Chapter Text
Consciousness comes like a brick to the face. It comes slimy, and cold, a cold which penetrates deep to the core. It comes like waking from a deep sleep, where for a moment neither the year, nor the name is known.
Unlike deep sleep, neither answer is apparent, nor easily accessible.
The right hand comes reflexively to the face, and removes a soft, flexible object from the mouth and nose. The movement is precise and unconscious. This raises suspicion that the behavior was practiced extensively at some point. The hypothetical practice cannot be recalled.
Standing comes next, a shaky, unstable verticality, then movement, which ends, inevitably, in a fall. Arms and legs which have sat unused loose their use. With the weakened arms and legs, the only option for movement is a crawl.
There is the deep sense that the body should be clean, and that it is not. Habit guides the body out of the first room into a second. Habit leads into a small nook. It raises the right hand to a shiny protrusion, and guides the careful twist of that hand. Habit braces the body, reflexively for the shock of the cold and wet.
It revels in the warmth and cleansing which follows. Carefully, weakly, but with so much joy, habit guides the thorough scrubbing which dispels the slime. Dignity is a discovery, like a friend long forgotten, and with it the concept of self.
Discovery is a discovery, but a familiar one. That thrill of learning is a habit far older than any other habit, a habit which is more of a nature, a nature which is close to the core of the self.
The warmth seeps deep, silently defeating the cold as it goes, bringing life back to the body. The exhaustion of simply living mixed with the warmth brings sleep.