She Slept in Sepia

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She Slept in Sepia

Every night, when Evelyn closed her eyes, she left her world behind.

Not in the way most people did—not for dreams or nightmares or the jumbled reruns of a tired mind.

No. Evelyn traveled.

She awoke in memories.

Not her own.

And always in sepia.

The first time it happened, she thought it was a dream painted by some forgotten photograph.

She stood in a cobblestone street in what looked like 1930s Paris. Gaslamps flickered amber. Music leaked from a corner café—soft jazz, smoky and full of longing. People passed by in tailored coats and hats, blurred at the edges like someone had drawn them in charcoal.

She wore gloves, white lace, and carried a parasol she didn’t remember owning. In a shop window, she caught her reflection—brown curls pinned neatly, eyes wide and distant. She looked... like someone else.

When she woke the next morning in her tiny apartment in Brooklyn, the feeling hadn’t left.

It never did.

It became a pattern.

Every night, Evelyn woke up in a different sepia-toned moment.

One night she was dancing in a sunlit ballroom in Havana. Another, she was boarding a train with a suitcase marked “Anna Moreau”, bound for Marseille.

Sometimes she was a child, sometimes an old woman. Always someone else.

But there was one constant.

Him.

A man who appeared in each dream, though he wore different names and faces. A pilot in one, a painter in another, a schoolteacher reading poetry beneath a tree.

But his eyes were always the same—light hazel, like sunlight through whiskey. He looked at her like he remembered every version of her, every life, every whispered goodbye.

She