we've been swept up just by circumstance to where the coyote lives

For some people, waking up from a dream started with eyes opening wide. More often than not, Sookie woke up in the exact same way herself, lids flying open and the entirety of the world in front of her, dreams disappearing as easily as the darkness fled with the rising sun. But this time, it was different. She could feel sheets under her hands, the soft pillow below her ear, and these things she clung to desperately, afraid of what she'd see when she woke up. She'd forgotten so much. The way that her bed felt at home, how soft the mattress is, as opposed to the bed she had on the island, remarkably normal in spite of the way it was on an island that no one could explain. And in those few seconds after she was awake, Sookie didn't know what she wanted to open her eyes to, already feeling a tear creep down her cheek as she wondered if she'd wake up to Mitchell, or if she'd wake up alone, or somewhere else altogether. Once, remembering the island alone was enough to convince herself that she was still there, living her new life.

No longer.

Sniffling, Sookie buried her face further into her pillow, not yet ready to wake up, gripping the pillowcase as she took a deep inhale.

"Anyone there?" she asked, voice quiet.

pignatin pien de fum, poca papa ghè

A couple of days after Sookie's unexpected trip to Bristol, and she was back to working with a renewed vengeance. No matter how long she dwelt on what happened there, on her renewed encounter with death on a scale all too large and far too wide, there was really nothing to be done. She couldn't go back to fix everything that had been broken, and no matter how many times she tried to talk to her three friends on the island, there was only so much that she could convince them of, being someone who only saw Bristol and the situation there for two days. Not wanting to feel so lost, hating the feeling of being helpless, Sookie had decided to take up her work on the island again. She fashioned flashcards out of cutouts from a blank, worn notebook she found on the bookshelf, first focusing on Italian, the bulk of which had felt like it all disappeared from Sookie's mind after all the hub-bub. As she sat on the front steps of the Compound, she flipped through the cards now and again, while also writing in some spare pages of the notebook, of the plan that she wanted to roll out for new arrivals.

"L'italia è un paese meraviglioso," she said with a flourish of her hand, giggling afterward to herself as she raised an arm over her head to stretch. "Well, at least, I'm sure it is, if I'll ever get to visit it in my life, but I'll take George's word for it."

That was when she heard approaching footsteps and looked up, beaming as soon as she saw the familiar face.