Caged Birds Sleep Walk

The Sleepwalk of the Caged Bird

Cages make the best beds

The Caged Buraq

Shahira’s escape is more like that of someone getting lost only to find themselves.  She has to lose herself to the point of breaking down before meeting Alethea and Jacob.  

She meets Jacob at a party outside of Austin.  It’s a grungy garage-like setting and the characters look very creepy.  She gets lured there by someone she met online (flies that out).  Someone slips her a date rape drug and she passes out.  She wakes up in an antique shop owned by Jacob’s grandmother who raised him.  

Later in the story, Jacob (or another girl) reveals to her what she did at the party.  How her true nature reveled itself.  How she started dancing.  Raving.  Losing herself in the unadulterated ecstacy of the moment. 

Have to include a scene with the bats coming out of Congress avenue bridge.  Revealed also as a flashback.  This is probably the moment when she is given the drug.  May not be the date rape kind, but definitely hallucinatory.  

The first chapter introduces her and the trip to Austin.  It has to get her on the road but show no sign of impending conflict.  The next chapter will place her on the floor of the antique shop (or some room adjacent to it).