You begin to make out the floor.
There is colour beneath your feet. A dull blue, with grey worked through it in a pattern you can’t quite follow. You stop and look at it. You don’t know how long you’ve been walking on carpet.
Somewhere overhead, someone calls a flight.
You lift your head. You can see chairs now, and people sitting in them. Beyond the chairs, more people pass with bags over their shoulders. You watch a woman lift a cup to her mouth.
You are in an airport lounge.
You try to remember coming through the doors. There must have been a point where the darkness ended and this began, but you can’t find it. Even with people around you, and enough light to see their faces, you have the feeling you are still coming out.
You reach for your phone.
There is someone you need to find. Someone you care about. You open Find My and wait for the map, certain they must be somewhere in this building.
Their location is flying away without you.
You pull the map back until you can see the distance between you. Then you look up, searching the people nearest you, as though you might recognise them among the chairs despite what you’ve seen on the screen.
They have gone.
You need to get to the next place. You know it, though you haven’t been there for a long time. You can remember arriving there once. You try to hold on to that memory long enough to work out how you did it.
Around you, people seem to know where they are going. A man checks his watch and puts his laptop away. Two people gather their coats and leave together. You get up when they do.
Beyond the lounge, you can see how far the airport stretches. The carpet runs past another row of seats, beneath another sign, on towards people too far away to make out. You look for the end and find more of the same blue.
You should be moving. You feel it in your stomach, in the way you keep lifting your bag before you’ve decided which way to go. Somewhere in here there must be a departure that will take you to that familiar place.
You need your passport.
You put your bag on a chair and open the pocket where you keep it. Your fingers reach the lining. You check the other pocket, then your jacket.
You know the shape you are looking for. You could find it without seeing it.
You take things out of the bag and set them beside you. You run your hand along the bottom, pressing into the corners. You open a zip you have already opened.
Another announcement. People stand up around you.
You check your phone. The person you are trying to reach is still somewhere else, and you are still here.
You need to go. You can feel how late it is getting.
You put your hand into the same empty pocket again.