Opera in Underland

5. The Search Begins

Rosalind hadn't slept well in over a month.

When she'd heard the news about the warehouse, where she knew her baby sister had last been working, she'd figured the little girl got out just fine. But then the news came in that she was missing. For a long time, she was assumed either dead or a runaway. Considering they never found a body, and given her background, runaway was deemed more likely, and the police had been sweeping the neighboring counties for the girl.

Even though they weren't blood relations, technically, they were sisters in all but that. They had grown up together for a short while, sharing both sorrows and laughter. Rosalind had done all she could to look after the younger girl. After all, she was the only one who cared enough to try on most days. But that had all been suspended indefinitely once she'd had her birthday and moved out, leaving her little sister behind.

And now the girl had gone missing. Even though Rosalind was eighteen, with a sort-of-job as a freelance writer in between shifts at the coffee shop, and had no real legal bind to her, she felt a certain degree of responsibility. She shouldn't have let them drift apart, no matter how caught up in her work she was, or how far behind on her bills. Scraping out a living and barely getting by was no excuse for forgetting about family, not in her mind.

Rosalind deleted another sentence from the open document on her laptop, gritting her teeth in frustration. She'd been typing and retyping the same column for over two days now, somehow unable to find the words. Her sister would have known. She always knew. That flair for drama she'd had had always been one of her more endearing qualities.

Rosalind sighed, leaning back in her chair. Maybe some tea would help her clear her head. She stood up, closing her computer, and shuffled over to the stove. While she pulled out a mug and heated the water to brew with, she shuffled through her phone, checking twitter, tumblr, her newsfeed, the usual.

She sat on the counter, sipping her drink. Nothing really new was being reported today, it looked like. People were still complaining about the government, the bees were still disappearing... there was hardly anything going on in this sleepy city she'd grown up in.
Then she noticed another headline from a city across the state, Endsville, and snorted to herself. What crazy hoax was happening in that town now? There was always something absurd to be heard from there. Most people just dismissed it as pranks, or sensational click bait type stories. But it was usually good for a laugh.

Out of curiosity, and boredom, she clicked on it, fully prepared to see whatever ramblings about vampires or pizza wars those people could cook up.

"Local Wandering Girl Falls Down Hole, Hasn't Been Seen Since"

Hmm. That didn't sound like the usual stuff. She frowned a bit and checked the date. It was earlier today. So, while scrolling through to see who the unfortunate child was, she wondered what this was all about. The details revealed themselves slowly, and a story came together.
As she read, her heart started pounding. Her eyes grew wider and her mouth grew drier. The girl had been in that town about a month, from her city originally, and the description... it fit perfectly.

It couldn't be... could it?

This was the first real lead she had on her sister. Rosalind was not about to let this go. Dropping the tea and breaking the mug, she muttered a few choice swears, dashed to her computer, threw it open, and fired up every search engine she had. Anything she could find even remotely connected to the incident was fair game now. Screw meeting her deadline, this took priority.

All the articles she could come across - and there weren't many, mostly just tweets from people in Endsville - were very unclear about what had happened. Some said she stumbled, some said a giant snake snatched her, and one even claimed she had jumped in voluntarily. All they agreed upon was that a girl of that description had gone down a very large hole in the ground and failed to come back. So what did that mean for her now?