When I was little, my mom ran an at-home daycare. There were plenty of toys and playthings scattered around the house, in the "toy room" especially. I had many fun toys to play with, along with my peers. But there aren't many toys that I specifically remember playing with or had a special bond with. But I do remember I had a fortress.

My fort was in my bedroom. In my room,there were two windows, a closet, a bunk-bed, and a few outlets, all of which I shared with my older sister Kelsey. But the bunk-bed was the main feature. It was a part of our fort. I had the top bunk (because I was smaller and therefore lighter) and Kelsey slept on the bottom bunk. I remember there was an outlet close to Kelsey's feet that our night-light guard occupied. It was almost like it was his post outside our bunk-bed castle, his duty to shine bright light to keep Kelsey and I unafraid. Safe from the dark forces outside our bedroom door...

But one night, our guard didn't wake. The room was pitch dark and I sivered and trembled in my nightie as I climbed down the ladder carefully to crawl into Kelsey's bed.
Kelsey was awake too, but she wasn't scared. Kelsey fixed the bulb on the night-light and he shone bighter than ever.

After the light was fixed, we couldn't get to sleep. I stayed in Kelsey's bed and we giggled and laughed for a long time. "Christa, I wanna show you somethin'." She said.

"Okay."

"Watch this!" Kelsey put up two fingers.

All of a sudden, there was another two fingers that looked like hers against the wall colored in black! I tried it, and sure enough, my fingers made a replica of themselves on the wall. "What does this look like?" Kelsey asked me.

"It looks like a bunny rabbit!"

I made a bunny with my fingers and made it hop across the wall underneath the top bunk. "I know a song for a bunny. Wanna know it?"

"Okay!" I exclaimed.

Kelsey started singing and frantically bouncing her bunny shadow on the wall. "Little bunny Foo Foo hopping through the forest, picking up the field mice and bopping them on the head."

"Down came the good fairy, and she said... Little bunny Foo Foo, I don't want to see you picking up the field mice and bopping them on the head. I'll give you 3 chances."...

And so on and so on. This is the greatest memory of a fort that I have. It was more like a bedroom, a bunk-bed, a song, my sister and a broken night-light, but close enough.

I know I will never see most of these things ever again. They all went sooner or later, but in this order: 1st: My sister. She was killed in a car accident soon after the night when the light burned out. 2nd: The night light. I eventually learned how to sleep without one. 3rd: The bedroom. We moved 2 or 3 years after the accident. 4th: The bunk-bed. I outgrew it, and it went to my sisters Katie and Huana. When they outgrew it, it went to my nephews.

The only things that remain of my favorite place is the memory, the song, and the house where it all happened.

But it belongs to someone else now.