Heroin | Diacetylmorphine (formnumberfour) wrote in nevermore_past, @ 2013-10-07 14:18:00 |
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Entry tags: | heroin, opium |
Who: Heroin (Open to Opium)
What: The birth of a goddess
When: 1874, 1893
Where: London, England/Elberfeld, Germany
Warnings: Drugs
C.R. Alder Wright was working late again. All of the other chemists had gone home for the night, yet he remained in his lab, mixing chemicals and seeing what he could create. The demand for a more potent painkiller had been rising lately, and he was experimenting with morphine, to see what he could come up with. He had come up with something he thought showed promise, but it needed to be tested first. He sent it off to Owens College in Manchester, and awaited to hear back from his colleague.
Something shifted in the air above London, an energy filled St. Mary's Hospital that hadn't been there before. It wasn't anything solid, not yet, but the air crackled with potential. But the world would have to wait a little while, the way it did for most things.
23 years later and 372 miles away, Felix Hoffman was working at the Aktiengesellschaft Farbenfabriken, using morphine to try to create codeine. Unknown to him, he had created the same compound that Wright had all those years ago, and that was all it took. On the banks of the Wupper River, a woman opened her eyes for the first time. She had no memories, no name, and as far as she knew, no family. But she did have a purpose: to soothe pain. She turned her face toward the town, walking on legs as shaky as a new colt's. After a few false starts, she managed to more or less get the hang of it. She stole a dress that was roughly her size off the first clothesline she passed, and ducked behind a tree to clothe herself. She felt vaguely guilty about the theft, but she needed clothes, and she had literally nothing with her.
She made it into town, charming the innkeeper into letting her serve for the night, in exchange for dinner and a bed. Tomorrow, she could wrap her head around who she was, and what she was here to do. But tonight, she was cold, hungry, and tired. Everything else could wait.