It started normally enough.
Well, as my dreams go.
I was a teenager. A really thin, pretty teenager (whoot!*), on a school trip. There were seventy or so of us, sectioned off in groups of four or five. We were riding in a narrowboat**. Or, rather, there were several narrowboats, because just one couldn't contain us all, but the dream only focused on the one of them.
Fair enough. All well and good so far.
There was a bet. Or a challenge. Something like that. People were challenged to swim in the river behind the narrowboat as far as possible. The narrowboat, in between sailing its way slowly along, would stop every now and again and park up - moor - against the bank whereupon heads would be counted, which split the journey into neat little chunks. The more chunks you swam, the more prizes you got.
...Okay...
So, we - that's my group - decided to swim most of the way. We were all strong swimmers and anyway, it beat being stuck on the boat.
Glenda got in first.
Then Joey (a boy).
Then Michelle (she entered with a spectacular dive).
Then finally, me.
The water, instead of being horridly cold, was deliciously warm, and apart from the patch where we jumped in, clean and clear of mud. Glenda exclaimed in delight that there were hermit crabs wandering along the weeds at the bottom and we all put our goggles on - where had they come from? - and had a look.
Then the boat began moving, and the swim began.
So we were swimming.
It was pleasant at first, y'know; water, nice, sunshine, nice, Narrowboat put-putting away ahead of us, nice. Then we realized that the water line was dropping. Pretty soon, there was so little that in places it trickled in pathetic little lines, in others sat in puddles, and in other places there was no water at all; just sand and gravel and stones.
Shrugging, we sat down unperturbed and put on our shoes - where had they come from? - so that we could walk without snagging our skin on errant sharp pieces of stone. The boat had disappeared but we weren't worried as we knew - how?? - that it would be moored safe and sound at Didcot (a nice little town in Oxfordshire that doesn't, in fact, have a river running through it. Or a canal. Or even, so far as I know, a stream); all we had to do was walk to it...
...We started walking, and suddenly, the dream jumped. I was no longer a stunningly beautiful college student with a talent for river swimming, but a penguin (yes. A Penguin) on her way to fetch an egg.
The explanation for this was that we - our group of penguins that is - didn't lay our eggs, but had to fetch them from a secluded and secret part of a nearby forest and then bring them back to our nesting site; an enterprise (as helpfully explained by David Attenborough, who was narrating) not without risk. In fact, he told the viewers sadly, most of the group (700 this time) wouldn't survive.
So off we waddled.
First stage was up a steep bank; so steep that several penguins lost their balance and fell to their death.
Second was to cross a busy road that had hazards like ten tonne trucks thundering along it. Unsurprisingly a few more of us pegged it.
Third was another steep bank, one we had to go down, this time, rather than up. Again, it was perilously steep. Again, there were many losses.
Fourth a waddle through the woods. Fairly easy and danger free. One penguin managed to spear her head through with an errant tree branch, however.
Finally, stage five was entering the secret part of the forest to retrieve the eggs; and this turned out to be the most dangerous stage of all, because the eggs were guarded. The guards remained hidden high up in the trees and inactive until the first of the penguins was within touching distance of an egg, then sprang into life, revealing themselves to be giant, two-pronged pine needles. The uppermost tip of each needle was coated with a deadly poison, and the needles themselves were not only very angry at the intrusion and potential loss of their eggs, but highly maneuverable and skilled hunters.
At the death-by-poison-needle of the first penguin, a mad dash began and chaos ensued. We - the penguins - knew, that once we had the eggs, our chances were high. They were magical, you see.
Twenty to thirty of us made it (me among them). The second our beaks touched them, a transformation took place. Our beaks became yellow, rather than black, as did our feet. Our eyes became a milky white. Our wings lengthened and an extra set grew out from beneath them, leaving us with four in total.
Hastily, we gathered as many eggs as possible with our new and highly dexterous wings, placing them carefully in handy nearby egg boxes. Then we wrapped our lower wings across them, pinning them to our feathered chests, and to a backdrop of enraged screaming from the needle guards, took flight.
Yes, David Attenborough explained in that unutterably gorgeous voice of his; these particular penguins were special. When endowed with the magical energy given off their eggs, as well as all the other, more subtle attributes they gained, they were able to do what no other penguin could: fly.
Cool or what? I certainly thought it was. 'Whoo!' I thought: 'I'm FLYING! I have no how, because penguins can't fly, but I am! Whoo!***'
So, there we were, flying with our eggs, untouchable by the needles of death (and boy, were they mad). BUT: the safety of the nesting site had not yet been reached, and as we soared through the air a new threat became apparent. Wind. Strong wind. So strong that it was gale like in its proportions. So gale-like, in fact, that a jumbo jet would have difficulty going in a straight line against it, let alone thirty odd puny sized penguins (Emperor Penguins we weren't. Were barely bigger than a cat. A small cat, at that).
We flew hard and with all our newly acquired skills, but even so, the going was tough. Too tough for some. Many were blown off course, and not all of those many managed to get back again. Including me. Losing control, I dropped my precious cargo and span in a crazy spiral sidewards and down.
Right into the path of one of the trucks.
SQUISH.
On the plus side; a) it didn't hurt and b) the eggs were fine, saved on the wing by one of my comrades.
Also, my brain finally twigged that I was dreaming.
Now a ghost - whether a penguin, a hot co-ed swimmer, myself or someone else I wasn't sure - I meandered away from the scene of my penguin body's untimely demise wondering what I should do now, and found myself back in the original story line; this time as an interested onlooker.
The girls (including the one who had been me, or me who had been her? Bah. Anyway...) were still making their along the riverbed, though by now the waters had risen and they were wading, rather than walking.
Shrugging, I waded along with them****.
Soon they were no longer wading but properly swimming, and I found myself intertwined with the hot co-ed again, though, disconcertingly, not in the same way as before. We were no longer one, but two; her herself and me myself, somewhere inside of her, and stuck.
Grand. Just grand. My original dream's body had become my jail. The jailer, a college student.
After swimming for a while, we noticed that the right hand bank, lined with muddy gravel, now had a wall running alongside it. A very tall wall, with several holes along the bottom of it. Holes that, on close inspection, had little black penguin beaks sticking out of them.
...Yep.
Two story lines had collided.
My co-ed, with me stuck inside her, swam across to them with her friends. To their delight, they found the penguins to be sat, in their individual little holes, on nests. And those nests contained baby penguins. Two or three per nest.
There were lots of exclamations, most along the lines of "SWEEEEEEEEET!"
It was as they were about to leave that my Student Jailer noticed that one of the babies was outside of the nests in the muddy gravel and on its own. None of the penguins would allow the little thing in - we knew because Glenda tried every nest - so Student Jailer put it in her pocket, claiming that she was going to adopt it. Joey warned against it, because "dude! You'll have to chew up raw fish and shit and let it eat it out of your mouth! Gross!", but Student Jailer was adamant. She would not let this poor, innocent thing die.
The next course of action was to swim to the boat to fetch Student Jailer's purse, then head to the fish monger's, which we did. Once at the fish monger the woman behind the counter was presented with the baby penguin and asked what it needed to eat. Unfazed, the fish monger lady explained that herring was best, but as this was a very little baby, it probably hadn't had its first meal yet, which needed to comprise of the special milk produced from chewing beads (yes, beads).
Handing over the beads - which so helpfully she had in stock - she watched while Student Jailer crushed them in her teeth and the lifted the baby penguin up so that it could pick at them. Then once that was done she handed over several pounds worth of herring.
While on their way back the students were waylaid by a procession of the other students, all heading to the boat, along with one of the adults in charge of them. The Adult In Charge was incredibly miffed that they had been gone for so long, furious that a baby penguin had been acquired and outraged that Glenda, Joey, Michelle and Student Jailer had been taking part in the swimming when they had signed an agreement not to, particularly given Student Jailer's "delicate condition".
Chastened, they started walking with the others back to the boat. Michelle whispered to Student Jailer that she might have to give the baby penguin up, and Student Jailer declared hotly that they'd have to kill her first.
It was then that her hands and feet started to glow.
The other students, including Glenda Joey and Michelle, screamed and backed away and Student Jailer's breath became ragged in her chest as she observed the weird shimmering blueish haze climb from her hands along her arms, and from her feet up her legs, before converging on her chest. As it reached her heart, time seemed to stop and the surrounding area grew dim. All that was moving was Student Jailer's heart, beating slowly, slowly, slower...stopped...
...Then all that was moving was me. Up, up, and away into the stormy clouds above; higher and higher and faster and faster until everything was a jumble of grey and light and nothingness, before crashing down again with a shuddering thud, upon which I found myself inside of someone else.
This time it was a woman on a giant metal bridge. She along with several other people were there to watch a meteor shower destroy Earth (a big event that had been long looked forward to).
Anyway, there were were, waiting for the meteor shower. All well and good. Trouble was, others were also there, under the water far below the meteor watching party. Lying in wait...
Five minutes later the meteor shower began*****. And the lurking lying-in-waiters struck. With gusto. Shooting tentacles up out of the water and onto the bridge, catching hold of anything they came across and dragging whatever or whomsoever it was back down to where the owner(s) of the tentacles were waiting.
Cue, panic from the majority of the guests.
Luckily, a small group of people on that bridge were not actually guests, but Demon Hunter Extraordinaires, including the woman whose body I was currently ensconced within (cool!), and at the first hint of trouble, they threw off their disguises, drew forth their weapons - from...somewhere... - and started battling bravely.
At first, they appeared to be winning. But then! A sly tentacle caught hold of the woman and I, and sent her - with a fantastically blood curdling scream****** - towards the railings on the bridge's edge.
The other Demon Hunters rallied to her defense and managed, just, to prevent her from going over. But that left them with another problem. The tentacle was around her ankle. Once the suckers were attached, there was no way to remove them. And the grip was tightening all the time. Within seconds, the woman's ankle would be ripped through, and there was also the probability that another tentacle would be flung up before that.
They knew what they had to do. The woman knew too, and closing her eyes tightly, she nodded.
The Head Demon Hunter drew a wickedly sharp blade from his belt.
One swift thrust and it was all over. To the woman's surprise, there was no pain at all and the team watched as the tentacle slithered over the edge and fell towards the water below, taking the woman's foot with it. Another swift movement from the Head Demon Hunter saw a small black object hurtling down after it, and seconds later a massive explosion of flame engulfed the river, before pulling into itself until all that was left was a mass of bubbles seething madly. Then the bubbles lessened. Then nothing.
For a moment, nobody moved.
Then a squawk attracted their attention. Turning round, they saw a penguin stood in the middle of the bridge, head on one side, watching them quizzically.
"...oh God," somebody said. "It's here. The bringer of the apocalypse*******."
'Oh, great,' I thought, wriggling uncomfortably within the now one-footed woman: 'perfect'.
A great, cold shadow fell across the bridge.
And then I woke up. With a foot that was completely numb due to a dog's head lying on it, a mouth that tasted oddly of fish, and a body drenched with sweat and in desperate need of a pee.
...Right. No more elaborate cocktails for me...
Alice x
* yeah, well, with all the dieting in the world I'll never be skinny without surgical intervention. Nor without the aid of some pretty awe inspiring magic will I ever be a teenager again. It was pretty fun to combine the two
** to those that don't know; a type of boat designed, as its name suggests, to weave its way along narrow waterways and canals
*** unlike David Attenborough, I, at least, had not expected that
**** eh, why not?
***** and very spectacularly beautiful it was, too: the Earth splintered and dissolved like a slow motion video of a balloon I had seen once popped by a pin
****** it was so great. Half of me was afraid that I did it in real life. The other half was hoping that I had
******* the bringer of an apocalypse: a small black and white penguin on a giant metal bridge. Who'd have thought?
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