She opened her eyes on what must have been a very heavy night of drinking. Charlotte sat up quickly and found herself on the edge of the forest across from the archaeological excavation site where Dad was working with his team.

Her head was pounding, her mouth was dry, and her whole body felt so sore like she had just finished running a marathon that lasted for days.

Her summer dress was clean and smelled good so she must not have been sleeping out here for days.

Loud groan escaped her mouth when she tried to stand up. Her bones made cracking sounds, and she shakily stood up.

"Dad, Ellie ..." she whispered to herself as she stretched her arms to hold on to a tree next to her. She took a deep breath, and her mind clarified a bit more. What was I doing before falling asleep and waking up here? She forced her brain to sputter back alive.

She was with Emily. Following Ellie, Dad and the rest of the team because Ellie was going to dig something with her shovel ...

That was it. That was all she could remember.

She shook her head a few times, rubbed her face, and started walking toward the excavation site. The site looked empty, and Charlotte could not remember what day today was. From the sun position, it was morning now, could not be more than 11am in the morning.

"Charlotte!" someone shouted her name from the direction of the forest behind her.

She turned around and smiled widely. Dad, Ellie, Michelle, Emily were rushing toward her.

"Where have you been? We have been looking for you since this morning sunrise!" Dad looked like he could not decide whether to be angry or happy.

"Charlotte!" Emily jumped and hugged her.

"We all have had really strange experience. We woke up this morning, shortly before sunrise, at the excavation site and none of us remember why we slept there last night!" Michelle looked perplexed, the same look in Dad and Ellie's face.

"I just woke up now too," Charlotte shook her head to remove the last bit of her headache.

"It is so ... so strange! Ellie cannot remember much about her stay here at all. She starts now regaining some memory about arriving at the cottage, but that is it. So strange!" Dad scratched his head in confusion.

They were all standing around there for some time, trying to figure out what had happened to them. Noone could give a good answer.

"We might have inhaled some poisonous gas that escaped during our digging ... and that disoriented us, made us lose consciousness," Michelle tapped her chin as she proposed her theory.

"Maybe good angels have kidnapped us!" Emily jumped with her theory.

"Good angels?" Michelle stared at her young daughter.

"Yes! At Sunday school, I learn about the guardian angels, the good angels that take care of us!" Emily smiled and started running around among trees.

They were all quiet.

"Maybe Emily is right. There are angels who have for whatever reason kept us safe from whatever danger that was out there!" Ellie nodded her head.

Noone gave response.

Charlotte sighed. Angels. Some entities have kept me safe. She spoke in her mind, and for some reason, she could not deny it. Her logical mind was quiet about it.

It was when she looked up the blue sky, she saw an eagle. A large one that flew around in circle above them all.

When the eagle swooped lower, she could see it. It was a golden eagle, and strange thing was, it had a tuft of reddish feather right on top of its head. "You ..." that word escaped her mouth when she saw the eagle, and when the rest of her companions stared at her with confusion as to why she said you to the eagle, she shook her head. "I don't know why I said it."

"I thought you knew the eagle personally, Charlotte," Michelle teased her. They all looked up to the sky and saw the eagle too, it had flown much higher now before disappearing behind the clouds.

After standing around for a few more minutes and noone could come up with any more plausible explanation, they all decided to just go back to Dad's cottage. "We are all fine and healthy, nothing is missing, so let's treat this as a strange occurrence. Tomorrow I will make a couple phonecalls and ask for some more thorough check of the environmental conditions here. Gases that escaped from underground during our digging and caused us to lose our consciousness seems to be the most plausible explanation for now," Dad ran his fingers on his hair and nodded. The rest of the people there agreed.

<<<>>>

For Charlotte however, she had this nagging feeling that she had forgotten something important. She just could not remember what it was. Her slingbag laid next to her when she woke up and nothing was missing from there. Everything was intact.

The rest of her vacation was smooth and enjoyable. Dad and Ellie were happy and excited in preparing their wedding, and that was contagious to Charlotte. She started helping Ellie in coming up with some basic ideas for the wedding. Theme colours, wedding party style, location ...

"I don't know. Beach wedding seems really nice, but I also like a wedding in a classic garden or a small intimate ceremony in a very good restaurant," Ellie toyed with some ideas that evening in the cottage after they had dinner. Dad was busy typing some research report at the dining room and was completely engrossed in his report that he did not join the discussion between Ellie and Charlotte.

Charlotte paused and stared at Ellie's engagement ring for some time.

"How about a castle? I think a castle wedding is a very good idea, Ellie," she offered her thought without taking her eyes off Ellie's ring. Though for a fleeting moment she felt strange, she did not understand where that came from: Castle. Castle had never been on any of her list of what-to-do-if-someday-I-get-married. It just jumped out of her mouth.

"Castle? You think so? Yeah. It has more character to it. Do you think it'll be much more expensive though? To rent a castle?" Ellie stared at the ceiling, then back at Charlotte.

"Charlotte?" Ellie called her when she did not reply at all to Ellie's statement.

"Necklace ..." Charlotte stared at Ellie's ring and just let out the word without much thinking.

"What?"

"Ellie, I mean ... why it has to be a ring to seal a marriage? Can't it be a necklace?"

Ellie took a deep breath, tilted her head in deep thought. "Of course it can be a necklace, Charlie. It is based on the agreement between the bride and groom I guess."

"A necklace can be a sign of a deep love, a true sacrifice. It can be that. Totally. Love is shown not just by a ring in a wedding. A marriage sealed through a necklace is just as powerful," Charlotte sounded like a researcher who was absolutely convinced by her research conclusion and tried to convince a roomful of skeptics.

Ellie smiled. "You are going to get married someday and the sign will be a necklace, instead of a ring, aren't you?"

Charlotte paused, her breath became faster when she felt a knot in her stomach. That feeling again. A feeling of ... loss, of something important that she forgot. And necklace. Why do I have such strong feeling toward necklace and marriage? Charlotte could not comprehend it.

"Yeah ... yeah. I think so," she answered Ellie. Ellie smiled again, patted her shoulder and stood up. "I am off to check what your father has been busy about the whole evening!" she proclaimed loudly and sauntered to Dad.

Charlotte nodded.

That night, she laid on the bed, listening to the whooshing of the wind outside.

Tomorrow she would leave the cottage to begin her long journey home to her own apartment. Dad and Ellie would also come along with her on the trip home.

Vacation was over.

But something within her screamed that no it was not over. She did not wish to go home. Not yet!

This vacation had felt strange to her in a way, like there was a different person that came to this place and now a different Charlotte would go home.

She felt warm and droplets of sweats had dampened her face. She kicked her blanket away and laid sprawling on the bed.

Home. She had to just go home. Stop being weird, Charlotte! she reprimanded herself. Going home was the best idea for her now. Maybe she had just been missing her own tiny apartment, her plants, her friends, her spicy ramen noodles eaten straight from the saucepan, her routine ...

That night she did not sleep well. Everytime she drifted off to a light sleep, she would hear the wind that she could have sworn sounded like a roar. An angry roar of a beast from underground. That was exactly how it sounded like.