Charlie's first waking thoughts were "What a lovely nap." Followed quickly by, "Fucking hell, the test." Soon to be followed by, "Ugh, I'm wet."

She quickly sat up and opened her eyes, which is when all of the previous thoughts coalesced into one succinct question.

"What. The. Fuck?"

She was sitting in a jungle. A real, honest to god, South American Amazon style jungle, it came complete with tall trees with bases wider than she was tall. Charlie craned her neck up to stare at a canopy of limbs and leaves. She couldn't see a sky, but the jungle was lit well enough for it to still be fairly early in the day. She laid there staring at the impossibility of her situation. She could not find a single logical answer for this. Charlie had lived in Florida her entire life and while most of that had taken place in a city; she knew that none of this foliage was native to her home state.

Was I attacked? She asked herself.

Oh yes, the devious plan of dragging a poor crippled 25 year old student to South America and leaving her there. Dastardly!

Even her snarky comeback did little to help her mood or bewilderment.

So she decided to turn her attention to more immediate concerns. Like the fact that she was wet. Charlie reached around and touched her back, while keeping a wary eye on her surroundings. She had watched enough nature documentaries to know of the many many dangers of the Amazon. At least in Florida, she could easily identify the dangers both in and out of the water. Charlie wasn't easily scared, but she had seen enough cottonmouths, eastern diamondbacks, and gators in the wild to know that caution is a hell of a good thing. The problem was that she didn't have an internal encyclopedia of the wildlife for this jungle. Hell, she wasn't even sure which jungle that was.

After confirming that she was in fact damp, she came to the truly brilliant conclusion that it was because she had been laying in mud.

Alright first things first, I've got to stand up on my own. Not my favorite thing to do, but we all have to start somewhere.

Charlie began the often painful and tedious task of getting upright. She rolled over onto left side and got onto her stomach, then braced her hands under her as if was about to do a pushup. She then slowly curled her left leg up to a crouch. This was usually the painful part, as it would shift her right hip and it always felt like she could feel the pins screaming a protest. The doctors assured her that was in her mind or psychosomatic, but fuck them they don't know shit. It hurts.

Charlie braced herself for the strain and then pain, but it never came. Her left leg and hip complied quickly and easily to the commands her brain sent them. So she stood up. She stood up more quickly than she was used to and the weight of brace decided that it would take that moment to shift her off balance. There was nothing for her to do, but shout "Fuck!" and fall heavily to the ground. Again she braced herself for incredible pain and again none came. Well other than where the brace pinched her skin and where her bum was sore from an abrupt introduction to the ground.

Charlie was stunned. For the first time since she woke up she glanced down to her legs. What she found was more shocking and terrifying than waking up alone in a strange jungle. Her legs were smaller. Her pants were, at least, a few sizes too small and her leg brace was loose. Like it didn't fit and would either need to be adjusted or more likely replaced. Charlie just sat there touching her legs. She quickly rolled up the pant leg on her left side and giggled at what she saw, toned lean muscle. She knew these were her legs, she remembered the way they looked in those ridiculous and wonderful rugby shorts covered in mud. A thought occurred to her and grabbed her torso and worked her way up to her chest and over and down her arms. Everywhere she touched was her body before that nasty hit and fall, back when she spent most of her off-hours in the gym or on the field. She sat there giggling like an idiot. Then she touched her hair, it was incredibly short. She had never had really long hair, but she couldn't remember it being this short. The sides were buzzed, but the top … the top was longer. She pulled it into her eyes and stared at it.

Blue.

It was neon blue.

"But … I've only dyed my hair once."

Charlie had only had blue hair one time. It was the year she joined the Rebels. The girls told her that long hair was a liability on the field, they were right, and whisked her away to a salon. She was trying to decide what to get when Karen had started teasing her and informed Charlie that she was in fact too girly looking. Well that was also true. Even with the muscles and the height, she always had a large chest. She just could not get rid of it. It made any kind of uniform a pain and it made running a terrible sport. So Karen announced to the hairdresser that Charlie was going to rock a faux-hawk and that it was going to be bright blue. Charlie wasn't really sure she liked the style, but her mother's face when she got home that night made up her mind and she kept it.

However, that was when she was fifteen, but she's twenty-five now.

She slowly stood up again and looked down at herself.

But I don't look twenty-five. I look fifteen.

I'm fifteen.

I'm in a jungle.

I'm a child.

Holy fuck.

After standing there like an idiot for a few minutes, hours, whatever. Charlie started unbuckling her brace. She had some reason and it was logical, naturally, but the real reason she was taking it off was … she was curious. If her hip was fine then maybe she was fifteen again. Maybe the past ten years had been a dream. That didn't explain her being in this jungle, but it was the only theory she had really.

The brace fell off and she started to tentatively stretch her legs. Within minutes she was doing jumping jacks and whooping like a little schoolgirl. Then she did the only sensible thing and punted the brace into the jungle.

The thrill of being young, healthy, and strong had not quite left Charlie, but it was definitely being tempered by caution of the jungle. She decided that the best course of action was to take stock of her supplies and then find the trail of whoever had left her there and follow it. The supplies were easy. One filthy black t-shirt, one equally as filthy pair of jeans, one pair of sandals, her wallet, and a Swiss army knife. The biggest problem was her pants. They were so loose that they were in constant danger of falling off of her. Of course this didn't come as any great surprise as she had effectively lost about 70 lbs. So Charlie used the knife and put a new notch in her belt. When that task was complete, she reverently kissed the knife and slipped it back in her pocket.

"Thank you, Grandpa." She announced to no one in particular.

Other than her precious multi-tool, her supplies were pitiful. The wallet contained a multitude of receipts, cards, her ID, and a paltry four dollars. Charlie violently shoved the wallet back in her pants. With her resources, or rather lack thereof, now accounted for she turned her attention to the jungle.

She had awoken in a small sort of clearing, which was a generous description of the place. The predominant foliage was a large leafy fern, while it, thankfully, didn't bear any thorns it had the annoying tendency to cling to her clothing. The floor was a carpet of dead leaves and rotting plants which covered a layer of thick black mud. Charlie slowly paced the small clearing cursing every god but her bubbe's and could not find a single track or broken path anywhere. She stared up at the unbroken canopy of trees and then back at the muddy floor, before letting loose a cry of frustration.

"I mean, I'm not a fucking girl scout, but come on. You don't drag an unconscious chick through a jungle without leaving some kind of evidence." She gave the jungle carpet a murderous glare. The carpet, however resisted her intimidation tactic and provided no answers.

Frustration was quickly becoming her primary emotion as she wrestled with it. "Okay", she slapped herself, "Charlotte Elizabeth Nacht, you're a grown woman get it together. If you can't find a path just make your own and we'll go from there."

So she picked the easiest direction to traverse and headed into the unknown jungle. Panic was attempting to sink its filthy claws into her mind. So Charlie used her age old tactic of talking to herself. She was aware that this might be seen as insanity, but she had always thought that that was ridiculous. Just because a truly crazy person talked to themselves, did not mean that everyone who talked to themselves were crazy. Causation does not imply correlation. Crazy people usually had hair too, but that does not mean that everyone with hair is crazy. Charlie was not crazy. Charlie was a former twenty-five year old turned fifteen year old, but that did not mean she was crazy. Charlie was not crazy. To prove that she wasn't crazy she recounted the morning's events. Spent the night playing a video game, kissed Justin, drove to school, snarked at Tim … and then. The pillar?

Charlie stopped walking

The pillar?

No, that's crazy. This isn't a fairytale or a video game, this is actually happening. Magical pillars don't exist and if you continue this train of thought maybe you truly are crazy. Look you know this is real, Char. You're sweating from the heat, the little scratches from where that branch grabbed you kind of stings, and you can smell the musky odor of rotting plant life. No, sweetie, this is real. Therefore if this is real, then there must be a logical reason as to how you came to be here. We'll figure it out.

Charlie resumed her trek through the dense jungle. However, the nagging thoughts of what was and what wasn't real continued to plague her.

She wasn't sure how long she had been walking. The only timepiece she ever had was her phone and that was in her bag and that was back on the bench. Right? Yeah she definitely left it back on the bench next Tim.

Tim.

Nope don't think about it. Just keep walking. Now is not the time.

Anyways Charlie wasn't sure what time it was, but the jungle appeared to be rapidly darkening. That was more than a little disconcerting. She had yet to see much wildlife though. A few birds she didn't recognize and quite a few lizards and a couple of snakes. The snakes she gave a wide berth to, but they appeared to be of the constrictor variety so she wasn't terribly concerned about them. However, she was well aware that most jungle wildlife was primarily nocturnal and that was a valid concern. Especially since she had never hunted and was armed with naught, but a pocket knife.

Charlotte froze. She heard something. That something was grunting and sounded like it was digging.

A dog.

Dogs don't grunt, idiot.

Uh … a pig?

Pigs are domesticated. Come on you can do this, I believe in you.

Shit, a boar.

We have a winner.

With this inner monologue running through her mind, she crouched down in the underbrush and attempted to quietly peer out at the boar. She had never seen a real boar before, but she was well aware that a wild boar was a force to be reckoned with and should be avoided at any cost. She quietly unfolded the tiny pocket knife, though she was fairly certain it was useless against anything larger than a puppy. It still made her feel better though.

Charlie's eyes sought and found the beast. That wasn't a boar. That was something else. It was definitely boar-shaped, but it had scales. It had scales and spines. It had scales and spines and was huge. At least four feet tall and more than double that in length.

Is it a dinosaur?

Your guess is literally as good as mine, kiddo.

Crap.

Charlie must have made some sort of noise, because the beast (and it was truly a beast) snapped its head and looked straight at her. Charlie liked to consider herself a brave woman. She had been in a number of bar fights in her time and had taken on women twice her size on the field with little to no trepidation. She had gone swimming in springs and lakes with some truly massive gators and one time was almost struck by a rattlesnake. Each one of those times, she had handled herself with dignity and wisdom and had simply gotten out of the way of danger. However, when the beast roared at her and charged, Charlie froze and screamed.

Two shots rang through the jungle followed quickly by two more. The beast staggered, let out a pitiful whine, and slumped to the ground with a heavy thump. Of course, this didn't particularly help Charlie's frazzled state. Her screaming stopped and left her shaking and crying. There was no inner monologue, there was only the realization that she could have died. She could have died a horrible and undoubtedly painful death.

"Hey, hey" The strange voice that belonged to a man said softly. A hand reached out and gently touched her arm.

To Charlie it felt like an attack, everything felt like it was about to attack her. Her world had just become very real and if she had given it any thought she would have realized that her previous ruminations over the philosophy of what is and isn't real were laughable. This right here was real, the world looked sharp and it was like her eyes could see every detail. She had two options: fight or flight. She chose fight.

Charlie's knife hand went sweeping up to the man's face. She felt like she was moving quickly, but the man easily gripped her wrist and prevented the attack. However he didn't see her leg shooting out simultaneously to kick his knee. With a feral cry, Charlie threw herself on the man and the two of them hit ground with a grunt. Now straddling the prone and winded man who had 165 lbs of crazy on his chest, she tried to punch his face with her free left hand. Again he grabbed her wrist, he may have been saying something to her, but she was not the mood to decipher his speech. Both of her hands were captured and he was wrestling them around to her back. However, her head was free so she slammed that down onto his face with an audible crunch.

"Son of a bitch!" The mystery man cursed at her.

Head butts are not a fun tactic. It's true that they look really cool in movies or games, but in actual practice they should only be used as a true last resort. Mostly because you are just as likely to injure yourself as the person you are attacking. So unless you are wearing some kind of protective gear on your face, which of course would look ridiculous not to mention tacky, we cannot recommend it.

The pain from aforementioned head butt was enough to stun Charlie out of the panic induced attack. She just sat there on the stranger's chest staring dumbly at his bloodied nose.

"Huh" She eloquently stated.

The man quickly took charge and flipped her to the ground and pinned her down her down with his weight.

"Okay, you ready stop now?"

She just stared at him. Her body hadn't quite caught up to what was happening and was violently trembling. The blood from his nose had started to drip down on her face. Charlie knew she must be covered in it. Her face was covered in this stranger's blood. She remembered the boar's fate and the sound that was definitely some kind of gun.

I attacked a strange man in a jungle and he has a gun. Shit, he's going to kill me.

Her body didn't know what to make of this revelation so it concluded that the only logical response was to vomit.

Charlie found herself on her hands and knees five minutes later with the contents of her stomach laying in a disgusting pool on the jungle floor.

Weird, when did I have barbecue?

"Here, take this." The man offered her a piece of cloth.

She took it and mumbled a thanks. After cleaning her face, Charlie stood and gave the man an apologetic glance.

"Sorry about the face."

"It's nothing. I've had worse." After a moment he added. "So what the hell are you doing out here?"

Charlie had no response to that. So she gave him a shrug and a shake of her head.

"Alright. Well unless you want to spend the night out here. We better get moving." He tossed Charlie her now folded knife and started walking away.

Charlie stood there holding her knife and his rag. She looked back at the now very dead beast and then back at the strange man's rapidly disappearing back.

So, I guess this isn't much of a choice.

Her legs agreed and she quickly caught up with the man.

The man's name turned out to be Ethan Wallis and though they didn't talk much as he steadily led her through the jungle. Ethan was a few inches taller that Charlie and appeared to be mostly built of solid muscle. His accent was decidedly southern US, but she wasn't sure exactly which state. Probably Georgia or Alabama, she decided. He had a military buzzcut and carried himself like a soldier. His clothes were unremarkable, camo pants, dark brown shirt, and boots.

Yes, definitely military. Well that's a relief. They can get me home.

There was only one thing about Ethan that concerned Charlie, his gun. As they trudged through the jungle, she stared at it. It was definitely a weapon she decided and as she couldn't see any other gun it had to be the one she had heard. However, it didn't look like any gun had ever seen. It didn't appear to have a barrel and it was too blocky. It looked like a rectangular block with a grip and a stock. It was so strange and felt completely out of place, but there it was anyway slung over Ethan's shoulder.

Ethan came to an abrupt stop and out a high whistle. A few seconds later a light flashed from up high and he continued walking. Charlie was on the verge of asking him about it when they walked out of the jungle completely and into some sort of field. It was completely dark, but she could make out neat dirt rows in the ground on either side of the narrow dirt path they were walking on. Off in the distance were lights, real lights, florescent man-made light. Charlie wanted to giggle with happiness, there were people here. Everything was going to be alright. It wasn't civilization, but it was a far cry from the muggy jungle that was apparently filled with dinosaurs.

The dino-boar thing still bothered her.

However, the prospect of a shower and bed was in front of her and that outweighed any thoughts of the earlier terror.

There were a few people wandering about as they neared the buildings. The adults she saw were relaxing and socializing and there were a few very dirty and happy children running around. When they saw Charlie though every single person reacted the same way, they stopped and stared at her. Unabashed staring. She offered them smiles and a wave, but only a few reciprocated the sentiment. Charlie was starting to get very nervous about where she was. The previous feeling of safety and civilization was replaced by fear.

So with Dueling Banjos playing in her head, they came to a stop in front of one the identical plastic buildings.

Ethan turned and gave her a stern, but not unkindly face. "Now my wife's a doctor. So I'll have her give you a once over." He glanced down at Charlie's now bare and filthy feet.

"You should have told me you lost the shoes."

"One of the thongs ripped off and I don't know where the other one went." She shrugged. "Besides there wasn't anything you could have done."

Ethan shrugged and pointed to a hose, "Rinse your feet before you come in." Then he walked through the door.

The water felt better than it should have and was blessedly cold. Charlie grimaced at the cuts that covered her feet. She never really liked to wear shoes and preferred the option and going barefoot whenever possible, so she always wore sandals. Right now, though for one of the first times in her life she wished she had put on actual shoes, preferably large heavy combat boots.

With her feet as clean as they were going to get, she walked up the steps and into to the house. The décor was simple, but weird. The front door opened into a living room with a couch and armchair. It should have felt familiar, but the patterns and style were wrong. The colors were a bright purple and the design was an intricate looping floral design. The word garish did not come close to describe them. Voices coming from a back room interrupted her thoughts about the dubious tastes of the interior decorator; and she found herself following the noise. There were some pictures lining the hall and she gave them a glance as she passed. Ethan and a woman in a white wedding dress. The same woman giving a naked baby a bath. Ethan and a group of men saluting something off camera.

Yup, like I thought. Soldier.

Charlie knocked on the door with the voices when she turned back to the picture with the soldiers. Those weren't soldiers. She didn't recognize the uniform. The cut and color was wrong.

The hell?

The door was opened by a very small woman with smiling eyes and brown hair swept up in a bun. The height difference was significant and Charlie subconsciously tried to make herself look smaller.

"Well don't just stand there. Come on, let's get you cleaned up and into a bed." The tiny woman swept the giant woman into the room and sat her down on a counter top next to Ethan. The room, Charlie decided, was definitely familiar. It was a brightly lit patient room, with a bed in the corner covered with a plastic sheet. Could be worse she could have made me sit there. With the exception of the wall with the bed, the walls were lined with cupboards and cabinet, with various instruments attached to walls. Charlie didn't know or care enough about medicine to know or care what they did.

Debbie, when she finally introduced herself, did not stop talking and Charlie effectively ignored her after she was sure that what was being said wasn't actually important. Debbie moved in quick and precise movements as she sterilized Charlie's feet and then proceeded to rub an ointment into the cuts. Then she covered Charlie's feet with a clear plastic, that looked suspiciously like saran wrap. Charlie was confused, but that was really nothing new. Nothing today made any sense. Logic decided to take a vacation and did not give Charlie a two week notice.

"I said," Debbie was patiently repeating. "Just sit here for a few minutes and don't stand until the gel finishes its job."

"Oh right."

Deborah gave Charlie a sympathetic look. "Well do you want to tell me who you are?"

"Charlie."

Debbie raised eyebrows expectantly.

"Charlotte Elizabeth Nacht."

Debbie was writing this down on a tablet and raised one eyebrow at her.

"N-A-C-H-T"

"Thank you. Do you want to tell me how you ended up in the jungle or do you want to wait till the morning?"

"Morning, if that's ok." Charlie paused. "Is there a shower I could use?"

"Oh, of course and Ethan is getting the spare room set up now."

Charlie let a real smile replace the fake one she had plastered on when she first met the doctor. Debbie was busy removing the wrap off of Charlie's feet.

"Ok, wiggle your toes and tell me how they feel."

Charlie foot felt cold when it was exposed to the air and the warm tingling feeling was quickly fading. With a smirk at the doctor she wiggled her toes obnoxiously and then looked down at them.

They were perfect. Well they were still Charlie's size 11 feet with the long toes and the slightly longer second toe, but they were healed. There weren't even any scars. Charlie grabbed her foot and pulled it to her face and closely examined it. The skin was rather sensitive and not just where the cuts had been, but everywhere the gel had touched.

"What did you do?" Charlie tried to keep the accusative tone out of her voice, but failed.

"Honey, it's just medi-gel. Now scoot off to the shower."

Medi-gel. That's a word I know. I know that from something.

The shower was so deliciously steamy, that Charlie stepped in fully dressed and washed the mud away before stripping down. After scrubbing down three or four times, Charlie regretfully turned off the water and toweled off. The foggy mirror seemed to taunt her. She had yet to see her new-old body properly.

What if my face is different? I might not be me.

Would that be so bad?

Yes.

Charlie took a deep breath, pulled the towel off and wiped the mirror down.

"It's me." She giggled.

"Well it's me when I was younger, but fuck it I'm still me."

Fifteen.

Yes, fifteen, but I don't care. Besides look at my chest, I forgot they started out this high up.

Humming to herself she draped her clothes over a bar in the shower, collected her tool and wallet, and slipped on the shirt and shorts left in the room for her. Charlie had never been a vain woman, but the many years of a sedentary life had left their unattractive mark on her self-image and seeing the girl in the mirror with the her old body was almost too much. She wanted to be nothing but happy at the youthful face, but there was a strange longing in her for her old body. The scars weren't pretty, but they told the tale of the past 10 years of her life. The broken mess was what Justin fell in love with, he never even knew this girl. Only her mind was the same and she wasn't sure if she could trust that anymore.

Justin is probably terrified right now.

So, it wasn't the giddy child who left the bathroom, was directed to a small bedroom, and crawled under the covers clutching her only possessions; it was the grown woman who was missing her best friend and lover. Justin. That sweet man who didn't care that walking hurt her and instead taught her to play guitar and drive stick shifts, so loving and kind that she was sure he was the polar opposite of her. She missed him. Justin knew her crazy and she knew his. And his brand of crazy could not handle her disappearing like this. It would break him. Charlie would break him, just like he had feared.

You can't even prove that he's real. You can't prove he loved you.

With that thought the events of the day truly came crashing down around Charlie and she finally broke down and cried. Charlie knew how to cry, she had done so many times over the years, less after Justin found her, but the tears were still known to happen. She knew that this was going to be a cry that wouldn't end tonight. This would be an ache that stayed and left a scar.

Laid there for awhile gripping her only two possessions and she had a thought. She opened her wallet and sifted through the cards with a sort of desperate panic. When she slid the card she was looking for out of the sliding plastic, her hands were visibly trembling. Charlie lifted the card to the window and tilted it so it reflected the light and read it.

Her face.

Her face and name.

Her face and name and birth date.

1987

She kissed the card and went to sleep gripping the most precious item she had ever owned. Her Florida driver's license.