// Novel. Page 11. //

Jane was once dead, but now she was alive.

She had found freedom, joy and celebration in breaking away from the chains of her past.

For the past five years, the world had operated in a slow motion: a lethargic, depressed, dragging of everything – the heavy movement of birds’ wings, the slow change of the pedestrian light from “stop” to “walk,” the exhausted turn of the lock to her apartment door.

Despite all the commotion in the city, every motion, to Jane, had been lifeless.

Today, the birds fluttered about with a gay lightness, the man on the pedestrian light seemed to suggest that everyone skip instead, and the sound of the lock was an excited staccato.

Jane’s day was brimming with the sound of hope.