When morning came, Nellie found herself waking up with a painful crick in her neck.

She found herself yawning as her eyes struggled to flutter open all the while her body refused to move. Even though she was incredibly sure of the fact that she was supposed to have been moving, her body just… didn’t want to. It wasn't just that it felt as if she weighed a ton, it was also that there felt like there was an odd form of disconnect between what her brain was ordering her body to do and what the body was understanding it was to do.

It wasn’t all that surprising, really; that much Nellie could admit to herself.

As she began to truly take stock of herself, she was able to feel how bone tired her whole body felt. Her arms, splayed out on the top of her desk and used as a makeshift pillow, felt as heavy as lead. The dull, somewhat burning, ache radiating from the top of her shoulders all the way down to the tips of her fingers was one she could not easily ignore. The burning was so strong it was almost as if she had managed to finish a week of consecutive arm days without any rests in between.

With a groan, her eyes closed as her left cheek met with the desk’s cool surface. Her head had moved, sure, but her body still seemed to be much too stubborn to do as it was asked.

Well… at least the feel of the desk against her cheek was cool enough.

As Nellie lay there, body slowly beginning to light up with all of the aches and pain of having been allowed to rest in a relatively torturous position throughout the night, her brain was much too focused on attempting to remember what she had been up to before she had unexpectedly and accidentally fallen asleep.

Crying had always had a bit of an exhaustion effect on her; this had been something she had lived with for as long as she could remember. This wouldn’t be the first time she had wound up incredibly tired after essentially going through a breakdown filled with way too many tears. But it would be the first time that she wound up falling asleep in such an uncomfortable and uncommon position.

What had she even been doing before she had managed this incredible feat?

It may have taken way too much effort on her part, but Nellie was eventually able to force her upper body to straighten up. It may have required her to plow through aching arms that wanted nothing more than to go back to doing nothing, but she managed to force them into motion. And as she did so, she was able to see what had kept her at her desk for long enough to fall asleep: her laptop.

Its screen was off and there was no light coming from the power button- probably, it had automatically gone into deep sleep after she hadn’t touched it because she had accidentally managed to fall asleep at her desk.

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Like a tidal wave, all of the memories of the past night and the horrible turn her life had suddenly taken came crashing back into her.

Bennie had cheated on her.

And with her sister of all people.

She had cried over it, lamented the fact that her life would never be the same, actively contemplated not letting anything change and instead taking the route of ignorance being bliss… and then… she had gone down a rabbit hole of CaveTube videos that all revolved around witchcraft.

Quite frankly, she had no idea how much content she had managed to consume. She just knew that Ainsley Aimes was a name that she now thoroughly recognized and understood; she could call to memory the types of witches that had really stood out to her from the long list of various categories she had watched at some point; she knew the dangers of not thoroughly researching the possible health effects of any substance that could be utilized in the craft if it was meant for human consumption; and that she had bought a tarot deck.

Wait.

Nellie paused at that, feeling as her thoughts skidded to a halt.

Her memory was fuzzy in the way it would become whenever she tried to remember anything that took place at a time that she was exhausted. She could be wrong, but she could picture in her mind’s eye the website on which she had bought the deck; the stark white of the background, the bold darkness of the price she was willing to pay, and the vibrant, striking colors of the images of the deck itself. She could even remember the flutter of her heart at having something new to focus on that had nothing to do with Bennie, her sister, and everything they had caused.

But… there was no way.

… Was there?

It felt like a distant memory, as if it was more dream than proper memory; as reachable as it was unreachable.

But.

She had a bad habit of letting her impulses get the best of her at the worst of times; her childhood room’s closet was still filled to the brim with all of the trinkets of unexplored hobbies she had promised her parents she would get into but never followed through on. And there was a sick pleasure she got from buying something new, no matter how illogical or unnecessary it was in her life.

Nellie closed her eyes, breathed in deeply, and allowed her head to fall back onto the desk. Her arms, the traitors, had already been perfectly positioned to pillow her head's descent even if she hadn't called on them.

As she allowed her eyes to close, she noticed that they burned. It wasn't the burning sting of tears, though. No, this was another kind of burning that she was far more accustomed to experiencing, a burn she had become familiarized with due to endless nights of intense studies and torturous work on projects. This was the burning of eyes that were sorely in need of sleep.

With a deep inhale, Nellie decided that there was only one thing she should focus on, that there was more than enough time in the future to handle anything else.

If it wasn't sleep, then it would be a problem for future Nellie.