Writer: The normal font is the story proper and the text in italics represents the lead characters' POV, i.e. her private thoughts and perceptions. I'd like to indent the italics, but I don't know how to do this in Fictionpress.

Title: Haunting the forgotten

Chapter 1: I hate waiting

The darkness was perfect, unbroken, relentless in its conquest. It flowed over her and enveloped her, filling every crevice of her skin, lapping at the entrance of every recess, threatening to invade even the inner sanctuaries of her being.

I feel like I'm floating in the darkness. If I waved my hand in front of my face, I bet I wouldn't be able to see it.

Not that I could find that out for myself, thanks to the miles of rope securing my arms and legs to whatever structure was embedded in the ground. I can't even scratch the itch in my nose.

All I can do... is wait.

After a while, her other senses asserted themselves over the shock from the total loss of sight; began tentatively to explore her surroundings. The darkness relented a little, differentiating itself into subtle nuances of sounds and smells and textures. The smell of dust dominated at first: a dry, lifeless smell of abandonment that clogged her nostrils and polluted her lungs with every breath. Underlying this was the smoothness and hardness of the cold surface that she was splayed out on. There was enough of an incline to raise her lower body slightly higher than the upper half in a shallow arc – not enough to cause immediate discomfort, but enough to cause a gradual disorientation.

I've always hated waiting.

Small sounds began to impinge on her consciousness, breaking the monotony of the lightless cocoon. The frantic scurrying of myriad feet formed a counter-beat to the random swishes of fragile wings, punctuated by the odd high-pitched squeak and overlaid by a cacophony of other sounds outside her range of hearing. A faint dripping was barely audible, hinting at a wetter location at an unknown distance.

Waiting used to be at the top of my list of hates. But now I have something worst than waiting to put in my list. The absolute worst thing that I hate even more than simply waiting is...

. . . . waiting

. . . . to

. . . . be

. . . . eaten.

Well, I suppose I've found the one positive thing that mother said I should look for in every situation, no matter how bad it seems. I have an absurd urge to giggle at the sheer irony of that thought.

They had removed her outer garments before tying her down. Fabric was scarce, and would presumably not be adding anything to her tastiness. The thin shorts she'd been left with were not meant to cover a lot, and the cold of the surface against her exposed skin was beginning to grow uncomfortable. She shifted as far as she could, trying to send some blood flowing in the direction of her increasingly numb limbs. Her thoughts felt increasingly sluggish and scattered against the lullaby of the insidiously creeping cold and the lack of sensory input. A deep lassitude was settling on her. Yet her consciousness refused, obstinately, to fade.

I thought that stuff they made me drink was supposed to send me to sleep. Why isn't it working yet? At least sleeping would be better than this intolerable waiting.

Her thoughts took leave of the surrounding darkness and began to stray around the colony, tracing a familiar path down the main street; past the dwellings put together from whatever the occupants' resourcefulness and ingenuity could manage. The flow of thoughts stopped to pause awhile outside the grey panes and striped door of her own family's abode. But they did not linger, continuing on instead to the next residence – an imposing structure of hard Fyeglass blocks and Mael rods held together with thin, flexible ropes of Stic. It was the grandest dwelling in the colony, befitting the status of the family that lived there. And here, standing at the doorway of this collection of precious materials, was the goal of her mental journey.

He stood literally head and shoulders above her, blond to her raven, blue-green eyes to her amber, taciturnly persistent to her energetic impulsiveness. His gentle smile greeted her, and then his kiss, collaborated by his hands on her waist, pulling her body towards his... and ended as always, with her pushing him gently away.

"Wylin, Wylin, the Keppen's son; How I wish that I'm the one." That was what the girls in the colony chanted behind her back in tones of spiteful sarcasm spiked with envy.

Because he wanted her, and not them. Handsome Wylin had his sights set on nobody else but her, in spite of her lack of womanly curves and her unremarkable hips that were so unfit for childbirth. But she wasn't ready; wasn't ready to bear a child with him and wait out the first few months in anxiety, hoping that the little one would live... and if not, repeating the cycle child after child after child in a desperate struggle for the survival of the colony. She liked him well enough, but it was because she liked him that she couldn't face the thought of his anguish over the inevitable loss of at least some of their children.

I guess now I'll never know who they take after. I'd rather hoped they would be like him – they'd fit in better than if they didn't think too deeply, unlike me.

Her thoughts, having paid their fond visit to this gentle giant and his inexplicable love for her, moved on. Time had ceased to pass for her without the day's patterns of changing light to mark its passage. Freed of this shackle, her mind soared free, flitting through the events of her modest life to settle at last on one early memory.

Crazy Machachachachaly. That's what they'd called him in cruel imitation of his stammer – all of the children in the colony, and many of the adults as well. The children never allowed him to speak for long without drowning him out with their taunts and jeers, at which point he would stop speaking, and start hitting and kicking whoever was in range. Without fail, she would get involved, despite being punished later for getting into fights that were none of her concern.

He lost every fight. She would have felt quite surprised had he won. The boy's frame had little muscle on it, even if he was not unhealthily thin. His dark eyes dominated his perpetually solemn face, overshadowing every other feature. They were like the deep pools at the colony's edge that the children were warned to stay away from, quietly taking in everything yet revealing nothing. She'd actually agreed with the other children that those eyes were creepy. But all the same she'd secretly admired him for never revealing his feelings, no matter how cruel the words thrown at him. She saw it as a sign of strength, recognising with rare insight for her age that there were other kinds of strength, not just physical ability. It was for that reason that she had never once failed to rescue him.

Who would have thought it of me? That I'd be the Rescuer of the Weak?

But who's going to rescue the rescuer now? It's so deliciously ironic that I want to giggle again.

.

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I usually write in the first person. This is my first story in the conventional style of third person and past tense. But I still can't let go of the first person POV because of how that lets me get inside the head of the character. So you could consider this story as a compromise and an experiment. What do you think? Let me know!