She has begun to keep unnatural hours, trading sleep for the slow arithmetic of the dark. 

The night knows her footsteps by heart now.

Hunger no longer protests.

It sits beside her like an old, loyal animal, quiet, patient, almost tender.

Books lie open at her desk,  their pages breathing faintly in the draft, as though knowledge itself has wronged her and dares not speak first.

For days she has lived on little more than water and thought,  moving through the corridor with the softness of a rumor,  

a girl rehearsing how to vanish without disturbing the air. 

Something unsettled beats behind her ribs, not quite sorrow, not quite fire, but a fevered star clawing for sky. 

A private storm no hand can calm, no prayer can name.

Tell me, girl,

what invisible altar have you knelt before?

Who taught you to offer yourself

as though you were both the sacrifice and the god demanding it?