The blackness was warm and inviting and Aurora didn't want to open her eyes. Despite here eyelids feeling like lead, she slowly attempted to blink. After a few minutes she put her hand out to try and sit up, when she did so a young woman's voice said "I wouldn't do that if I were you."
Aurora stopped. Opening her eyes fully, she looked around to see where the voice had come from and scrambled to a seated position when she saw she was no longer in the library.
She was sitting in a patch of dirt at the base of a tree at the edgy of a field, the soft hues of purple and orange telling her it was early evening. Aurora could smell woodsmoke and spring flowers but there was still no sign of the woman that spoke. Then the pressure began to build in her head again after sitting up too quickly, and she vomited onto the tree roots.
"I did warn you" said the voice again. Aurora reached for her bag to get her water bottle, not able to converse with the voice until she'd removed the bitter taste of bile from her mouth. Once done, she looked around again.
"I would have thought it was quite clear by now that you can't see me" said the voice in an almost laughing tone.
"Well, where are you then?" Aurora said tentatively.
"I'm inside you, looking through your eyes. But the question I think you wanted to ask was who I am" the voice answered.
Aurora had a million questions and was very confused, but decided to be polite and not question the sanity of the woman who seemed to try and help her.
"Yes, thanks for the warning. Would you be so kind as to tell me: where we are? Who you are? And what we're doing here?"
"Well, I'll try my best to answer those" the voice laughed "firstly, we're two fields over from the village of Gledeley, and my name is Dawn" the voice paused at this point, as if in thought before continuing "I was born and died in this village, and you're sitting under a tree about two meters from where I'm buried, which might have something to do with why we're here."
Aurora shifted uncomfortably, thoroughly confused and rather disconcerted at the though of a dead body nearby. Looking around she noticed a rough wooden cross made from twigs at the head of a pile of earth to her right. In moving, she felt something sharp dig into her right thigh. Looking down, she saw it was the white bone with the runes from the library.
"So you've no more idea about why we're here than I have?" I whispered into the twilight.
"No, sorry" said Dawn.
When Aurora focused harder on the voice, she became sure that it was coming from inside her own head. It seemed to accompany her own internal monologue.
A cooler breeze brought her out of her musings and she realised she had no idea where she was or what she was going to do.
"Aurora, I can call you that right? Given I'm living in your head without your consent, it seems only fair to ask. I can sense you're starting to panic, perhaps I can help?" Dawn said calmly.
Aurora swallowed hard, pushed aside her concerns and nodded slowly.
"Well, this may come as a shock, but given you've changed location you can't be too surprised to know you're in a different time too" Dawn started slowly. Aurora nodded again but remained silent.
"You're in my village and I'm freshly buried so I'm guessing it's late March 1461. Since you're from 2021, I think this is something to do with you touching the talisman made from my femur." Dawn finished the end of the statement in a rush and Aurora looked at the bone talisman in shock.
"What happened to you?" Aurora asked full of pity, she had felt the deep emotions when she touched it originally.
"I'll tell you all about it another time" Dawn said sadly, "but for now I think you should be more concerned with what you're going to do now."
Dawn was right of course. Aurora knew that that meant the first battles of the War of the Roses was over and Edward IV had been crowned king but she had no idea what any of that meant for her.
As the sun continued to sink below the horizon, red kites wheeled in the sky looking for a site to roost, and Aurora hugged her jumper around her tighter, curled up in a ball against the tree roots and tried to slip away into sleep in an attempt to quiet the mounting fear about the future.