Semi-Random Reflections

Read time: 2 mins.

“She woke before her alarm clock went off, per the norm. Not enought to strictly qualify as bright-eyed yet, but enough to realize she’d exited her dreamscape and surfaced back in reality.”

She was hearing her internal monologue as third-person narration again. Each perception registered in her mind as a written description. Not a totally unnatural way for a novelist to think, though it would probably disturb someone less literarily-minded.

“Her head had settled into the sunken part of her pillow that took all night to properly shape to her head and only really became comfortable in the morning. Her head wanted nothing more than to relish that comfort, but the rest of her body insisted on rolling over. She let the majority win, feeling a gentle tide of warmth rise from under her blanket and caress her face as her twisting body lifted her blanket and the fabric settled back down around her.

“Closing her eyes again allowed her to slip back into the esturary between consciousness and unconsciousness, where she could reconjur any lingering dreams and shift through them with a firmer logic.”

She could audibly hear the narrator’s voice, as though she’d left an audiobook playing while she slept. Usually her internal monologue sounded quieter and more internal, and once she noticed it, she could usually consciously choose to direct its observations in different ways. Only in moments like this when the boundaries of her mind became extra thin did that mind come up with its own thoughts and audibly express them as if it were another person.

“She opened her eyes as realization dawned.”

She.

Her internal monologue had called her “she” on its own.

Very few things could make her smile when she first woke up. This did. The only person whose opinion truly mattered had paid her the compliment she valued most without forcing it. Even better, she hadn’t argued. The pronoun hadn’t felt like an affectation. It had felt like her head resting in a perfectly shaped pillow and warmed by her own body heat.

It kept feeling that way even after she sat up and started to stretch, as she put both feet in the waking world and the boundaries of her mind thickened. That was all the confirmation she needed. This identity wasn’t a mistake she’d talked herself into, or a passing phase she’d feel embarrassed by in a few years. It was a piece of her she’d missed until now, a piece she could pick up in full confidence and wear like the crown it was.

She leapt out of bed and strode for the door, now officially bright-eyed.