Beginnings are only ends in new clothes.
Danny remembers things differently, at least in her opinion. She doesn't remember dates, or who's dating who. She has to have her friend's numbers written in her address book, not just programmed in her phone because she often loses that as well. She doesn't remember street names specifically. If you ask her the recipe for something that only she can cook, she can't give you specific measurements, because she can't remember those either. So what does she remember? She remembers textures and tastes, smells and sounds. She hears things that don't sound anymore, and she knows how to get to places by landmarks; she remembers emotions and feelings.
She remembers the taste of autumn on her tongue as she and her family pick pumpkins, the smell of the water as she goes swimming in the lake, the fear the gripped her the first time she almost lost her friend, and the mind numbing shock that she had been the one to save her.
Once, when she was small, Danny had heard her parents speaking about her, once.
"Danicka feels everything amplified."
They didn't know quite how right they were.
It wasn't raining quite yet, but it was getting close, she remembers that, in a world where nothing is as it should be. A world of refracted light among clouds of dust and bursting stars that light a sky the color of the roses in her mother's garden. Tendrils of light wind around her, and she feels and hears things that should not be-but then hasn't she always?
It isn't raining, but the sky is the color of iron, clouds pregnant, ready to burst.
She and Nina are walking to Nina's car, they are laughing. Lenses-muffled sounds; she can't remember the words, but she remembers the warmth that being around her best friend gives her.
Fast forward
They're standing together amidst a group of other students, everyone hurrying to their respective buses-
"Ready?"
There's a scream-the ground trembles and cracks beneath their feet. People scream and run-Nina is gone.
There is no anchor
(Sleep now…)
Crying
Sirens
The pavement is warm and damp, she catches a glimpse of deep red before she can no longer look-fire is everywhere, burning my skin, and glazed brown eyes are looking back and Nina's dead God what's happened just want to sleep.
"My god, she's still breathing!"
Tubes-crying (Mama? No, mama, don't cry- 'm okay)
"We can save her."
"I love you, angel."
And now dreams; suspended here, in her own mind. Time doesn't exist. She doesn't want it to exist. She is at peace with herself.
Pain.
Her world freezes and she is falling, she is in pain.
Her mouth opens, but her tongue is a lead weight, dirt in her throat. Her chest burns; a flame bursts and she can't breathe. Why not? For the first time in her life, she actually forces herself to breathe; her nerves are screaming at her with the rage of a thousand suns. God she just wants to sleep again, kill her please!
Finally, she screams out her pain to the world, and her hearing comes back-monitors scream with her, and people are shouting, there's the hissing of machines, and the blinding white of what can only be a hospital room.
People in white help her sit up, and something sharp pricks her neck like a stinger; the pain dulls moments later, and she begins to feel loose limbed.
"Welcome to the world," someone whispers, and she is drifting again. Not into her world, but a world of drug induced sedation.
They tell her when she wakes up again, cuffed to the hospital bed.
Her name is Danica Gianano, and she has been, first comatose, and then in cryosleep for over two hundred years.