The morning did not greet her with warmth, for though the sun had risen and the world of ordinary lives had resumed its rhythm of careless laughter and hurried footsteps, there lay beneath it a sharper current, unseen yet deeply felt, and as Elara approached the great iron gates of Regina University, she felt not the welcome of familiarity but the quiet tightening of eyes that followed her every step, as though the ground itself had begun to question her right to walk upon it.
Her stride did not falter, though within her chest there stirred an older ache, a memory not yet faded, one that returned unbidden with the sound of low voices carried upon the morning air, voices that did not know they were heard, or perhaps did not care.
