The Garden of Heathen

Found Meaning

Song suggestion: No One is to Blame- Mindy Smith

It was dark when Gally was awakened by two little hands pressed to his chest.

"Gally, wake up! I remember!" Aussie cried excitedly as she repeatedly pressed him into the mattress, bouncing him like a ball.

He wasn't sure how long he'd been asleep but it was difficult to shake off the grogginess. He rubbed his eyes till he saw stars, and when those finally cleared he saw Aussie leaning over him with a clarity and madness in her eyes. Her hair was crimped and wild looking from it being wet when she went to sleep.

"What is it?" He sighed as he propped himself up on his elbows.

"White Rabbit!" She grinned as she squeezed his wrist. "It's from a book called Alice In Wonderland. A little girl sees a white rabbit in a waistcoat with a pocket watch and follows him and she ends up falling down the rabbit hole into Wonderland."

She stared down at him so happily but he had no idea what any of it was supposed to mean. He hoped she might have an idea on that, but if she did she wasn't sharing it.

"Ok, so," he drew the words out hoping to prompt her to go on. "What do you think that means?"

Her expression fell ever so slightly.
"I... am not sure-but! I remembered!"

A faint, pitying smile pulled at the corner of his mouth as he fully sat up. How terrible it must be to finally regain old memories just for them to be equally as cryptic as the rest of this place.

"Maybe it means there's going to be someone or something that will show us the way out of here, lead us down a rabbit hole of some sort, a way out of the maze... what do you think?" She asked him earnestly.

His eyes had adjusted to dim light in the room, enough to see her fairly clearly. His grogginess had lowered his inhibitions and he was now brave enough to gaze directly into her eyes.

"I think you're right," he said as he brushed her wild hair back over her shoulder. "Because-"

Because.
The thought almost made an auditory click as it dawned on him. The B in BYLH stood for Because!

"Aussie, remember at the bottom of the note, the letters BYLH?" He asked her as his hand now gripped her shoulder.

She looked confused for a moment, her eyes moving in a thoughtful arc.
"Yeah, I think so."

"They're not a persons initials, they're initials for words in a sentence. The B is for Because," he explained his own revelation to her.

Her eyes lit up.
"You must have written it," she reasoned excitedly, shifting to get more comfortable on the side of the bed, her thigh resting heavily against his.

"You don't think I wrote the whole note?" He asked her, his hand coming down off her shoulder and resting in his lap.

"I don't know," she admitted with a shrug. "It just felt like the note was written to you, not by you, if that makes sense. It just didn't sound like you," she explained.

"Maybe I sounded different before I forgot everything," he said quietly, the thought wasn't a pleasant one.

"Maybe... I don't know," Aussie agreed sadly. "But I remembered White Rabbit which was part of the typed message, you remembered something  handwritten."

Suddenly her face seemed to light up and Gally was almost disappointed that it was just the dawn finally starting to break.

"Oh my god, I know what we should do," she exclaimed as she briefly placed her hand on his shoulder close to his neck, her fingers grazing his skin above his collar. He was awake now.
"We'll compare your handwriting to the writing on the note!" She was practically bouncing. "Where's the note?"