Woman's World

Synopsis

Coming up out of five centuries of sleep was like fighting my way up from the bottom of the sea. I was blind, I was choking, I was mangled by the pressure. All I could think was that I had to get up and out, up and out.

My sleep-cramped brain battled toward consciousness. The blackness around me gave way to deep violet, then gray, then a vague colorless dinginess as I rose to wakefulness. I moved my arms, tentatively, feeling the centuries-old numbness starting to give way. This is what it feels like to be born, my mind said.

Then, voices. Loud, strident, horribly painful to nerves that hadn't felt the impact of sound in five hundred years. A kind of terror ran through me; I cringed at the thought of the unknown future into which I had so boldly plunged. It had seemed like a joke, once—but I had slept away half a millennium, and time for awakening was here.

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