Lyra
If someone had told me that a single night could stretch itself across an entire lifetime, embedding itself so deeply into my bones that it refused to ever fully let go, I would have laughed.
Not politely.
Not thoughtfully.
I would have laughed with the full, disbelieving force of someone who still believed the world operated on fair and predictable rules.
Because nights, by their very nature, are meant to end.
They arrive wrapped in darkness and possibility, they pass through hours of quiet struggle or fleeting joy, and eventually they dissolve into memory, softened by time, distanced by new mornings, made bearable by the gentle erosion of days that follow.
But now I know better.
That night didn't end when it was supposed to.
It didn't fade gracefully into the pale light of morning the way normal nights do, carrying their burdens away with the rising sun.
It stayed.
