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H E R
When I awoke, I was no longer encased in the wooden panels of the box car. Or a decaying church. Or by quiet firelight in a dark forest. The walls were a creamy purple shade and the room was filled with a crisp silver morning light.
My room. My old room. From Before. Before?
I pulled away the patchwork quilt made with love from a grandma I had never met and swung my legs over the edge. It was strange, the bed was too soft. Like I would fall right through.
I smelt pancakes and turkey bacon.
Shoving my feet into a pair of slippers, I raced down the hall and practically slid down the back set of stairs into the kitchen.
"Daddy!" I cried, sprinting towards his figure with its back turned towards me as he worked away flipping pancakes to reveal their golden-brown tops. I wrapped my arms around him, embracing him tightly. It was weird. It felt like I hadn't hugged my own father in forever.
"Whoa, whoa, kiddo." He turned, placing an arm across my shoulders while still maintaining the pancakes. "How's my Ellie-belly-jelly-bean?"
"I missed you," I told him, burying my face into his old Montgomery Fire Department t-shirt.
"Missed me? I tucked you in last night." He chuckled, shaking my shoulder slightly. "It's only been, what, eight hours? Oh, well. I missed you, too, sport."
He always called me nicknames like that, carried down from my brother, despite the fact I was absolutely not a tom-boy. It was strange, I felt like I hadn't been called that nickname in... I couldn't remember.
Then I was confused. Was this a dream? No, it felt to real. You can't feel in dreams. I was sure of that. Right?
Wait. Why would I be dreaming? This was my life. I tried hard to remember what had happened before I woke up here and all I could fathom was a strange, undecided shade of blue that I was unfamiliar with. Perhaps the hue of the iris of one's eye.
And why had I told my father I missed him when he had only been down the hall the entire night?
But I did. I did miss him. I missed him like he had been ripped away from me and my heart had never recovered. Yet, there he stood, with a heavy, warm arm around my shoulders.
"What, Ellie, no 'Good Morning' hug for mom?" Chanel N°5 invaded my sense of smell and I turned to my mother, as she adjusted the tie on the robe of her blue, gauzy peignoir set, her typical pajamas. I released my father, allowing him to go back to his breakfast duties and sprung into my mother's arms.
