wasn’t a moment where Carina slipped through her fingers, or she lost her grip.

…her hands just didn’t exist anymore.

Her whole body was gone.

Carina was gone.

Everything around her was light, and it made no distinctions about where it ended and she began. Blinking did nothing to shut it out. But she was not alone.

Her vision did not change, but there was an inexplicable rise and fall, connection and collision. A sea of consciousness surrounded her, and all around her, the light breathed with the heavy weight of a sleeping colossus.

But it could see her.

Everyone and everything could see her.

The light illuminated her thoughts, her soul — her hair, skin, and skull no longer protecting her from light shining directly into her. She flailed in panic, but had no physical body to truly do so. No lungs were there to seize on her, and yet her mind insisted she was suffocating all the same.