Willow sensed the wrongness before she could give it a name.
At first it seemed small enough to ignore. A subtle pressure settled beneath her ribs while she stared at the line of text on her computer screen. She read it once, then again, and realized she had no idea what the sentence actually said. The words refused to attach themselves to meaning. They drifted in front of her eyes like shapes that would not settle.
She leaned back in her chair and pressed a hand low on her abdomen, instinctively protective, hoping the discomfort would fade the way ordinary fatigue sometimes did.
It did not.
The overhead lights seemed to brighten at once. The fluorescent hum sharpened until it sounded like a swarm trapped above the ceiling panels. The printer across the room clicked and whirred as someone sent a document to print. Normally she barely noticed the machine, yet the sound now grated across her nerves like metal scraping against bone.
