A601

Prologue

Back when I was eight-years-old, my mother Elinora went missing. She was a very secretive woman who never told me or my dad anything about her work. All we knew was that she had two jobs, other was hotel employee, the other unknown. She told the best stories and had a great imagination. She told me stories of different adventures that I thought were all fiction.

"Look over there, Alex. You see those two stars glowing next to each other? Between them is a planet your mommy will one day travel to." We would sit on the front porch of our house. Just the two of us. She would wrap a blanket around us to keep us warm and protected from cold nights. We'd stare at the night sky and she would tell stories of ancient places faraway and people who had never even heard of a place called Earth. Places out there were much more developed than what Earth was.

Her stories sounded like a fever dream but at the same time so realistic, like she had experienced them herself. Sometimes she brought up future plans, the places she wanted to go. Unsearched places no one had heard of. Sometimes she woke me up early in the dawn and brought outside to look at the meteor showers or the sunrise. We would take long family trips to open places or small mountains where the sky was open. You could see everything. We would lay on the ground, me, mom and dad, and stare at the sky as it changed colors.

"Alex. What are you  doing up?" Mom turned to look at me while wrapping a scarf around her neck. I was eight. I had woken up in the middle of the night after hearing dad and mom talk outside my room. Mom walked to me after wrapping her scarf. "Go back to sleep", she said with a gentle smile, brushed some of my strawberry blonde hair behind my ear.

"Where are you going?" I asked. I held Bunny closer to my chest. The huge pink bunny plushie was a present from my fifth birthday party.

"Work called. I have to go on a longer work trip than anticipated. It'll take a couple months before I'll be back." She stood up and took her green woolen cloche hat from its place on the shelf. She puts the hat on and makes sure her long strawberry blonde hair is not wrinkled underneath.

"I don't want mommy to go." I took a firm grip of her long grey jacket and felt my eyes start burn. She kneeled down on the floor and took me in a hug.

"Two months will go by before you know it. It won't take long, I promise." She gave me kiss on forehead before standing up. She gave a kiss to my father who leaned on kitchen door frame. "Take care of each other while I'm gone." Before opening the front door she turned to me.

"Alex, be a good girl, okay." And with that, she walked away to a work trip that was supposed to take two months. Two months turned to four, four months turned to a year and year turned to many years. She was not coming back.