Elusive

She was an explorer, an adventurer. A soul searcher, a secret finder, a treasure hunter. She was one of those kind - the transcendent, marked by the world but still flowing freely through time and space and energy like a brilliant sunbeam. She lit up the world.

She was on a mission. In search of glittering treasure, she found something different, something of infinite more worth. Something that she had been looking, even longing, for. She bundled it up carefully in silk woven from starlight and held it close to her, but still, the guardian of the paradox demanded a sacrifice. She offered her gold and jewels, treasure maps and secret passwords in the ancient tongue, but the guardian knows what a person values the most. The one thing a person could never give up. The guardian stole away its prize and spun her around and around a blank slate world until all that was left was the barest glimpse of something she so desperately needed.

The guardian could not keep its stolen goods, for something so delicate, so magical, could not be contained by those whom it was never intended. The secrets, the answer to all that she had once known, belonged to the place where they were born. The answers were not in the fleeting moments of contact or the long stretches of reaching for something that wasn't there. They weren't in the snatches of conversation, muted by the steel grey planes throbbing with ancient life and the omnipresent dust that dulled everything like a vow of silence. Rather, they were bled out in primary red and swept into an unforgiving river, now tinged pink, lost forever.

She searched for the answers for many years. She climbed mountains and invaded castles. She fought bears and tigers and men for the truth. It is very difficult, however, to look for something when you can't even remember what it is. It is even harder to find your way out of the darkness when your eyes cannot adjust to the light. No matter what she did, or where she went, she could never find what she so longed to know. Then, one day, as she was walking through an enchanted place, a cloud loomed overhead and she was caught in its shadow.

She knew.

She stretched her fingers and closed her eyes and breathed it in. Watched out for, cared for, cared about, for the first time since she could remember. Sharing secrets, sharing trust. The look and feel and feeling of a hand reaching out to her just before she...

Could feel the sun on her skin again, the warmth unable to reach anything inside. Just like that, the secrets were lost. She chased them for many days, following the cloud and the answers it had soaked up from the river, hoping to be caught in the storm that would release every memory to her. But alas, the shadow of a cloud is a flighty thing, not predictable or able to be trusted, and as elusive as a true friend.

When the rain fell, it fell far from her, washing away the tears and filling the soul of someone who needed its answers even more. Me.