She woke up to feel her toes going numb, then tingle. Her limbs were wide open, between the soft place she lay on and the light blanket. She felt something a little heavy on her forehead, itching, but didn’t drop her pose for a scratch. She was not too hot, not too cold. It was just like laying on a calm sea under the sunshine after swimming for hours. Except, it was dark. 

For the first time in so long, Eda felt relaxed, almost like she slept through a whole week. 

Was this the perfect heaven she was told about? But hypothetically thinking, one was not supposed to feel things like itching and numbness after the soul leaves the body, right?

A sudden pain rushed through her stiffened body as she tried to get up. Definitely not heaven, she complained. Eda felt awfully alive, but how did she survive?

Even if she miraculously did not get affected by the blast, she would’ve flown out up in the sky with the effect of the explosion and crashed to the ground unconsciously. And even if she were still alive after that, there wouldn’t be anyone around to help her as she was (hopefully) the only one inside the building that night. The only explanation her still-not-fully-awake brain could think of was that a superhero saved her, with his super hearing and super speed and super everything. Oh, Eda would gladly like to be saved by an Avengers character, excluding Captain America, she hated him.

If only any of them existed though.

She took off the wet towel on her head and had a quick look around her surroundings. She was in a small room and the curtainless windows showed that it was night outside. She was on a comfortable futon, inside clothes that are obviously not hers, having some bandages around her arms and legs which she noticed just now. The friction on her skin, as she moved, hurt like thousands of papercuts burning. Still, she stood up in agony, waited for the dizziness to fade away, and got out of the room hoping to see someone. 

The wooden floor cracking under her steps and the high-pitched sound of cicadas outside filled the hall the door opened to. She could hear someone snoring when concentrated. Would it be inappropriate to wake the people at this hour, Eda wondered. 

It would be. 

So she looked around for a phone or a computer quietly only to find no signs of electricity at all. But there were lamp-like things on the walls, also candles on a table near her, still no power outlet. The furniture was mostly of wood as far as she could see and the house, when considered as a whole, felt too old-fashioned to begin with. 

What if… Did Eda somehow…

Ended up being saved by the Amish?

Well, that would explain the lack of technology, she mumbled. That would also mean she needed to find her own way to communicate, using a phone from a gas station maybe. So the outside she went.

Eda could see a little distance around her but there were no signs of city lights, or street lights, or car sounds. In fact, there was even an absence of a buzzing sound she never noticed before. Did she get that far away with that explosion?

“How impossible” she muttered as she sat down on the grassy ground to rest her aching body. The weakness of her muscles reminded her of the tiring after-surgery experience she once had. Seriously, how many days was she unconscious?

She inhaled deeply. The smell of high oxygen burned her nose inside, she could feel herself getting high on air. A light breeze flowed in her long hair. Closing her eyes, she lifted her head to feel more of it. And when she opened them… she gasped. Eda couldn’t help but fall down on her back in awe. 

The starry night looked magnificent!

She lost her sense of time, just existing there felt like an eternity in milliseconds. She could swear that a whole universe can be seen up above, well, at least a half hemisphere of it. She may simply lay there for the rest of her life. Every little big dot of a star twinkled faster than a computer screen, dazzling her. It was so beautiful, too beautiful. Unbelievably.

Then Eda wondered, this might just not be the world at all. It could simply be her best dream ever. One that she would tell all about it. She would say… what would she say? 

She forced herself to look at the sky once more as her body surrendered to sleepiness.

The reality hit her in her dream, hard. Her brain played the explosion over and over again trying to find out what could've happened. Eda felt her skin heating, the inside of her ears throbbed and her eyes were blinded by the light every time, this imaginary pain felt too real. After the blast just as she passes out, she found herself falling to the beginning of her mistake every single time. 

Time... Eda laughed in irony, she forgot the meaning of the word. The cycle took forever and was going to last forever where she fell, ran, got blown up, fell, ran, got blown up, felt the blast on her forehead…

There really was something on her head. 

She popped out of her sleep, out of breath, heart pounding like a mouse’s. Desperately attempting to suck in air, Eda started coughing. Someone patted her back, gently, until she calmed down a little. 

Somebody talked, another answered, but Eda was too distracted.

Wiping her tears of pain to clear her vision, she saw a middle-aged woman with white hair, not the white of the elderly but the beautiful white of an albino. She said something, her voice felt just like Eda’s mother, soft and earnest. Eda tried to understand. 

A young man next to the woman, maybe her son, spoke. Eda felt like he asked a question but she couldn’t make sense of it. Confused, Eda shook her head to get the blood flowing. 

“Ah,” she could hear herself fine, “where am I?”

Now, she was not the only one confused. 

“Nooo, you don’t speak English,” muttered Eda feeling the gazes.

“Do you find her?” yelled a young girl running towards them. Eda was certain, this was definitely another language! One that she never heard of.

“Peki ya Türkçe?*” Eda tried everything she knew starting from her native tongue to find a common language. 

“O habláis Español?* How bout русский*?” Though the puzzled faces of these people looked nothing like Asian, she still tried. “Konichiwa*?”

“What is she saying?” said the newly joined girl.

“How would I know?” answered the boy, his brows wrinkled. 

“Brother, did you perhaps drop her on her head while I was gone?”

“Come on, Fez, even an idiot like you should’ve realized she is foreign!”

“Says the dumbest moron alive.”

“Kids, language!” snapped the woman, she seemed to be the one in authority, and the other two stopped while glaring at each other. So they were fighting, Eda thought.

She still couldn’t make sense of it. There was no way she changed continents and these people seemed unaware of the most popular languages around the globe. Were they like, aliens or something?

Something was missing. Her mind was on alert, warning her to look carefully, listen carefully. Aside from the strange people, the outdated house, the unbelievably clear night view…

“Airplanes!” she yelled feeling the strangers’ gazes

She heard or saw no airplanes in the sky since last night. But there should be approximately a hundred thousand flights crossing North America per day.

An impossible explanation arose in her head.

“Hass...*”