Chapter One

You could ask me now why I am afraid of the daylight, the pale brightness that washes out the world, and why I tremble beneath the shadowed coolness of an oak tree. I can not tell you why, only that the sun hurts my eyes badly, and that I wait. The wind whistles past me, covering my face with my own short, dark hair.

I wait for the dimness before the storm, when everything white glows and I am no longer terrified of the reality of the daylight. In the dimness, I can interpret things as I please, and shadows soften the harshness of the depth of the woods. Even now, I can run my hands over the oak tree catcyns littering the ground, thick with autumn leaves, deep with the obscene, moist matings of fungus and algae over the rotting skeletons of woods. At least I cannot see it.

Even now ...

My sister calls for me, holding her arms vainly above her head. Her blonde hair and childish blue dress are plastered against her, as the light rain begins to fall. "Buttercup! Buttercup!"

I stand up, as heavy droplets seep through the oak and begin to soak me. I cry back to her, and follow the sound of her receding voice back to the camp. The trees are copsed thickly, and the rain blurs them, and the shadows love to dance along them, beneath the tattered ceiling of leaves. I can't help gazing up at the multitude of trembling leaves waving shyly at me through the rain. Dimness and brightness whips around their edges, a ghostly cavalscade, echoes of light reflected through rain, waxing and waning ... they wave and cackle, laughing, faster ...

My sister, finally impatient, has her hand on my shoulder, and her eyes are narrowed. "Buttercup, what is wrong with you? Standing out here in the rain?"

"Ah-mmm ..." I respond quietly, my mind empty of words. The rain feels so cool and good against me, and there is no sun to watch me, only shadows to surround me.

"Come on, Buttercup."

The tent flap before me lifts, the canvas rustling softly, and I am sat down onto a dry sleeping bag. I look sadly up at the roof of the tent, wanting to feel the rain against my skin again. It has been such a long day, such a long time, and it is hard for me to relax anymore. A rough towel is rubbed strongly against me, drying me off, and I hear a curt sigh to let me know that such a break of solitude was not welcome.

My other sister, Blossom, only looks at me blandly.

"It is time for lunch, couldn't you remember?"

"I'm not hungry."

I hunch down into the sleeping bag, and I stare dumbly at the side of the tent. It is Sunday, and our weekend is almost over. We will have to head home again soon, and I dread the terrible noise and chaos of the city again. Many days, I wish I had an entire world, an entire life to myself.

On the side of the tent, the rain plutters and plunks softly against the waterproof canvas, and forms strange shapes. The droplets clump and part in an oily sort of dance, as if they wished to form something, but gravity consistantly broke them, and they struggled to shape, again and again, rising and falling ...

There is a tiny, soft pitter beneath the plunking of the rain, but I shake my head. It must only be the cackling of leaves, or raindrops softly hitting the ground. I can still feel my sisters staring at me, against my back, and I stubbornly close my eyes to shut out their unwanted attention.

There is only the soft pitter, patter, pitter, patter, plunk! of rain, and the dimness, and I squint harder, thinking of solitude.

When I roll over again, Bubbles and Blossom are still staring at me, their eyes half-lidded with a benign sort of concern.

But, no, I open my eyes, and they are not in the tent. The tent is still empty, and the rain has stopped. It is much brighter now, and I rub my eyes furiously. There are merry sounds outside, the pleasant laughter between people, and I crawl out into the daylight, my mind still fuzzy from sleep. The arms of my sisters are there to surround me and guide me to the picnic table where fresh sandwiches await.

A dark-haired man who I call father in my head but Professor outloud leans over. He is smiling cheerfully, as if to welcome me back to the safety of the waking world.

"Lunch?" I try.

"Dinner," he corrects me.

"It seems like it's only 2 or 3 o' clock," I say, looking up at the sky. He follows my gaze, uncomprehending. There is no sun out, the sky is all gray clouds, but it appears as bright as early afternoon.

"It's almost 5:30," he says, consulting his watch.

I can only shake my head dumbly. As beautiful and quiet as it is out here, there is no concept of time. Only human habit can bring that. I can still feel the eyes of my sisters, and it feels like they are all staring silently at me as I eat. They have already eaten.

"What?" I rumble, perturbed. A simple meal should not be a spectacle! The Professor lowers his voice and head, as if afraid the trees will object to loud noise, or that I will break like a wine glass in an operahouse.

"Are you alright, honey?"

"Why does everyone so worried? What is wrong? Do I have something on my face?" I ask. They begin to carefully look away, and Bubbles nibbles distractedly at some stray crumbs on her plate. I feel frustrated, and it must show plainly on my face, for none of them wish to answer.

I stare at my hands, but I have finished eating the sandwich mechanically, and there is nothing left, although I do not remember consuming it or savoring the taste. I start back to the tent, for lack of a better destination. My blonde sister stirs, her eyes flickering momentarily to life again.

"You look awful, Buttercup."

Her head inclines away again, the moment gone, and I continue to the tent as if nothing was said. I'll just take a bath when I get home. Three days of camping without a bath or shower hit me harder than anyone else, I suppose. I don't delicately glow like my sisters do, I sweat.

I find myself back at my sleeping bag with nothing to do. I dig out a comic book, trying to immerse myself in the adventures of the hero, but my mind is too distracted for that. No one brought a mirror, and their stares are burned into the back of my mind. What could hold their attention so raptly? The rain begins again, promising an end to an extremely dreary day.

My sisters make their way into the tent damply, and hunch down to warm up inside. As some point, I must have begun to relax again, as I read the dialogue between the hero and villain grow more heated.

Beneath my elbow was a cold puddle of water. This not in itself inherently frightening, although the coolness certainly was shocking.

I had the distinct impression that the water clung to me vicariously, and the patter beneath the rain, the sound of a waterfall perhaps, rose into an unholy crescendo, slowly took shape into -

Light.

Tears of terror were in my eyes even as I screamed, they had burst out and down my face, for in that instant was a glimpse of something unfathomable, that I cannot grip even now, that my mind slides around. That instant of horror was swallowed up into the bliss of forgotten memory, even within the second that I sensed it.

My sisters yelped in adject, shared fright, looking around wildly for the source. I gasped something mundane, about the waterproof tent leaking finally and the wetness of the rain on me. I don't know if they ever believed me in that second, for the Professor burst into the tent, clearly expecting an emergency.

There was only a sort of dumb silence, until everyone crumbled into nervous laughter at the tension. I found my laughter helpless, automatic, high-pitched with hysteria as if it were being pulled out of me outside of my own control. I shook and writhed and gasped for breath, clutching my sides, laughing. I can't imagine what was so funny, except I kept on remembering the terrified expressions on everyone's faces.

The Professor, soaking wet, states, "I think it's time to go home. It's raining very hard now."

I am ushered into the rain again, shivering with cold, and we walk through the wet, damp woods toward the parking lot. Oh, in hindsight, forethought is beautiful! If only we had remembered to bring umbrellas.

Each drop of water I am aware of as it rolls down my body, and soaks into my clothing. It seems to be unnaturally wet, soaking into everything around us and on us. I feel a great sense of relief when we reach the car, out of the rain, out of the moist crunchings of forest leaf litter. The car rumbles and shudders to life, and the gentle clack of seat-belts buckling echoes. We pull out of the parking lot, and head back to Townsville proper.

I start laughing softly.

Because, you see, in the darkness of the seat in front of me, I knew that a little shadow was peering out at me. I think it was at that moment that I realized I was quite insane, for how can there be such a thing? I can look at the windows of the car, and still! The water is trying to form into shapes, but the wind is constantly stopping it.

The car is going to stop, and the wind will be gone. The clouds will clear up, and there will be light!

And in that light -

"Buttercup."

- will be -

"Buttercup."

- that thing we all -

"STOP LAUGHING, BUTTERCUP!" Blossom screamed, her face nearly touching mine, her hands clutched painfully against my shoulders, and I stop to gasp for breath before erupting into new multitudes. She winces at the saliva, and I finally quiet down, still tittering an uneven intervals.

The trees on the side of the road stop moving, and the car stops shaking.

The droplets clinging to the windows have regrouped into a throbbing, pulsating amoeba around the car, on the ground. Hot, slick shadows cling to me, my clothing still wet, seeping into me.

... I don't suppose I ever mentioned why I don't like baths?

Always, every time I came near the bathtub, there would be a little shadow watching me out of the drain. In my youth, I only knew the vague discomfort of being watched, by those lustful eyes. I would rather glory in the grime, the smell of battle rather than yield to be forced into that still water where the shadows would watch me.

He's been growing - ever since - toying with us, distracting us. How should we have known that one day he would tire when he realized he couldn't win his games anymore? Oh, bliss of oblivion, that we would have lived in insanity and misery rather than the sanity of knowledge!

For there, outside the window, the rain is of liquid strings and tendons dripping from the clouds. They cling to the earth, and shudderingly rise from the grass. The dark mass, the writhing gray mist of the shadows eebs out and away. He drops his living entrails. Him! Him!

I know once, in that singular instant of first light, that we were an unnatural thing upon this earth. But there was the dark, handsome face and stare of terror that drove the thought out of my mind, back into the forgotten.

I can feel it now, the consciousness beneath, that was always laughing at us and our vain attempts.

I had always known that we must return from whence we came. Even the Professor, in that stark moment of horror, foolish conduit, knew that we were not meant to be!

The water rises, a veritable tidal wave of primordial slime to engulf the small machine that harbors us. My sisters struggle valiantly now to scream or react, but it is too late. It is already sliding through the cracks, and the living ooze upon us drags and calls, like iron to a magnet.

Oh, light! It burns, it burns!

I could still feel the paroxysms of uncontrollable laughter even as I died.