The first thing she noticed was the silence.
It wasn’t the kind of silence that settles gently, like snow over a quiet town. It was a violent absence—an abrupt severing of sound so complete that her mind rejected it at first. No engines. No voices. No warning chimes. Just a hollow stillness pressing against her ears until it hurt.
Then the pain arrived.
It came in fragments—sharp, disjointed signals firing through her body as though each limb had its own memory of what had happened and was trying to report it all at once. Her ribs burned when she tried to breathe. Her left shoulder throbbed in deep, nauseating pulses. Something warm trickled down her temple and pooled behind her ear.
She didn’t open her eyes yet.
Because if she opened them, it would be real.
Instead, she floated in that strange space between waking and unconsciousness, where the mind tries to stitch together a narrative that makes sense. She clung to the last thing she remembered.
The plane.
Yes.
Seat 14A. Window seat. The wing just outside, trembling slightly against a sky that had been far too calm for what came next. She had been watching the clouds, thinking how they looked like frozen waves, when the first jolt hit.
A drop.
Not a gentle dip, but a sudden, stomach-wrenching plunge that yanked a gasp from everyone on board. A few people laughed nervously. Someone behind her muttered something about turbulence.
Then came the second jolt.
Harder.
The overhead bins rattled. A baby began to cry. The flight attendants froze mid-aisle, their smiles dissolving into something tighter, something rehearsed but strained.
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