Seeking to Save the Lost

I woke up this morning to an utterly quiet house, which is not unusual, and did my morning bed check ritual.  I still live with the pagan superstition that a kiss on the forehead while they sleep will act as a talisman warding all danger and harm away from my children while I am at work or out and about.  I checked on L first, as her room is closest - but her bed was empty.  Vaguely remembering the scamper of knees and elbows over me at some distant point in the previous night, I went back to my room to see if Stacy and L were compatibly arranged.  I didn't remember any further awkward pokes or kicks, so L must have slept on the other side of Stacy, and it must have been a tight squeeze since I'd had my usual spacious side all to myself.  But on examining the room, Stacy was snoring comfortably with no one challenging her for mattress real estate.

I went back to L's room thinking I just somehow missed her.  There was a lump of covers on her bed that I, somewhat relieved, realized had to be her - I had just failed to probe it.  But my subsequent probing turned up no cocooning kid - they really were just cover lumps.  I hastened to N's room.  He was virtually cocooned with his comforter drawn tightly around his face.  He looked like a Indian or Eskimo papoose.  But L was not with him.

I was pretty sure she had not gotten up - the living areas were dead quiet.  I couldn't imagine she would get up in the middle of the night with a bad dream and want to sleep on the couch so far from the rest of the family.  I quickly verified that assumption.  The living room was empty, the bathrooms deserted, the kitchen clear.  All the doors were still shut and locked.  Beginning to feel my adrenaline concentrate, I started wracking my brain.  The bunk-bed - I hadn't checked the bunk-bed!  So I checked the bunk-bed.  I beat on N's top bunk with my hand, feeling up and down the length of it.  No L.

I retraced my steps, checking all the empty spots again to see if a small child might have materialized in the moments since I'd last checked.  I began wondering how to tell Stacy.  Somehow this seemed all my fault.  Should I wake her up?  Maybe L would reappear if I just waited it out.  Usually happened with my wallet or watch.  Perhaps I could distract Stacy long enough when she woke up that she wouldn't notice L was gone.  How long could I pull that off?  An hour?  A month or two?  On scanning N's room for the third or fourth time I became engulfed in a burst of  protective anguish over the one child still left to my care.  At least I still had N - but what if I lose him too?  I stooped down to give him that guardian kiss I'd started to deliver twenty minutes ago.  (Did I forget to kiss L before I went to bed last night, I suddenly wondered?)  Wheezing peacefully in his full-body blanket binding, N was oblivious to his sister's abscondence; I scooped my arms around him to add an additional shot of voodoo hug protection to my kiss.  Something warm and solid collided with my hand as I sought to engulf my son.  There was a rustling of sheets, a murmur of "ouch" and then again, quiet.  I ripped back the sheets and there, fidgeting and shuffling in the sudden cold air, was my little fugitive, balled up and huddled behind her brother.  I stood in stunned disbelief.  The two cannot be within three feet of each other for more than ten minutes without a laceration, dislocation or near-dismemberment of some kind.  How dare they sleep so peacefully cohabitated when I'm in such a state!