Unbreakable - A Beautiful Lie · (Roswell Fanfiction) · √

ONE ONE FOUR

I was running. My legs were short and clumsy, but fast. The wind caught in my loose long hair and the bright morning sun kissed my face.

My mouth was laughing. Long chains of pearly laughter.

I felt light. Carefree.

Mom's hair was warm reddish brown, the curls looking soft and inviting around her smiling face. She was holding her arms out, welcoming me into a hug, her legs bent to come down to my height.

I knew that she had been gone for several days. I couldn't remember where she had been. I just knew that I was over the moon delirious with happiness about her return.

"Come here, Lizzie," she encouraged me. As if I needed any encouragement.

My legs were hurting now. Stumbling. They were getting tired and felt heavy.

Mom seemed further away. I frowned at the realization, my laughter fading.

I inhaled sharply, the laughter dead now, and yelled, "No, Mommy! Don't go!", my four-year-old lungs aching for air.

My body was telling me to stop, but I couldn't. I needed to get to mom. I could make it. I had to make it.

"You can do it, honey," mom told me, her voice sounding far away, muffled. Through a fog I saw her warm smile shake and grow weaker.

She was even further away now, the distance between us growing like someone had zoomed a camera lens, making her shrink into the size of one of my Barbie dolls.

"I'm coming," I tried to yell, but I was panting too hard.

I fell, my knee hitting the graveled road, the small pebbles digging into my young flesh. The pain shot up my leg and radiated from the palms of my hands which I had used to try to stop my fall.

Tears instantly sprung up in my eyes, but I squeezed them back. My throat was thick with repressed pain as I turned my eyes upwards again, to search out my goal.

But she was barely visible.

The bright morning sun had disappeared behind a grey cloud, casting shadows and darkness over the ground below, while veils of fog were moving in around me. Cold rushed up over my arms and the pain in my knees and hands was rapidly forgotten while a feeling of loneliness and abandonment wrapped around me.

No. Wait.

It wasn't emotions sneaking up on me. It was dark creatures. Creatures with large bottomless black eyes, no mouth, and large heads. Creatures that looked like giants, with long bony fingers and large palms, with long legs and wide upper bodies.

They were coming from all directions, moving in on me in a slow circle.

Those tears that I had fought now flowed unhindered down my cheeks. I was so scared I didn't know what to do. How to breathe. How to move.

Instead I squeezed my eyes so tightly shut that it hurt, wishing them to go away.

Go away. Go away. Go away.

I felt the air around me get colder, chilling the skin of my bare arms and legs, and I knew that it was their presence that brought coldness. I just knew. Behind my closed eyes, the darkness became darker as I felt them around me and I brought my scraped palms up to my eyes to block out even more of what I might see through my thin closed eyelids.

That's when I felt a sliver of warmth behind me, near the back of my neck. My frantic heartbeat calmed in anticipation. I listened. Listened to whether that warmth had a sound.