When you First Get Love

There wasn't much to the family home any longer. Roof collapsing every which-way- stairs having crumbled, making the home almost impossible to get into for someone unfamiliar to the property, and a danger to all. Where there had been flowers, now stood their long dried, browned skeletons. Windows were now jagged shards of glass projecting out of the once thought impenetrable stone walls, lending to the eeriness that Magda felt at the sight. As she walked, she could smell the winter coming in the air. It had rained recently, and the sky hadn't stopped being a dreary tone of gray, subduing any liveliness that could have been in this place that starred in a great deal of Magda's nightmares. I can't imagine it -not- being there. I doubt anyone's been here in at least 15 years. There was a rustling behind her, but the sound of the gait of the creature told her that it was just Rouge, the kitten that followed her around constantly. Rouge had been dying in a field she'd been wandering through a few months ago, and Magda'd nursed her back to health. Since then, she was essentially her shadow. Rouge's playful, lilting trampling helped Magda feel safe. If Rouge wasn't scared, she shouldn't be either. The sight of the old house didn't scare her. In fact, she wasn't even aware that she had been scared at all until Rouge had made her presence more known. There's nothing here. There won't be anything here. She had started to hear old memories vividly, looking around at the place she'd grown up. Tears threatened to form every time she imagined her brother's voice upon another memory attached to a certain tree or walkway, as well as when she walked upon the flowerbed under her grandmother's window, where she very plainly heard him tell her to flee and to not look back. She could still feel the spot on her back where he had pushed her, hard, to get away. She didn't realize she had been standing quite still in that spot for an indeterminate amount of time. To an outsider, she and her almost nakedness and bare feet, being trailed by an oddly speckled kitten, would have been a pretty odd sight. All she had to do was reach around the desiccated trellis, and push the button. As she stepped forward, she felt a splinter of glass pierce the mound of her foot. She had started to react, but thought better of it, as she'd not yet begun to find any proper shelter. She probed the stonework for the node she was supposed-to-have-felt at least 5 inches to the right, and once it was found, she pushed it in, and looked down at Rouge to see how she was fairing. Rouge was just sitting patiently. When she saw Magda look at her, Rouge stood on her hind legs, and held her paws in the air to be picked up. Madga put her hand under her, and lifted her on her lower back, from where Rouge started climbing onto her shoulder. Magda pulled the trellis upward, and made her way into the small crevice that was now steadily opening downward into a cavern that she hadn't seen in many years. She hadn't remembered it being so cramped, and she didn't feel like she had gotten much bigger since her teens, but still, she was finding herself surprised with how this now seemed more difficult and arduous. The heat of her breath held a sickening stagnancy after it had been released, having to remind herself repeatedly that it would soon be over as she, hunching more and more, ventured in. Rouge had even had to sidle down her back a little to keep from grazing the roof. Spider webs strained to keep held together as the walls continued to separate, snapping silently and lazily falling down onto the sides of the stone. The descent was steady, but at a weird enough pitch that her footsteps felt off-balance and haphazard. She considered the possibility that it was being back here that threw her off balance, and stopped considering things entirely for a moment just before she faced off with the absolute darkness before her. Her eyes had now adjusted well enough to see the black void that would be the ending of the cavern. The slow-moving stone walls had finally stopped making the cold, grating sound of their movement, and eerie quiet replaced it. She inched towards the lip of the tunnel, feeling the ground with her toes, scared of having to jump off into something she wasn't quite confident would be there. Putting her hands against the walls, she turned herself around, and down onto her stomach, sliding her legs, and hip off the side. She slowly allowed herself to slide down the wall, toes grazing it gently; giving her weight off as much as she could. Before her strength could give out any, she told Rouge to hop, to which directive she slowly and awkwardly made her way down Magda's back and tail-end to gently stay on Magda's bent calves. "Now jump!" Magda whispered, with apprehension. As Rouge did. Magda took a deep breath, blew it out, and let herself fall before having the chance to hear Rouge touch down in whatever way it was that could have decided her fate. The fall hadn't been overly steep, but she had had no way of knowing quite how far downward it was. When she hadn't landed a literal second later, her panic rose and a soft high-pitch squeak left her throat. An overreaction on her part. She landed safely with no difficulty other than the hair of a moment when she lost her purpose. She wasn't good at this, and never claimed to be. A moment later, Rouge came to her and circled her ankle mewing lightly, and then wandered off to the right. She watched as the odd gray caricature of Rouge pranced along the way into pure blackness. Now was the time for light. Magda kissed her necklace, which began to glow an irredescent blue-ish green. She could now see that Rouge was now smelling an overturned armchair, which then hopped onto and over books strewn across the floor. Magda couldn't help but feel silly when her first thought was that her grandmother would be very upset at how her books had been treated. Rouge had made her way over to the charred podium at which she remembered her grandmother speaking to an intimate crowd. A couple of times. People who looked similarly to her grandmother. She took out a notebook and wrote down a few lines detailing what she had only just realized she'd forgotten. She didn't want to pull too much on the memory, or it might break under the pressure, so she shut herself off as much as she could. Deafening silence rang in her ears, as the entire world left her in a leach-esque, explosive manner. Memories flooded and brought Magda bucketing down before completely disassociating. Well. Not completely. She could still see while she remembered the event. She could hear those voices from her past like they were going on in surround sound, but it was all still garbeldy g**k. She wished to shake her head loose to think before she had to pay too much attention, and she couldn't quite. What happened was a large shock instead. ZzZzAAPpp! World black. She knew she was in mid-day now, but where? She leaned up and saw -their- tree above her. A long branch lay above her head, and had probably hurt her left eye, as she now couldn't see well out of it. ... Jesus, dammit all! Magda still didn't know the story. She had probably lost her family; loved and not so loved ones, alike. But wait... Her brother had just pushed her out of the tunnel, pleading with her as quietly as he could for her to leave; making sure she took a bag he appeared to have packed prior. He pushed her hard, running back down the tunnel.She still felt his hands and their accidental cruelty. Her fear kept her standing in the same spot outside of her grandmother's room, trembling leg keeping her stagnant as the light through the window suddenly changed, and loud noises were in her beloved grandmother's room; breaking things, rummaging. The tunnel closing woke her from her stupor, turning slowly toward the sound. Within an immediate glance, she stopped looking and corrected course as much as she could-sprinting with little thought to her surroundings. Her heart, her chest, and her head all wanted to turn around and fight whatever was happening, but her feet did what her brother told them to do; run away. Somehow, she had made it 20-odd miles away before she collapsed. It had been almost, if not more, four hours. ___________________________________________________________________________________________ When Rouge knocked down a wooden post, causing her to scamper away in fear, Magda's memory was given life. She had started reacting, too. She felt the intensive need to run and luckily realized what she was doin-, which led to another series of reactions. She stopped and thought... And then began to cry. Something she hadn't done in some time. Her necklace started to turn a warmer color and faded back to the blue-green of before as she calmed herself down. This place was my home. Where are my loved ones? What am I even doing here?