Chapter Thirty-Six

The moment I crashed into the floor of the school, I woke up. My head was on the ground beside the couch, and my line of sight was on the ladder. I looked up the best I could and saw my body standing, it’s arms ahead of it, much like I was doing in the dream I was having. It twitched awake and turned towards me before reaching down and picking me up in one swift motion. Embarrassed by how we found each other, it places me back together, and I sit down to breathe. I felt a small pit, bouncing around my body as I tried to replay my dream. It felt as if it could have been ugly. I felt it heading in that direction. I felt the sensation I had when Dawn stood over me.

But I remembered the sounds I heard alongside that sensation, and how they tried to overpower the bad sensations. It was calling to me, forcing me to move, forcing me to walk forward. It pushed me, and it felt right. I stared forward, looking into the darkness in front of me, when I was interrupted by a door opening and a bright light over me. I stood up and turned around, seeing Nina standing, her hand still on the knob. We stood in silence before she began.

“So, how are you?” she asked, avoiding the words I expected to hear. “How was your…”

“Don’t worry,” I said with a smile. Nina’s eyes opened wide, staring at my smile. “Not terrible.”

“Then, you’re doing okay right now?”

“Trying.” Nina smiled at that word and headed to me as I pointed to her eyes. “Not dark. Looks good.”

“I tried to sleep as much as I could. It was difficult, because my thoughts kept going back to you, but I managed it, and it was very refreshing.”

“Dreams?”

“Not this time. It’s been a while but considering they’ve all been nightmares, I’m not too worried about it.”

“One day, good dream. Wake up happy.”

“I want to experience it, so I’m looking forward to it. And speaking of looking forward to something, we still have one more of your favorite things to do. But…” I looked at Nina as she stood up and put her hand to her chin. “This one might be the most difficult one to accomplish.” She walked to a bookshelf and picked out a book. The title read “Geography”, and it looked as dense as it did heavy. She opened the book to the section about coastlines and found the entries on beaches. “See, beaches aren’t just in any old place. They’re where the land we stand on meets the sea. It can’t be a river, and even though large lakes can have something similar to a beach, I don’t think it’s what you’re trying to experience.”

“Found flowers. Found vegetables. Find beach,” I said.

“It’s different this time. I haven’t seen anything that looks like a beach. In fact, I haven’t even seen so much as a puddle of water.”

“Sink has water. Vegetables need water. People need water. How?”

“I’m not sure how it works, but everything seems to be underground here. People tell me that settlements only thrive when they find the section of the ground that has the telltale signs of water flowing underneath it.” Nina noticed my changing expression and her voice began to match it. “And even if we knew for a fact that beaches were possible up here, we could be far away from them! The mountains that we can see here are so far away, nobody that has walked there has ever returned! If there was a beach behind them, or even somewhere out in some other direction, we’d never know.” Nina slowed her words and looked towards me. “I’m sorry. We can still try. We can still pick a direction and see if we find anything resembling it. I might have missed something since I wasn’t looking for it, but that would be the best we can do. And we can’t walk too far away from my house, either. I still don’t feel ready to try and stay away from my place for even a night.”

I felt small spikes in my heart. I thought that she would be ready to tackle on this challenge with me. But after hearing the person who was much more familiar with this world explain everything, I had to agree with her.

“Silver lining. No bad dream. Worse, with bad news,” I said, breaking the silence that had formed around us. Nina breathed a sigh of relief.

“I didn’t even think about that! I would’ve felt terrible,” she said putting her hand on her face.

“Okay with you. Still try.” Nina looked back at me.

“Are you sure you want to do that? Like I said we could make a simple plan to try and find one but–”

“Failure, okay. Still have many days.”

“I guess it’s true. There haven’t been any signs that you might be going away.” Nina looked up before turning her gaze back to me. “If you really want to give it a shot, then I’ll do my best to support you.” Nina headed back into her room to change as I stood up and stretched. The other two things seemed impossible. It didn’t matter if we were lucky to find them as fast as we did. We found them in the end, putting all our effort into doing so. And this was going to be no different.

We went up the ladder and stepped outside. I looked over to the ashes of the fire we made. It was only now that I realized how out of place they looked. It was the same color as the ground around us, but I was able to feel the life that stood next to it. Nina mentioned that there weren’t a lot of people that wandered around here but it was something that I thought should stay with me. Nina looked at the mountains before turning towards me.

“We’ve already reached our first challenge: finding a direction to go,” she said. “The mountains are out of the question for now so that leaves three general directions and countless deviations from them. Was there a specific one that you think is calling to you?” She laughed at her words. I raised my arm and pointed to my right, the direction in which the mountains faced our right side.

“There. Haven’t seen.”

“I was joking about it calling you. Did you really hear something?”

“Random,” I said with a smile. Nina smiled back, wanting to say something else.

“What did I say about teasing me?” she said as she ruffled my hair. I laughed as we both began walking.