Two years ago. 

She was feeling again. There was sadness, anger, but most of all loneliness. They were ghosts of what they once were, but she felt a weird relief to have emotions again. It swelled in her chest, providing her much needed warmth. 

Teresa still lay across from her, eyes closed, breathing. She wasn’t feeling anything. Dahyun felt worry. They had had their emotions stolen at the same time. Why wasn’t she feeling anything yet? 

There was no strength in her body, and her muscles struggled to bring her to a sitting position. 

“Teresa,” she said, her voice only a rasp. The name struck the silence, but it did not reach her fellow fae. 

Dahyun crawled over to where she lay. She tried to reach out to her in the emotional world, but recoiled each time she came into contact with Teresa’s mind. It was cold. Empty.

She reached her side, making sure she distanced herself from the emotional world then. It hurt, but she needed to make sure she could hear. She needed to hear the other fairy’s breathing. It was unsteady. 

“Wake up, please,” she said. If they were feeling again, they’d be able to escape. It would only be possible if they were together. Dahyun wasn’t strong enough to do it alone. She shook the girl until she felt dizzy from the physical effort. Stopping, she lay down beside her. Sleep didn’t seem like a bad idea. It would also give her more time to recover. Perhaps more emotions would come to her. 

Closing her eyes, she saw flickers of emotions from above. She didn’t dare draw on them—what if they realised she was feeling again? The extraction process was a painful one, like her mind was being set on fire, before being doused with freezing cold water. She didn’t want that to happen. She didn’t want to let it happen to Teresa again, who had bene drained first. Hearing her screams had almost been worse than experiencing the process herself. It was still beyond her how they had developed the means to do so. In the back of her mind, she wondered if there was truly a traitor among their clan. It was too painful a thought to consider. Teresa hadn't wanted to hear any of it.

She turned her thoughts to something else. Survival.

Carefully, Dahyun reached for Teresa’s mind, ignoring her own revulsion at seeing the emptiness. If she gave her some of her emotions, could that coax her awake? She could even give her too much and succumb to the emptiness yet again. Teresa was wiser than her. She was stronger than her. If anyone was to feel again, if anyone was to have the opportunity of escape, it would be Teresa. 

She opened a channel between them, allowing some of her core emotions to flow between them, as well as the few threads of happiness she’d gotten when she began to feel again. There was no resistance. The unconscious girl’s breathing eased and Dahyun felt the gaping hole in her own mind grow. Her eyes burned as tears began to flow. She didn't want to go back to that place of nothing, but she would now.

“I don’t know if you,” Dahyun paused to catch her breath, “can hear me, but you have to hold on to these.” Then she began to lose her grasp on consciousness. “You have to wake up.” With that, Dahyun fell away from both worlds and back into nothing.

_____
Momo was trying to find where Dahyun lived. She’d called Sana, asking her to excuse them both from school—either normally or through persuasion—and told her to meet her in the forest. When Sana had come, she’d explained to her what had happened: the air had been filled with the scent of death and Dahyun had run out of class. Momo had found her cowering just outside the door. She'd explained that tears had streamed down her face, that the girl was freezing to the touch, and that she'd been muttering in a language Momo couldn’t understand. Sometimes there were words said in Korean or English, but they didn’t make any more sense. She was telling someone to wake up, to save themselves, but also that she was sorry. 

She hadn’t known what else to do. She'd known that the forest was important to Dahyun, but not how. It seemed to help, so did the story-telling.

Sometimes their memories caught up with them, even if centuries had passed, their trauma didn’t heal like normal injuries did. Either it was something terrible that they did, or som