This May Continue On a Blog Made for Stories

This was my attempt at just writing something for the sake of writing. I made a New Year's Resolution (2 years ago) that I would just start writing. Maybe doing something every day, even if it's not that great.

Rosa opened her eyes. It was a long time before she could think of anything else to do – it was dark. It was the kind of darkness that deepens when you open your eyes, the kind that shifts and changes and you see shapes in its wake. A thought floats through her head:

How did you get here?

Now that’s a funny thing to think, she thought, I must have started standing up, and now I’m lying. As simple as that. Other things are simple too, like moving. Here, I’ll show you.

This was more difficult than originally planned, her entire body seemed to be frozen, and her body was not listening.

I order you to move, she thought, stubbornly, to her hands, you’ve never disobeyed me before, so move!

However, even with that great force of will, her body remained stubbornly idle, a rock on this pavement.

And that’s another thing, why is this so cold and hard? I do not remember ever sleeping on something as uncomfortable. I doubt I would have done this to myself on purpose. Unless I was in the woods and I forgot my bedroll, perhaps I’m in the woods?

She pauses for a moment to listen for the sounds that are so familiar to her. She listens for the quiet rustling of the trees overhead, listens for the sounds of the insects, for the animals that would be interested in an immobile young woman, listens for the telltale jingle of the garish caravan she traveled with for so many years. Nothing. That is to say, nothing familiar, there’s plenty to listen to, once her ears are tuned. What seemed like a faint noise in her ears that at first she mistook for her own head is now unmistakably turning out to be rushing water behind rock. She also confirmed the fact that she did not have a bedroll.

How did you get here?

How should I know? I just went to bed not too long ago – I am still perfectly exhausted. And here I am, in this foul smelling cold, dank place. I can’t move! Do you think I wanted something like this? And now I’m talking to myself. I’m just like those madmen who traded with the caravan.

The thought came again, this time stronger, but Rosa, if anything, had an incredible ignorance towards things she did not want to believe. She did not want to think of being somewhere completely unknown, not knowing where she was or what she was doing lying on the ground. She had seen plenty in her life, but never had she been genuinely confused. In her frustration, she let out a growl.

And the best I can do is growl! This better not be one of those stupid horror stories that the girls in the village tell me about. I certainly don’t believe in werewolves, and even if I did, one certainly did not bite me! I would have remembered that! And what is that tapping noise?

In her anger and frustration, Rosa was tapping her hand ferociously on the floor. Now that her hand had her undivided attention, it suddenly stopped, as if cornered by stage fright. Quietly reserving her judgment for later, she turned all hostile thoughts away from the now still appendage. It started tapping again with the retreat of the mental spotlight.

Rosa gave a small sigh. It was a perfectly absurd situation: no memory of the how she came to be there, lying on the ground, a voice in her head, and now an itch right on the tip of her nose.

This is absurd!

With that, she moved her hands, pushed herself into a sitting position, stood up, and scratched her nose vigorously. And to prove to her self that it is all in her head:

“That was easy. And so was that! Never a doubt in my mind.”

Furrowing her brows, she concentrates on her right palm and pushes the energy out, as she did so many times traveling. This is a harder endeavour than she planned, as if what comes so easy to her is stunted behind a thick wall, but soon enough, as she was taught and it was willed to be, a tiny flame of blue green light flickers to life and wraps around her hand, and what should give off the light of a torch only shines like a candle, once again giving her pause.

Speaking aloud helps, “If this is a room, and I’m inside it, there must be a door.”