Brianna lay on the ground, arms crossed, her head resting crookedly on them.
She couldn't remember the last time she'd just laid there like this, blankly, doing nothing at all.
She remembered how back in school, she seemed to be endlessly tired during the day. She would always find herself doing just this—crossing her arms on her desk and sneaking in a quick nap—until the teacher walked up to her and cleared their throat loudly.
A gentle breeze would occasionally drift through the half-open classroom window, just as it did now in the Nest. Back then, it rustled her soft, long hair. Now, it rustled the tangled, withered straw on her head, making a dry, scratching sound.
She sat up and looked at her hands.
The patches of skin that had been torn open during her fight with the clerk had dried and flaked off. Underneath, her flesh was still a pale, desiccated brown. It turned out that having skin or not didn't make much of a difference.
