January 11th 2018

Chapter 11
Their Adjustment to the Unknown

She didn't have nightmares. She had weird dreams sometimes, that could border on bad ones, but they never seemed to her to qualify for the name of nightmare. And that night didn't exactly break the norm for her. She didn't have a nightmare, but still she woke with a start in the middle of the night and she couldn't chase this feeling inside her, couldn't get herself into a mind state that would lead her to sleep again. After a while of lying there without result, she'd gotten up and gone to sit by her window, looking up into the darkened sky.

Why was she even feeling like this? Why was she so shaken by something like the basketball season being cancelled? It didn't seem right, and yet here she was.

She couldn't even remember the dream all that well if at all. She did halfway remember what she'd been thinking before, maybe just as she'd been falling asleep. Maya never did shy away from acknowledging her former life, her former mindset, and how despite the fact that she had grown and adjusted a great deal since coming to Texas, she would never pretend as though her roots had been swept away from under her, removed like so many weeds. She was who she was, was who she'd been and who she'd become. So where would the line drop for her when something like basketball was taken away from her? Would it cause some kind of chain reaction?

Sitting in her window now, she would tell herself just… no, it wouldn't… would it? She was just overreacting, that was what that was. How could she not? Not knowing what was going on, how they'd gotten to this point, it was just asking for her to lose herself this way.

That was what she told herself now, that was what she believed, but that wasn't going to clear her head for that night, just flip a switch and let her all of a sudden feel that she could sleep. She was just going to have to ride it out.

She could probably text any one of her friends, wake them up, and they would chat with her until she felt better. She could go into their room and wake her parents. It would make it seem worse than it was if she did that though, so she went and found the book she had to read for English and returned to the bay window to read by the light of her phone, scribbling notes as she went. If she just focused on the text, and she really needed to if she expected to understand any of it, then she wouldn't be focused on everything that had gotten her so frazzled and sleepless.

It took a few minutes and a bit of rereading to get herself going, but she had managed it in the end, and for about an hour she'd gone on reading, to the tune of the sleeping dogs nearby. After that hour, she was feeling the yawns regain her, and so she'd let out a breath and determined herself to trying and sleeping again. Book and notes were set back on her desk and she'd climbed under her blankets, curling up and sinking against her pillow, all with the desire to best capture the spirit of sleep. She wouldn't think about basketball, no, she would stay with the tale she'd been reading through a few moments before.

When she would wake, she would distinctly recall imagining her friends and herself in the guise of characters from the novel, either enacting the story itself or their own lives, in the fashion and language of the time, which was absolutely an improvement on her previous dreams. And then suddenly, in what couldn't have stuck out more if it tried, in this world centuries away in the past, a bright orange ball had come rebounding into the picture, its sound like a bell rung to call to attention. Her dream counterpart had tried to ignore it, but again and again the mystery object, so baffling to the others around her, would not be ignored. The dream Riley had picked it up and handed it to her, and without being able to stop herself she had taken it. The moment she'd held it, the illusion had broken, and they were back in the present, back as themselves and they stood in a flat world that looked like it had gym flooring uninterrupted on all sides and nothing else, nothing but them, like they were all that remained. And then the ground started to tip, leaving them all struggling to remain standing but inevitably falling, rolling and sliding off into the unknowable horizon, screaming and flailing.

It was some small fortune that the second time she woke up the sun was coming up. It was morning, and she would have to get up anyway. She would go shower, have breakfast, and then… stuff.

Tuck had been trotting after her since she'd gotten up, and it was hard not to smirk, seeing him staring back at her, wagging his tail, like the canine embodiment of his namesake. Friar Tuck… He'd stood outside the bathroom door while she'd been in the shower, sat at her feet as she ate breakfast, feeding him little bits every so often – and his siblings, too, of course – and then back into her room as she'd gotten ready.

"Dogs can be cowboys, too, who knew?" she'd laughed, giving the pup a good scratch, much to his enjoyment. "Your human backup is on his way, don't worry."

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners