Gemotions

The attic air tasted of dust and forgotten things. Rain drummed a slow, dreary rhythm on the roof. Amelia trailed a finger across a trunk, the wood cool and unyielding. The task had been set by her mother: clear out the relics of her own childhood. Amelia had agreed, mostly because saying no felt like too much effort.

She opened the trunk. Inside, neatly stacked, were notebooks. Page after page, crammed with her mother's precise handwriting. Math problems, history reports, short stories… Amelia felt a strange, detached curiosity bloom within her. Why had her mother kept all this?

A wave of something akin to ennui washed over her. She sank onto the dusty floor, legs splayed, and pulled out a tattered book. The cursive, so familiar, felt alien. She read a poem, and a profound sense of the futility of things settled in her chest.