Dissolving

Chapter 21 - Deception

"Lily? Hey, Lils, wake up!"

My barely conscious mind registers the sound of a voice but I don't recognize it. I am just about to slip back into oblivion when something – or someone? – touches my shoulder. I jump at the unexpected gesture and a loud clattering sound forces my eyes to pop open.

"Shh, Lils, keep it down!" the voice hisses.

Noah.

I can hardly make him out in the semi-darkness of my surroundings. While I try to figure out where these surroundings are, the coldness of the air hits me full force. My body starts to shake uncontrollably and I instinctively want to wrap the blanket closer around myself only to find that it has slipped off my shoulders. No wonder I am freezing.

With clammy fingers, I struggle to grab the partially discarded item and once I have been successful in pulling it up, I snuggle inside it. It doesn't work immediately, but it is still better than being completely exposed to the cold air.

"Lily, are you awake now?" Noah whisper-shouts, reminding me that he is here, too.

I blink a few times, trying to wake up completely. Now that my mind is slowly starting to function properly, it sinks in that I am actually still in the shed. I focus my eyes on my brother. He stands to my left, as close as he can get, which is not very close since I am still squeezed into what little space I managed to free from clutter on the shed's floor. He must have super long arms if he managed to grab my shoulder from so far away.

I never noticed that Noah has monkey-like arms...?

"Lils, for goodness' sake, are you even alive?" Noah asks, louder this time.

I jump at the volume of his voice.

"Shh," I repeat his earlier command.

I don't even know why I am doing this. I am not fully aware of anything yet. I must have done it on auto-pilot. Just like breathing. It is kinda weird, not to be completely in control of my actions.

Only a few seconds ago – or was it minutes? – I was dreaming of riding a bicycle. With Finn. We were near a beach, somewhere, but it didn't look like our beach here. More like a cold-weather beach, if that is even a thing. I think there was some snow, too, which doesn't make much sense. We rode our bikes right through it, never slipping once and finding it very amusing. We were laughing, having fun, enjoying ourselves.

Then we stopped and Finn pointed to the horizon. Sure enough, there was an orca, jumping out of the ocean like they sometimes do on these shows where they train these incredible animals to do tricks and stuff. We watched the orca for a while and then the pod gradually grew bigger and bigger, until there were literally hundreds of them.

And suddenly, just like that, our happy smiles turned into frowns. Thick clouds appeared on the sky, pushing the sun away and a strange heaviness settled in my heart. It became harder to breathe and as I was gasping to get air into my lungs, I spotted a small fishing boat amongst the whales. It was bopping up and down on the ocean when the storm started to pick up.

The bright red boat – or was it pink? – got thrown around on the ocean like a tiny nutshell. It was too far away for me to recognize if there was anybody on the boat, but we could hear voices calling for us from somewhere faraway, out on the sea. It was hard to make out individual words, but it sounded like "help" and "we're drowning" and "I don't want to die".

I involuntarily gasp when I realize that I just replayed a very vivid dream in my head. Like a film in a cinema. Actually, it was a dream that turned into some kind of a nightmare. Noah woke me from it before I could see what fate the boat met, which is just as well. Something tells me that it would have rattled me even more than it already does.