Perhaps it was a dream, she thought. Perhaps if she pinched herself, she would wake up. But she didn’t want to wake up. She wanted to stay in this dream world where the ocean was the sky and the sky was ground.
She was literally walking in the clouds. Kerri strolled along the blue emptiness, never feeling a solid foundation beneath her feet, but the force of gravity kept her aloft.
She didn’t walk so much as glide, like an ice skater pushing herself across a smooth, glassy, frozen lake in winter. The sensation gave her a fluttering feeling in her stomach, but the feeling of danger had long since passed from when she first arrived.
Kerri marveled at the sunburst flowers growing amid the blue expanse, their glowing orbs protruding from fuzzy green vines made of unknown fibers. She turned to laugh with…someone. She couldn’t remember his name, but she knew it was a he that should be there with her.
Where was he? Who was he? Kerri began to spin around in a panic, searching for someone whose name was on her lips, but far from her mind.
As the desperation grew like a black hole in her chest, the ocean sky up ahead began to churn and rock, as if a sea storm had been triggered by her anxiety. The sky floor beneath her turned to gray, then black, and suddenly she was falling through and into…
Sheets. Her bed sheets and old knit blanket from her grandmother. And there he was, lying beside her, sound asleep; the one she had sought in her dream. He was real and he was present. Kerri reached out an arm into the sheets, but her arm found empty air.
A double twist at the end! She dreams on.