The taunt of that unlived human life started as a seedling of curiosity. It grew in the dark of her thoughts, gaining shape and strength when she wasn’t looking—a home somewhere with a thatched roof and no silk in sight, an orchard where the trees groaned with fruit, an expanse of skin free of a blue star. Now, it ate up the space around her heart. A living nightmare that snapped her joy. What was that life she had been denied? Maybe it would have been short, but at least it would be hers. But no one cared that she desperately wanted to touch someone and feel their pulse rising to her
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