Dawn at the harbor—arrival without memory 🔍

I don't remember boarding this ship. The last thing I recall is a flash of light, a spinning sensation, and then nothing until the cry of gulls woke me just now. My body aches as if I've slept on stone. An older dock worker, his face weathered the color of old leather, approaches and asks if I'm waiting for someone, his accent strange and clipped. I open my mouth but no answer comes. He shrugs and walks on, leaving me alone with the impossible fact of my own confusion. The year painted on a crate nearby reads '1919,' but I don't understand why that number should feel like a shock.

The walk into the city—streets full of faces I don't recognize 🔍

By mid-morning, I've found my way from the docks into narrow cobbled streets that climb away from the water. The buildings are brick and stone, their windows small and dark. Women pass in long skirts that sweep the ground, wearing hats with feathers and brims I've never seen styled quite this way. A newspaper boy calls out headlines I can't quite hear over the rattle of an automobile—one of the new ones, not many on the roads yet. My stomach is hollow with hunger, but deeper still is a hollow of not-knowing. I have no money in my pockets, no name that feels real when I try to speak it aloud, only the certainty that something has torn me from where I was meant to be. A church bell strikes eleven times, and I count each one as if the number might explain everything.