[center][h2]Pandora's Box[/h2]

Wind Wild

Ludelle

Day 1, Morning[/center]

Another second passed. Another second of my life that I'm never getting back. So far I'd counted three thousand fifty two. Fifty three. Fifty four.... I grumbled at the ridiculousness of my endeavour and stopped. Surely there must be more useful ways to spend your time, even in confinement. Like trying to escape, you'd suggest? Ha. I'm pretty sure it's the first thing on anyone's mind. Including the people who actually design your cell for you right before they lock you in it. 

I'd already tried everything I could think of. Brute force was out of the question: there was nothing around that I could break off and swing at the bars. Magic was also useless. Not because the Blind fool had abandoned me... which he had... but because even though I could still feel the magic inside myself, the leather-like skin that was bestowed upon me didn't let it out. I'd spent hours feeling my surroundings when my eyesight was rendered useless. Hours spent trying to find the sensation of metal or electricity under my fingers that I could influence. Nothing. I could feel the unmistakable cold but only on a purely physical level. So what was left for me to do except for counting the seconds or remembering my past? I definitely wasn't doing the latter.

I nested my head between my knees and flinched when the long inhuman beak hit the floor. Imprisoned. In a prison, in a cell, in a foreign body, not even the skin or face my own. If it was mere clothes it would have been better. Surely there would be the consolation that at least I'm still myself. As things were, I wasn't. Even that was taken away from me. Everything was taken away from me, even my awareness. For a person such as me, used to always being in the loop, it was particularly scary to not even know where I am. Not even knowing how long I've been here. 

I should have kept count of the days. But how do you tell the days when there's no light? My meals are not regular. I haven't been out since I came here. Everyone around me is quiet – is there even anyone around? I wish there was commotion around. Voices, shouts, anything. Anything but the dreadful, suffocating silence that went hand in hand with impending death. 

There was only one thing I had left. My dignity. The knowledge that whatever the charges were, they didn't have enough evidence to execute me straight away. The knowledge that I had covered my tracks well enough to buy me at least another day. The bitter-sweet knowledge that the reason they were so terribly harsh with how they treated me is because they knew I wouldn't break easily.... They say knowledge is power. I used to agree, and deep down still do but knowledge wasn't power in this case. It was power enough to keep me alive. But not power enough to get me out of here. And did such a power even exist...?