Eirin slowly opened her eyes, a sense of disorientation and peace clinging to her. The moment she did, a cacophony of voices, a loud, overwhelming noise of whispers and cries, filled her ears, but she couldn't decipher whose voices they were, their words a blurry, indistinct jumble.
A deep, aching sadness, lingering ghost of her encounter, echoed in the vast emptiness of her mind. 'What happened to Nirvana?' she thought, the question a quiet, mournful whisper in the back of her consciousness. She blinked, a slow, deliberate act, her eyes straining to gain their sight, to make sense of the blurry, indistinct shapes that moved around her.
"Ei! Thank god!" A voice, a familiar, heartbroken sob, cut through the noise, clear and sharp.
Eirin glanced to her side, her blurry gaze landing on the face of a friend, her vision slowly clearing, and she saw the tear-streaked, devastated face of Coleen, her eyes red and puffy from crying.
