The Watcher in the Dark

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    I do not know when the darkness came.

    One moment, there was light---The next, I was lowered into a hollow space, the lid closed above me, and the world ended.

    At first, I thought it was a game. But the silence stayed.

    The dark was not like night. Night had lullabies and nightlights. This darkness was heavier. It pressed against my sides, muffling sound, thick with the taste of dust. The air smelled of wood and damp paper.

    At first, I whispered to myself. I told my stories, the ones I had heard: adventures in a garden, journeys to faraway lands. My voice kept the shadows at bay. But slowly, the silence swallowed my words, as if the air itself grew hungry.

    I began to hear other things.

    A low groan from outside and above my enclosure. A scratch of tiny claws moving in the   unseen. The muffled sound of a thunderstorm in the distance. Each sound stretched thin across the darkness, like threads in a great web. Sometimes, the silence became so deep it hummed, a vibration I could feel but not escape.

    As I sat in the darkness, I remembered being chosen, held, and loved. Those memories flickered like candles inside me, holding back the cold.

    As the seasons turned---though I did not see them---the fear grew. In summer, the air swelled hot and stale, heavy as a blanket. In winter, the wood walls of the enclosure stiffened with cold, sharp enough to bite. Sometimes, I could hear rain striking what I could only assume was a roof above my enclosure. It sounded like a thousand hurried footsteps, but no one came.

    I asked myself: Had they forgotten me? Had I been buried away because I was no longer wanted?

    The thought sank claws into me.

    I tried to count time. One heartbeat. Ten. A hundred. But without light, without voices, the days tangled into one endless stretch. I could not tell if I had waited a year or a lifetime.

    Still, I dreamed.

    In my dreams, I remembered being carried to secret places where worlds were built just for me. I remembered whispers in the dark, not this heavy dark, but the safe dark of a room where moonlight had spilled across the floor. In my dreams, I was not forgotten.

    But when I woke, the walls of the box were still there, close and unyielding.

    I waited in the dark. Listening for sound. Watching hopelessly for movement. But it was too dark, there was no window, and no way out. Waiting, always waiting.

    Then, one day, it came.

    At first, a shudder. A tremble that rippled through my prison. I thought it was a dream, but then came the scrape of something sharp, ripping across the lid. The air stirred, fresh and strange, sliding over me. Light pierced through a seam, thin as a blade, and I felt my whole self shiver.

    The box groaned open.

    Though I had no eyes, I blinked against the sudden blaze of brightness. Dust swirled like spirits rising from the tomb.

    And she was there.

    Older now. Taller. Her hair was different, her face changed. But her eyes---oh, her eyes were the same. They carried the same spark, the same tenderness, the same memory of me.

    Her hands reached down, lifting me into the light. Dust fell away from me, and for a moment, I thought my seams might burst with relief.

    “There you are,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “My oldest friend.”

    The words filled me with warmth. I had not been abandoned. She had not forgotten. All those years in the dark had been only waiting.

    But then I saw another.

    A smaller face, peeking from behind her. Round eyes wide with wonder, hair tousled, breath caught in excitement. A child---her child.

    She turned and smiled, her voice now softer, more grown-up. “This was my best friend,” she said, placing me into the child’s eager arms. “Now I want you to love it too.”

    The child hugged me close and laughed. I felt warmth again as her tiny fingers gripped me as if I were the most precious thing in the world.

    The shadows fell away.

    The watcher in the dark was no longer needed. The silence was broken forever.

    I was found.

    I was home.