She had not been allowed clothing from her first Awakening until now. The way they came apart reminded her of Velcro, though there was none to be seen. The jacket adhered to itself and stayed closed when she closed it, but opened readily enough when she pulled the two front panels apart. A light-colored, thigh-length jacket and a pair of long, loose pants both made of some cool, exquisitely soft material that made her think of silk, though for no reason she could have stated, she did not think this was silk.

She snatched it up, dropped it in her eagerness, picked it up again and began putting it on. Unable to see it clearly, she touched it.Ĭloth! A folded mound of clothing. It was the usual lumpy cereal or stew, of no recognizable flavor, contained in an edible bowl that would disintegrate if she emptied it and did not eat it.Īnd there was something beside the bowl. It could have been used as a table, though there was no chair. There was another platform perhaps a foot higher than the bed. This one had not only a toilet and a sink, but a shower. She went to the doorway, peered through the uniform dimness, and satisfied herself that she did, indeed, have a bathroom. Twice she had not been, and in her windowless, doorless cubicle, she had been forced simply to choose a corner. There was, across the room, a doorway that probably led to a bathroom. The bed was what it had always been: a solid platform that gave slightly to the touch and that seemed to grow from the floor. The walls were light-colored-white or gray, perhaps. She sat up, swayed dizzily, then turned to look at the rest of the room. It could not matter while she was confined this way, kept helpless, alone, and ignorant. It had occurred to her-how many times?-that she might be insane or drugged, physically ill or injured.

At an earlier Awakening, she had decided that reality was whatever happened, whatever she perceived. The room did not only seem dim, it was dim. The room seemed dimly lit, though she had never Awakened to dimness before. When her body calmed and became reconciled to reanimation, she looked around.

Circulation began to return to her arms and legs in flurries of minute, exquisite pains. Lilith Iyapo lay gasping, shaking with the force of her effort. It was a struggle to take in enough air to drive off nightmare sensations of asphyxiation.

Dawn book octavia butler