Isabella's Heiress by N.P. Griffiths

willing herself to return to the blissful numbness of sleep but her body refused to comply so she contented herself instead with looking at the ceiling and drawing her quilt in around her as tight as possible as she fixed her stare on the cracked plasterwork. Her mind tormented her with flashes of the previous day’s events and it seemed that for every picture Emma banished, another two would take its place.
    Eventually Emma gave up trying to hide in her bed, choosing instead to kick the quilt off and throw her legs over the side. For a while she sat there, scrunching her toes through the warm cream carpet, whilst she rested her head on her hands. As the fog of sleep lifted, the familiar swirl of emotions started to settle back into her stomach.
    She headed to the en-suite bathroom, a perk she had never enjoyed while she was alive, she admitted to herself with a wry smile and busied herself washing. Emma used the familiarity of these rituals to banish everything else from her mind, taking minute care when lathering upher favourite soap, which she had found sitting in its dish, before applying it evenly across her face.
    Looking in the mirror, Emma was reminded of a time when, as a child, she had pretended to be the Wicked Queen after watching Snow White, asking it who was the fairest of them all. Of course the mirror would never answer but she would pretend it would and now, looking back, it seemed strange to her that she played the Wicked Queen at all and not Snow White as most other girls did at her age. Now, looking at her reflection, the face looking back was one marked with uncertainty. Emma was no longer the little girl whose most immediate issue was that she was talking to a mute mirror, she was a woman with very real problems and the lines creasing her forehead were compelling evidence.
    She left the bathroom and headed across to the wardrobe. Opening the doors, she ran her eyes across the rows of trousers. She had never really been a skirt person and chose instead a set of jeans she had picked up a few weeks before the accident. She stopped as that thought crossed her mind.
The accident
. Had she really become that accepting of what had happened to her? Emma pulled the jeans up over her hips before grabbing a red knitted jumper and slipping on some shoes.
    She headed downstairs and entered the main hall. It was early and Emma was alone as she walked across the earth floor and sat on the bench she had been on the previous day. Dust particles hung lazily in the air, highlighted by faint shafts of light that came in from the ceiling above. Emma looked up but couldn’t work out where the light was coming from. It just seemed to be there. She shifted, trying to get comfortable but the bench was hard and unforgiving.
    It surprised Emma how quickly this had become hometo her. There was a warmth to her surroundings that seeped into her psyche and she drew comfort in the softness of the damp earth beneath her feet.
    â€œHola, you must be Emma.”
    Emma looked around to see Sister Ignacia walking in from the far end of the hall. Shifting on the bench, she turned to face the woman heading towards her.
    The woman was about Emma’s height, with black hair tumbling down to her shoulders, framing a pair of playful brown eyes. Emma caught a warm smile from her and instinctively returned it. Wearing an orange corset over a loose white blouse and a green waistcoat, Sister Ignacia looked like she should be anywhere but here. It was held together with ribbons of the same colour, tapering down to a long white skirt, which flowed around her as she walked, stopping just short of the dirt floor. The bright colours were in stark contrast to the flat complexion of the hall.
    Sister Ignacia sat next to Emma and looked upwards “I love it here in the morning, it is so peaceful.” Leaning back, she closed her eyes and, stretching out her arms, let out a slow sigh. “How are you settling in, Emma? Father Eamon tells me