2. Tall trees

Amy was putting Cream to bed. It was her own old room, the wallpaper a nice, soft colour, like candles at Christmas. Just being there sent her floating on the clouds of remembrance. She was rummaging around for a pair of pyjamas for her young friend.

Luckily they had been able to find clean, dry clothes for all of them, though, she had to admit, she was sorry no camera had been procured. The image of Sonic in an old, worn sweat-shirt (yellow!) and Knuckles in a pullover which had probably been the height of fashion in the 80'ies would haunt her mind forever. Still, she had argued, it beat having a cold. The boys spend some time thinking it over, but had to mumble a grudging agreement in the end.

Cream was sitting on the edge of the bed, her legs dangling. The poor little thing's ears were still wet from the rain, which had been drumming constantly on the roof for the past four hours. In this beautiful little room, with the blinds drawn to shut out the pandemonium that raged on outside, it was hard to believe that it wasn't still the calm night of high summer they had come to know.

Cream looked up at her and smiled that small, sweet smile of hers – after a few cups of cocoa she had been back to her old, cheerful self, and the fright of the thunder had been nothing more than a bad memory.

Amy envied her. She tried to stay calm, but really she was worrying herself sick – the storm was too sudden and too wild to just go away in the morning. Something told her this was nothing more than the beginning, and the sensation left her insides squirming.

They had tried everything to get some news of what this sudden change was – radio, internet, tv, phone – but all had been blank. The power was out, and as they looked out at the neighbourhood from the first-floor windows, the massively dark night that met them left little hope of anyone else knowing what was happening.

Tails had set out to solve the problem, and had been working far into the night, regularly having hysterics over the uselessness of his equipment. He had passed out sleeping over the inactive computer around two o'clock. In the end, all attempts had been in vain, and they had decided to leave it till next morning. Things always looked better in the light of a new day.

Amy sat up in bed with a jolt. Outside the wind was still howling, and she could hear the rain hammer on the windowpanes with renewed force. Her room was completely dark, save for the occasional flash of a lightening. She listened, tense. The house seemed as quiet as always, but something had changed. Something outside, maybe… She knew she had woken up for a reason, but couldn't, for the life of her, say what it was now. Maybe the howl of the wind was making her edgy, she thought, lying back down – it seemed louder now, too, as though the house was caught in a hurricane, flying.

Pushing the thought back down into the subconscious, she drifted off into a dream about a wicked witch and a flying house.

Cream turned over, yawned hugely and opened her eyes. The grey haze of dawn was slanting through the blinds of her room, forming fuzzy figures on the carpeted floor. For a moment she forgot where she was, and wondered why her teddy-bear wasn't by her side. Oh – that's right; she wasn't at home, and her mother wasn't waiting for her in the kitchen, breakfast at the ready. It had been raining too hard for her to go home last night, and Amy had insisted she stay the night.

Admittedly, she hadn't protested all that much…

She kicked aside the covers and got out of bed. As her bare feet touched the floor, she shuddered involuntarily; the air of the room felt chill through the thin fabric of the pyjamas, and she rubbed her arms vigorously walking down the stairs, trying to get rid of the remaining stiffness in her limbs. She sneezed – figures; now she was going to catch a cold… and she had been so careful drying her ears last night too!

- Hello? Is anyone there?

The entire floor was deserted, nothing moving anywhere except those strange shapes on the floor and walls conjured up by the unreal dabs of early sunlight. She got the notion of walking through a house of ghosts, filled with the inaudible whispers of yesterlives. Panic rising, she hurried through the empty house, looking for the others. Where could they be?

The front door was open, a world of grey waiting outside. Dusty-light sprays of rain rode on the wind and had her soaked through in mere minutes. For a moment the child was left completely blinded. A cascade of light was welling into the garden like the presence of god in a renaissance painting.

Something nudged her brain; the garden had been a cosy place when she left it last night – a spot of shade and golden blurs of sun filtering down through the thousands of leaves of the old trees – not at all like this, hard, bright world of grey reality.

She blinked her eyes and jumped back with a sharp intake of air, steadying herself against the frame of the door. This wasn't her world! The parts were all there, but they seemed to have been put together wrong. The lawn was there, but scarred and torn by the raging of the tempest, its fresh green hue fading away as she looked at it. The flowers were there, lying uprooted around the place. The trees were there… something stuck in her throat, making her gag in mid-sob… Oh, yes the trees were all there, their huge richness of leaves lying limp in the mud left over from last night's rain, their wide trunks twisted and splintered as though they were but tiny twigs. It looked like they had dropped like dominoes, their fallen shapes lying pell-mell all over the grounds.

Her friends were there, standing in the middle of the random destruction, tiny, lost figures in the middle of the ravaged landscape. Cream's breath stuck in her throat as she ran towards them, too shocked to even cry. She reached blindly for the first figure she bumped into, desperate for the comfort of closeness. Strong arms closed around her, lifting her off her feet.

- Don't worry, Cream, don't worry… I'll look after you…

She pulled away in sudden surprise – Knuckles?!

But he wasn't the kind sort of fellow, not at all the one she would have expected to find comfort from. He looked at her and smiled through his usual frown. The earnest eyes of the echidna returned her frightened gaze, his strength forming layers of calm over her panic. She clung to his shoulder as the small group clustered together, facing the destruction in shock and awe, but at least facing it together.