What Once Was Feared

Chapter Two

A blinding light replaces comes flodding trough the opening I had made. It swollows me filling me with a feeling I cant quite explane. Fear, maybe? Pain? No, something much more than that.

"She's responding!" a feminine voice announces with relief and a hint of concern. Despite my eyes still adjusting to the sudden brightness, its obvious there's nothing but chaos all around me. People running all around me. Bumping, yelling, panting. What is this?

Then the light faded.

When I awake again I am in a completely different place. Maybe even a completely different world. I was in a place a little more familiar but I just couldn't grasp how. The walls around me seemed to hold many memories, but I just couldn't find them. The bed beneath me was reasuring. It felt like home.

Home.

I examine the room a bit more closely. There was a stuffed lion sitting next to me on the pale purple comforter. Resting its back on the assortment of pillows. I slowly reach next to me to grap the toy. As soon as my fingers grazed past the soft fur on the lions back, I slip into forgotten memories.

I was in the same room, but I knew in was different. The lion was no longer there. And there was a certain life to the room that was absent before. The shades were drawn and sunlight spilled onto the floor by my feet. The light kissed my toes and filled me with warmth. My thoughts were cut off as soon as I hear the turn of a doorknob.

*click*

I tense up at the anticipation of who might be on the other side of the door. Prepared for anything, I sit up.

The one thing I wasn't prepared for was to smile.

"Mom," I manage to say. Finally, a face I could conjure up a title for.

She takes a couple steps closer, "hi sweetie. Listen, I know its been hard for you with mommy and daddy. . . not living together anymore." Why is she talking to my as if I was only a child? "But you have to stay strong for mommy, okay? You can do that right?"

"Mom," I say questionably. "I don't underst-"

"No, no honey. It's not your fault," my mom says cutting me off. "Just... sometimes things just don't work out between mommy's and daddy's. They get to where they aren't happy with each other anymore. And they have to split up. Anyways, I got you a present for being my brave little girl." She took her had from behind her back, which I just now realized it has been like that the entire time.

In her hand was the same stuffed lion I saw just a moment ago. Except it still had its left ear. "Lions are very strong and brave animals," my mother said while pushing my hair out of my eyes like she always did. "Just like you are my very strong and brave little girl. My beautiful little lion." She knelt down again while placing the lion in my lap. "I love you, sweetie. Never forget that."

Everything around me turned to dust and blew away into the wind. I look around franticly, trying to understand what was happening. I got one last look into my mother's eyes before she, too, turned to dust. "Mom!" I yell, but my screams were carried into the wind along with everything around me. Everything except the lion. I hold onto it tight as tears streamed down my cheeks. I clinch my eyes shut hoping, praying, for things to just make sense again.