opal

I've always been of the opinion that my memories of what happened before... well, all of this, are pretty consistent with how everyone else describes it. Knowing that years and years of your life are nothing more than a half-remembered dream isn't the easiest thing to deal with. I guess knowing that they're still strong enough to have let you escape Hell is comforting, but all it does is take off some of the sting.

You'll still have far too many moments where you sit there, minding your own business, staring off into space, and you'll catch a glimpse of something that takes you back. You'll see the blocky, pleasant font on the poster advertising a class for whatever, and suddenly you're a child again, sitting at the children's table your grandma hand-made, waiting for Thanksgiving dinner to be served. You've been able to read every single letter printed since you were three years old, and you're so proud of yourself. It's warm, the whole place smells like turkey and pie underlined with wood and cigarette smoke. The adults chat and laugh in the other room, and all is right with the world.

Then you come back, staring right through the poster like you've seen a ghost. You count the people in your vision who died. Who you never got to say goodbye to, who would never know what you really became. And before you know it, you're crying and you barely know why, it all happened so quickly.

They'll never get to know who you became. But would they even want to know?

A lot of Lost like to pretend we were taken for no reason. Just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don't know if I believe that. Everything lines up too perfectly, too often. For some, I guess it feels too much like victim-blaming, you know? No one wants to think of themselves as the housewife who smiles and apologizes, saying her husband had no choice but to punch her in the face because she made dinner wrong. I get it.

But the Others, they're predators too. A big part of that is waiting for just the right moment, and, more importantly, just the right target. It's hard to swallow, but we were all taken for our own reasons.

Like most things, the moments before I was taken are just flashes of sensory detail. A hazy, humid summer night, cicadas and crickets singing in the surrounding woodlands. The smell of pine and cedar and fresh water and smoke. A flashlight, flicking towards the source of any errant noise. Nervousness, excitement as I left the main camp. My feet, crunching down some forgotten path towards a building many thought was abandoned, nondescript and nearly invisible against the dark undergrowth and thick tree trunks.

And, finally, my deadly mistake. Singing. Just to calm myself down. I guess even that was too much.

A scream from the building that no one but me heard as something swooped down, carrying me away in its talons.

I'm convinced that she had followed me. She knew. She'd heard me sing before, to the others in the camp, and she loved and hated it. The durance is an equally fuzzy thing, but I remember the jealousy, the face that could be beautiful one moment and twisted red with fury the next. It was one of the few things I could see before my eyes adjusted to the darkness of a forest forever cloaked in night.

Oh, but the music! The music!  I still sometimes hear it in my dreams. That's another thing no one likes to admit, when that horrible place could be beautiful. But what else could you call soaring through the pitch-black canopy, adding your haunting voice to a symphony of insects and howling night creatures, trees streaked through with foxfire that pulsed with every note.

But those dreams are rare. More often are nightmares. Never anything overt, at least not usually, but tense as I never know when her talons will reach out to grab at me again, threatening to gut me in some fit of avarice. Or the unseen creatures in the trees, ready to cut my wings from me and send me plummeting to the ground. Or... worse things.

Still, what I've survived has fascinated me enough that I can't fully divorce myself from it. I often get called too slick for an Autumn courter, too good of a socializer and not enough of a hunched-over hermit obsessing over dusty books. I definitely appreciate Spring's sense of style, but I've never been one for denial, even if it's fabulous.

Besides, even after all this time, I think I still prefer to keep it dark.