I woke up this morning, and found that I could do very little about it at first. Some ten hours had left my mind refreshed and alert, and my spirits immediately and vastly improved from what I noticed to be a beautiful sleeping girl who had appeared beside me in my sleep, and I had awoken to the vivid images of dream for the first time in weeks--maybe months. I asked my eyelids to open. They refused. Groaning at me like sore old men, weighted down by invisible burdens, they gave me no more than a twitch. I petitioned my throat to swallow, and was met with a similar reply from the constricted and encrusted column. We gave you thirty eight hours! they told me. Thirty-eight consecutive hours. Ease us back in.
My eyes are still opening. I am awake.