And my roses twisted toward me with black hearts and thorned mouths, my beautiful flowers turned into creatures straight out of hell.
I stepped in.
Pluto’s fur grazed my hand.
The second my foot crossed the threshold, the air closed around me.
Not like wind.
Like a film.
A cold, metallic pressure sealed over my skin, so fine I felt it first on my lips, then my tongue, then in the tiny hairs lifting along my arms. Every breath tasted bitter, like rainwater left inside a copper pipe, and when gold sparked beneath my palms, the air around me answered with a faint blue shimmer.
This wasn’t science.
This was quantum physics.
Something was suspended in the mist, clinging to the glass, the leaves, the frost. Surrounding me molecule by molecule, cell by cell, until the whole winter garden
