Something stirs in the cold. A weak breath escapes her lips - "Cold…" - barely more than a thought made sound. The bed beneath her creaks when she shifts, but her body feels brittle, muscles sluggish, like the commands from her mind are lost along the way. She opens her eyes. "Dark," she tells herself, the words echoing inside more than out.
The voice she hears—whose is it? Her own? Someone else's? A faint light seeps from the gap under the door, a few meters away. The air is heavy with dust, stale and unmoving, each breath carrying a dry tang of neglect.
Under the weight of the blanket, she drags her legs free and lowers her bare feet to the floor. Cold stone presses against her skin, and she feels each grain of dirt, every uneven ridge of the slab. The sound of each step swallows the faint white noise humming at the back of her mind.
Caution grips her before she touches the door. What waits on the other side? Could it harm her? A faint sound reaches her—wood set down on stone, footsteps moving. She knows that sound. She's heard it often, though she can't place where.
Keyhole light brightens suddenly as the handle turns. She grips it weakly, opening it just enough for a flood of brightness to sting her eyes. She shields them with one hand until they adjust. A woman stands there.
It's the gown she notices first—long, black, with white trim—and then the gray skin and hollow gaze. The woman's hands bear faint stains, though the dress is spotless. She doesn't look at the girl, her focus drifting over her shoulder as if searching for someone no longer there. Bowls—some full, some rotting—are arranged neatly along the wall. Without a word, the woman turns away.
No answers come. "Why silence?" the girl whispers, following into a corridor of crude stone and narrow windows, light comes from them to her eyes, but blinds her enough she can't quite look outside. She tries to match the woman's pace but stumbles; her body still moves like it belongs to someone else.
The hallway ends in a spiraling staircase. She braces against the wall while descending, noticing the faintly worn path on the wood—always the same steps taken. At the bottom, her eyes land on a corpse. She kneels, turning it over, but there's nothing left to rot: no flesh, no scent, no crawling life, not even bugs, something she expects from a dead body. It wears the same black-and-white clothes as the woman, beside it a small pile of wooden bowls. Though it deeply perturbs her, her mind chooses not to indulge the thoughts, instead focusing on someone who is still alive, possibly the answers to her questions.
Her pulse quickens as she follows the woman's earlier path into another corridor. An open doorway reveals a kitchen. The woman sits inside, staring at a wall until her head turns slowly toward the sound of the girl's arrival.
Even when addressed—"Who are you? What is this place?"—the woman remains silent. She stands slowly, retrieves a bowl and spoon from a cupboard, fills it from a cauldron, and sets it on the table without meeting the girl's eyes.
Something in the gesture feels deliberate: not kindness, not indifference, just necessity. A set of movements she seems to follow blindly. Drawn forward, the girl sits and stares into the pale yellow mush. It tastes of nothing—lukewarm paste dotted with soft lumps—but her hunger consumes her. Bowl after bowl disappears until her stomach aches. It hurts, pain. The most familiar sensation so far.
Once the hunger fades, she stands, murmurs a "Thank you…" but is met with the same silence. She waves a hand in front of the woman's face. The eyes track the motion but react to nothing. ''Why do you not speak?'' she insistis, something compels her to continue her sentence with 'cat got your tongue?', she doesn't, but it leaves her with a bitter taste. The conclusion is obvious, that woman won't help her.
Unwilling to stay in the kitchen, she slips back into the corridor. To one side lies the staircase and the corpse; to the other, closed doors. The first she opens leads to a library. She pulls a book from the shelf—symbols and sketches she can't read—only to drop it when movement catches her eye.
Nestled between the books, a creature watches her. Eight legs, fangs, many, many eyes. The thing is the size of her hand, legs sprawled in the tight space between the books. Fear and curiosity battle within her. An ancient instinct says leave. Another voice—curiosity—asks what are you? The creature stares at her eyes, as if it could gaze right at her soul.
Differently from the Lady, she feels something coming from it, it's scared of her as much as she is scared of it. She calms herself down, with her left hand holding her chest, she slowly reaches with her right towards the creature.
It flinches, raising two of its legs in the air. It does not wish to be disturbed. However, something tells her it shouldn't be there, that it would be punished if it was caught. So she reaches closer anyway, gently, slowly. Her hand lifts the creature from below, and it... understands? In her mind, the creature understands she doesn't mean any harm. ''I'm not going to hurt you, little guy... I'm going to take you somewhere else, you're not supposed to be here'' - The creature twists its head. ''Yeah, i guess that makes two of us, right?'' - She says to the critter.
The creature watches her with caution, as if she didn't belong there either. She moves away from the bookshelf, and as she turns back into the corridor, the light shines even more on the creature, it looks even bigger. But she doesn't falter, and instead, picks up her pace, looking for a way out, she starts walking around the corridor, eventually finds a door, a big one. She pushes the door open with her free hand, light spills onto cracked stone, overgrown plants, some dead ones, dirt where it isn't supposed to be, and a small circular table with two chairs further on the path outside. She takes a few steps outside, kneels down, and the critter slowly climbs from her hand to the ground, it gives her a last glance, and hops away.
As she gets back up, a shiny object catches her eyes - sitting quietly on the circular table. She steps closer, something stares back. The reflection tells her of her face, her hair, her eyes.
''Yellow strands like gold fillets, eyes blue like the skies above, i miss you, A.''
The words surface in her mind, not hers, but familiar. A whisper remembered. Something someone had written — for her.
But who? Why?
Is that her name? A? That simple? or is it her memory failing her?
She sits on the chair, looking through the mirror, she at the same time recognizes and doesn't recognize the girl she sees on the glassy surface. It's too pale, the skin is glued too tightly to her bones, the eyes look too tired, too heavy. They remind her of the Lady's eyes.
Her concentration is snapped, an aggressive set of sounds creeps up closer and closer, something metallic, snapping open and shut. She startles and quickly gets up. Coming from the middle of the overgrown green wave across, a man moves side to side, his right arm is missing. On his left, lies a big pruning shear, snapping open and then closing on itself, as if his missing arm were still there, he fails to use the shear properly, he can't cut any of the tall grass, the tree branches. ''Same clothes...'' - She says to herself, same black and white attire. He doesn't seem to notice her, keeping on failing his task, repeatedly, moving slowly from side to side.
She starts moving back inside, but something shifts, not him, not her, not the Lady, not the critter, who is now long gone. Something else, someone else. She can feel it now, she knows someone is watching her, a weird sensation, being stalked. It's something more like her, something that breathes heavily, someone whose heart beats a little too loudly. She turns back to confront it, and by the corner of her eyes, she can see him clearly. He's trying to hide, but his eyes are way too big, way too alive.