A/N: Thanks to everyone who favorited, followed, and reviewed! I bring you the next chapter of this story. I'm really happy about where this is going :D This is written from Nina's point of view, and probably will be for the rest of the story. I really hope you like this chapter, and it would mean a lot if you left some more reviews ;) By the way, I just published Sherlock fanfiction, so if you could go on my profile and read it, that would be great! Thanks again for reading, and I hope you like it! :D


Nina Marie Martin wakes in a strange bed in a strange room with a strange feeling that her sheets are trying to smother her.

Nina (who is Nina Marie to her gran, Nina at school, and simply Nins to everyone else) sits up in bed, bumping her head on an unforeseen upper bunk. From above, a voice she does not recognize protests, "Aw damn!"

She peers into the top bunk, where a girl she has never seen before is sleeping, or at least trying to. The sleeping girl, who appears to be near Nina's age, wears a white nightgown and has long red hair flows down her back in a waterfall of copper. To Nina, she looks like a queen.

"Excuse me," Nina asks, "but would you happen to know where we are?"

The girl yawns and rubs the sleep out of her eyes. She glances from Nina to the ceiling to the floor to the window and then back to Nina again. "On a boat," she answers, stifling another yawn.

"What do you mean, 'on a boat'?" Nina asks, perplexed.

"There's water, and lots of it. Just look out the window," she replies before cocooning herself in the blankets. "Of course, you might have thought to do that without waking me."

Nina feels a pang of guilt. "Sorry," she says quietly.

Looking out the porthole that is parallel to her bed, Nina realizes that the sleeping girl was right: hundreds of miles of blue ocean stretches out before them. The sky is tinted with an early-morning darkness that reaches on for as long as she can see. Nina, if she squints, can barely make out a boardwalk blanketed by a layer of fog. There, she sees Amber, waving excitedly. The figures getting smaller by the second, Nina struggles but can see a ghostly outline of who she thinks is Fabian. Finally, she can just see Patricia yelling after her, and Alfie nearly being pushed into the sea by Jerome as he attempts to wave. Ten seconds later, they disappear completely.

Nina gingerly sits back on the bed. Even though she feels remarkably awake, she knows she is dreaming. For instance, there is no earthly way she could have fallen asleep in her bed and woken up on a boat. Secondly, she shouldn't be on a boat when she should be finishing her senior year of high school. If this were a vacation, she would be surrounded by her friends, and people from her school. Her gran was in the hospital, so there was no way she could travel on a boat. Finally, there are things you shouldn't see in real life, such as your friends waving at you from a boardwalk a hundred miles away.

Not wanting to disturb the sleeping girl any further, Nina tiptoes across the room toward the bureau. The telltale sign that she is, indeed, at sea comes from the furniture: it is bolted to the floor. While she does not find the room unpleasant, Nina thinks it feels lonely and sad, as if many people had passed through it but none had decided to stay.

She opens the drawers of the bureau to see if they are empty. They are: not even a Bible. Although she tries very hard to be quiet, she loses her grip on the last drawer and it slams shut. This has the unfortunate effect of waking the sleeping girl again.

"People are sleeping here, you know," she says irritably.

"I'm sorry. I was just checking the drawers. In case you were wondering, they're empty," Nina apologizes, and sits on the lower bunk. "I like your hair, by the way."

The girl runs a finger through her hair, causing the hypothetical waterfall to ripple. "Thank you." Nina notices that she speaks with a light Irish accent.

"What's your name?" Nina asks.

She smiles. "I'm Laurna. You?"

"I'm Nina Martin," Nina returns the smile. "But I'm called Nina."

Laurna giggles, stretching her arms. "You eighteen?"

"In July," Nina says.

"I turned eighteen in January." Laurna looks into Nina's bunk. "Nina," she says, raising an eyebrow. "you mind if I ask a personal question?"

Nina tries not to look surprised. "Um, what is it?"

"The thing is"- Laurna pauses- "well, are you a skinhead or something?"

"A skinhead? Of course not. Why would you think that?"

The girl bites her lip. "Well, um...you don't have hair." She points to Nina's head.

"What?!" Nina jumps from her bunk, hurrying towards the mirror on the other side of the room.

To her horror, her entire head- except for a few of the earliest sprouts of light blonde growth- is hairless. She feels the top of her scalp, and it is oddly smooth. Nina hopes she wakes up from this strange dream soon.

"I- I don't know how this happened," Nina says quietly. "I wasn't like this before."

The redheaded girl furrows her eyebrows. "That's strange," she agrees. "But you're sure you don't know how this happened?"

"Yeah. I have no idea," Nina responds absentmindedly; she is still too busy studying her new reflection. She sees the face of a young woman: round cheeks, a pointed nose. Her eyes, once a bright blue, seem to have been dulled a few shades. Even the skin on her face seems slightly paler than she remembers.

"I wonder if it will grow back," Laurna says. Nina wonders if she'd meant to think this instead of saying it aloud.

For some reason, her question bothers Nina. "Well, it doesn't matter. I'm dreaming,"

"Hmm," Laurna sends her a questioning look through the mirror.

Nina is about to say something, but decides against it. After staring at her shaved head for a few more seconds, she speaks up. "Why don't we see what else is on the boat?"

Laurna shrugs. "Why not? We're both awake now." She climbs down from her top bunk.

"I wonder if there's a hat somewhere in here," says Nina. Even though she's dreaming, she doesn't want to be the strange bald girl. She opens the closet and looks under the bed: both are as empty as the bureau.

"Don't feel too bad about your hair, Nina," Laurna says softly. "But if it makes you feel any better, I've got something I can't explain, too."

Nina raises her eyebrows. "What is it?"

To her surprise, Laurna turns around and lifts her shirt up so her back is exposed. With a pang in her chest, Nina sees a tiny but deep, still-red wound. Even without examining it closely, she can tell it is a serious injury.

"Oh my God," Nina gasps. "How did that happen?"

"No idea." Laurna says, pulling her shirt back down.

"Does it...hurt?" Nina asks carefully.

The freckled girl shakes her head. "Not anymore. It hurt like hell when I woke up, but it's fine now."

"That's good," Nina replies, her eyebrows knit together. She doesn't tell Laurna, but she is worried for her.

She nods. "You know, we should go out now. See what's out there, like you said."

"Alright," Nina agrees.

On the way out, Nina takes a cursory glance at herself at the mirror. Without the shock of expecting to have hair, she notices she is clothed in a white nightgown. "Do you think it matters that we're both wearing pajamas?" she asks.

"It doesn't really matter," Laurna says.

Nina shrugs. "I guess you're right. Besides, what else do you wear while you're dreaming?"

As the pair heads out the door, Nina remembers that somewhere someone once told her never, under any circumstances, to open a door in a dream. Since she can't remember who the person was or why all doors must remain closed, she decides to ignore the advice.


A/N: I hope you liked it! Thanks again for reading :D I would be so happy if you left some feedback in a review or favorited or followed. I'll update as soon as I finish the next chapter, and I hope you have a smagical day! ;3

(Omfg, I just realized when I was writing Laurna's introduction, I forgot to take out the random jumble of letters I wrote when I couldn't think of a name for her. I fixed it, but I'm sorry if that confused any of you! If that happens again, I apologize in advance xD)