I saw it again, today. I haven't seen it in so long, it can be...it can't be back.

Yet, somehow it is.

I'll explain where it was. It was at my friend Rosie's house. We were sitting on the back porch to her place, joking around and sipping hot chocolate out of mugs with toxic waste symbols on them. It was nice. It was fun. It was...well, I suppose you could say that it was normal. We had school off, even though it was the last day of our finals week, and I trekked through snow and a bit of ice, in my boots, coat, hat, and scarf, just because...well, I hadn't done so just to visit a friend, in a while. The last time I had to do this, I was running for my life, not smiling at neighbors or taking a moment to enjoy the simple pleasure of wathching my breath turn to steam in the winter air.

These past few months have been relaxing an anything but lonely. Rosie has been proven to be a wonderful friend, though we really just met a little while ago. We know nothing of each other, other than the fact that we can have fun together...or that we like the same bands and pastimes and such. Rosie is nice. She has a slight accent to her voice, brown-ish, blonde-ish hair, freckles, and a friendly smile (not a perfectly straight and bleached one, just a friendly one). She...I think she's being targeted, (and not because of me). She fell asleep on the bus, one day. I moved to wake her up and saw those "operator symbols" drawn all overt her window. I woke her up and told her where she was in the neighborhood. After that, we continued to talk on and off. We became something of friends. Neither of us knows the other very well, but we get along; we have the same tase in music and books and such.

She eventually told me about a dream that she had had. It was just in passing, so, if I hadn't been paying attention, I might not have noticed her say it. She had thought that there was an unnaturally tall man dressed in dark, business clothing, leaning over a couple of seats on our bus, right across the aisle from her. I allowed her to think it was a dream, that it was nothing. That's better than the alternative, right?

She then began recieving notes in a strange notepad. It had sketches she didn't remember drawing. More importantly, it had, written in purple pen, code. I recognized it almost immediately as a code I had used a long time ago, for communication between my sister and I. That was the initial reason that I had been invited over to Rosie's house in the first place, actually; I was the only one she knew who knew anything about codes; I was to translate it all today. I did just that and, as an afterthought and a sort of reward, we had our cocoa, out in the freezing air.

I got up and went inside to get more hot cocoa for myself. When I returned to my seat, I put down my mug on the little table and looked up to say something to Rosie. She was gone. I looked around a little before seeing her standing in a clear part of her backyard, not more than a meter away from that thing. It had its blank head tipped to the side, almost as if it were staring at another curious specimen. Rosie, as I watched, slowly did the same, not moving closer, but staring straight up at him.

Before I could stop myself, I called out, "Hey, Rosie!" She turned her head to face me, then blinked a couple of times, the terrifyingly hazed look leaving her eyes. She furrowed her brow and called out, "Yeah?" The thing in front of her faced me momentarilly, then faded like a disappearing mirage.

"Ah, you want me to get some more cocoa for you?" She smiled at my quick save.

"Sure!"

She didn't remember staring straight at him. I din't bring it up.

She's probably going to post the translations sometime within the next week on her blog.
http://drowninginnavy.blogspot.com/