When Once Was Lost, Is Found

TW: Abduction

The stone bridge is solid beneath my feet. Yet, I feel as though I can feel the Earth rocking and rolling to the crashing harmony of the waves propelling in a torrent below the arch of my purveyor. My heart beats and sinks and pitches with the water down a short drop over and over. There is an overwhelming urge within me to take flight, to run. But I have come this far across rocky mountains, thick forests, and flowered fields to turn back now.

The house lies ahead, with swooping arches and a cobbled roof. When I take a step forward, I gasp as I am overtaken by a series of memories: sunflowers over my little head, the giggle of an infant, a mother’s rosy cheeks. My mother. It has been so long since I was taken. Too long. Would she remember me?

I take a step and then another: catching fish with bare hands, tongues held out for the snow. I am smiling and gasping and tingling with dreadful nerves and it's all so wonderful and terrible and-

I am standing on the porch. The door in front of me has a stained glass window and mahogany wood. I know that within the house, the light is turned to rainbows across the wooden floor. All of my prepared words melt into the soil beneath the porch and I stand there, with my only thought being: I made it.

I raise a hand, falter, then bring it to the door. Again. Harder, louder.

Seconds later the door flies open. A woman with greying brown hair holds it ajar. There is a teenage boy next to her with two dimples imprinted in his cheeks.

All there is is silence as we stare at each other. My breath is caught in the back of my throat. Then, her hand flies to her mouth, tears welling in her eyes.

“Meha,” She sobs my name. I find myself crying too. And with a warbled laugh, I speak to my mother for the first time in sixteen years,

“I’m here.”