LYRA
It had been almost a week.
I knew this not because anyone had told me or because there was a window tracking the movement of the sun but because I had been counting. Days and nights passing over my head like pages turning in a book I hadn't chosen to read. Each cycle of torch brightness and torch dimness marking another unit of time survived.
Six of them.
Almost seven.
Almost seven days of being in the cold. The kind of cold that started in the floor and worked upward through your bones with patient thoroughness. At night it was worse. The torches burned lower and the air took on a sharpness that pressed against exposed skin like something with intent.
I had learned to sit with my knees drawn up and my arms wrapped around them and my back against the wall that held the most residual warmth from the day. I had learned which positions preserved heat longest and which ones surrendered it fastest.
