FINGERS THAT STEAL SUNS

3 - A Cage with Two Doors

I am so weak. So painfully, achingly fragile that my limbs feel like they're made of shattered glass, splintering with the slightest movement. My muscles have forgotten how to obey, how to carry me, how to hold me upright. Even breathing feels like an impossible task, each inhale a battle against a hollow that seems to swallow all my strength, and every exhale a surrender to the emptiness inside. My vision blurs. The world dips and sways like a cruel tide pulling me under. My stomach twists into knots of hunger so sharp they pierce through the fog in my mind and make me dizzy, make my throat close up with desperate, ragged gasps.

I want to stay awake. I want to fight. But my body is a traitor, cold, unresponsive, trembling with exhaustion and malnutrition. I taste the sourness of blood on my cracked lips, feel the raw sting of my side when I move even the slightest, and I don't have the strength to scream, only the faintest, strangled sound that dies before it can even form.

Then the light comes, cutting through the shadows like a salvation I don't believe I deserve. It's too bright, too harsh, and for a moment it feels like it might burn me alive. But beneath the pain, beneath the hunger and the cold, there's a strange pull dragging me toward something warmer, something soft and real. My body trembles, muscles spasming uncontrollably as if they're trying to fight the darkness swallowing me whole.

The hands come next, gentle, careful, lifting me with a tenderness that almost breaks something inside me. I feel the press of palms under my shoulders, the cradle beneath my knees, the careful, soothing motion as I'm pulled off the slab that has been my prison. My head lolled sideways, heavy and unsteady, and the world tipped again, a sickening spin that pulls me toward the edge of unconsciousness.

How? How can there be touch without death? My skin is a battlefield, a war zone, a curse. My touch is poison, a fatal promise. Anyone who reaches for me should already be gone, burned away by the very essence I carry beneath these battered ribs. And yet, these hands hold me. They don't recoil, don't hesitate. They stay.

I want to pull away, to shove them off before the inevitable happens. Before their warmth snaps and turns to ash. But I'm too weak. Too broken. And something in their touch anchors me, whispers that maybe they aren't afraid. Maybe they don't believe the stories either. Or maybe they've decided to be brave enough to face the monster inside me, even if it means being consumed.

My breath catches in my throat, shaky and shallow, as I try to hold onto consciousness. The warmth beneath me seeps into my bones, chasing the cold, filling the cracks that hunger and pain had carved so deep. It's terrifying and beautiful all at once, this proof that I can be touched, that I can still be touched, without dying.

But still, I want to scream. To warn them. To tell them to run before it's too late. But I'm slipping, and before I know, darkness, once again, swallows me whole. The last thing I feel is the steady beat of those hands holding me, a heartbeat not my own, a lifeline tethering me to something I thought I'd lost forever: hope.

I think this is it. I think my life is about to end in this cold, dark nothingness that's been my cage for so long. But then, slowly, like dawn bleeding into night, I wake up.

Light spills across my skin, soft and golden, brushing against my eyelids until they flutter open. The room is nothing like the cell. It's warm. It's wide. It smells like something sweet and clean, like the air has been washed and dried in sunlight. My body feels different, lighter, somehow. My side aches, but it's muted, wrapped in gentle warmth beneath fresh bandages. My hands rest on crisp white sheets, unbound, skin touching silk.

I'm in a bed. A real bed. With pillows that cradle me and blankets that don't bite. My gaze drifts around, slow and careful. The walls are painted a soft cream, decorated with delicate patterns that feel like whispers. A window lets in the pale afternoon light, the kind that doesn't burn.