53
Jara squinted through bleary eyes.
She felt a thirst so great, she wondered if she had swallowed dust.
Her head rang with a pulsing pain. It filled her ears with a rushing shusssh.
She lay awake for some time, trying to understand what was wrong.
The small tent where she found herself smelled of a closed-in kind of sickness. Like it hovered above her in a vapor, seeping into her eyes and nose.
She felt cold and damp. The tent was uncommonly cold. A thick wool blanket covered her.
But she could feel from the touch of the fiber against her skin that underneath the blanket she was bare.
Jara drew in a sharp, dry breath.
She mustered what little strength she had to glide her hands down the length of her torso. Tears sprang to her eyes. All of this was wrong.
Someone had unclothed
