Umi hummed to herself in the shower.
It was only natural for a good morning to follow a great dream.
If only she could remember the details of it. The entire thing had been rapidly dissolving in her mind since she woke up. She had been walking in her own house, then there was desert, something about islands and flowers, and most importantly, a girl. It was all positive, she knew that much, yet she couldn't remember the why, or how, regarding any of it.
Had she actually gone through with Nozomi's suggestion? Had it worked?
The water began to grow cold and she finished up.
Umi opened the door to the student council room. It was after hours, as she preferred it.
"Oh, Umi," Eli began, taking notice of her, "you're looking much better."
"Much," Nozomi said, nodding in agreement. "Am I just getting cocky, or can I take that as my advice finally working?"
Eli cocked an eyebrow at that.
"I think so," the navy haired girl replied.
"You think?"
"I honestly don't remember it well at all, Nozomi."
Now Eli was giving her an "I thought you were one of the sane ones"-look, but neglected to comment.
"Oh, of course. I had the same problem; it seems like it must be a pretty common one, then," the shrine maiden said thoughtfully. "I found that keeping a dream journal - well, not dream per se, but you get the idea - was really helpful. Just something that you can keep next to your bed to record everything right when you wake up, when it's all still fresh in your mind."
Umi nodded, taking it all in, before Nozomi continued, "Oh, and make sure you get absolutely everything you can remember, even if it isn't all complete or sensical. Anyway, I was going to ask how your first time went, but I guess it's pointless for now."
The younger girl thought about it briefly.
"...I can tell you that it was amazing."
Then Eli cleared her throat pointedly while taking the first paper off their stack of work, and the trio prepared to get started.
Umi sat up in bed; it was, ironically, hard to get to sleep from the excitement now that she actually wanted to do so. Knowing that all she could do was wait for the inevitable, she sighed and moved to roll over.
Thus coming face to face with herself.
The floor proved itself an unforgiving mistress as she went crashing down with a shrill note of terror and surprise. It took more than a moment to even register that this meant she was finally asleep.
"That sight never gets less weird, does it?"
She collected herself, taking one last look back as she walked out the door and-
"...I forgot to change from my pajamas."
Umi wasn't so shameless as to think such an outfit was acceptable for company, but, she rationalized, there would be far stranger sights surrounding them, so surely it wouldn't matter too much.
The eerie silence of the home swallowed her whole and spat her out into the desert for the second time. Also for the second time, she failed to stick the landing and ended up on all fours. This time, however, it was the notion to find Kotori again which spurred her from that warm and welcoming sand.
The golden path pulled her along, past Neptune once more until she was looking down into the crashing sand and the bridge between the islands. For only a moment she waited, breathing hard, before letting herself get carried down once more.
This time she managed to hit the ground running, only to slide to a halt as the vertigo overtook her.
"This can't kill me. This can't kill me. This can't kill me."
Had the bridge gotten even longer, or was that just the acrophobia talking? Weak in the knees, Umi forced herself across the cracking path.
By the time she was on land once more, she found that she was more concerned with finding Kotori than the dizzying expanse below. The abruptness with which one could wake prevented her from asking what they would do to meet on future occasions.
She broke into a jog as the trees parted around her. No sweet notes floated on the breeze this time. Plunging deeper brought her to the edge of the clearing-
And face to face with a surprised looking Kotori.
"U-Umi!"
Perhaps it was silly to breathe a sigh of relief over a girl, who, realistically, she barely knew.
But she did, replying, "It's extremely fortunate that you also thought to come back here, Kotori," with a smile.
"It seemed to me like they only place we'd have a chance of meeting again, since you woke up so suddenly last time."
"Should we make this our meeting spot for the future?"
The ashen haired girl frowned for a moment in thought, "I feel like that cute little cabin by the river would be more special."
"Well..." mused Umi, slightly taken aback by the reasoning, "I guess it's a bit more fair since it's around an equal distance to each of our islands."
"Oh, that too!"
She was a smiling enigma, thought the navy haired girl, but an enigma nonetheless.
Perhaps she wouldn't be adverse to a little prying.
"You seem to know the ins and outs of projection," Umi began, "How long have you been doing it? If you don't mind my asking, that is."
Kotori had the skyward look of someone grappling with memories.
"Hm. It's been a while now. Maybe around a year? My island has passed through a bunch of cool places and by a bunch of people. Once you've been at it for a while, a big weeping willow, for example, is no big deal."
"C-clearly," said Umi, quietly embarrassed at the memory of her trembling at Kotori's feet.
"I remember my first time," the girl in question continued, "my island was right beside another, but there was this little gap between them that I was too afraid to cross. You could have done it with a particularly big step, but all I could think about was slipping and falling in! It just seems so silly looking back."
They stepped into the prairie as Umi countered, "My friend Nozomi taught me how to project, so I had something of an idea of what to expect going in. Still, I don't think any amount of explanation could have truly prepared me."
"Oh, lucky you!" Kotori said, "The girl who told me about this didn't stick around long." Suddenly bashful, she added, "This may sound a little weird, but we met randomly, like it was fate."
"Like fate?"
"I was coming home from school after all the clubs ended to study for this big English test. It was..." she frowned, "...probably just about sunset when I passed a shrine on the way and thought, 'a quick visit couldn't hurt'. I don't know if I looked intense while praying or what, but this weird shrine maiden came up and said it looked like I was 'searching for something'! Then she said she could show me how to 'bring my dreams to life' and told me about projection."
"Well..." Umi replied, "I suppose her claim was true, under certain interpretations."
"I'm grateful to her though, no matter how weird that was."
Letting a small grin break through, Umi said, "That sounds like something straight out of the pilot episode of an anime."
"'A highschool girl meets a mysterious shrine maiden and is swept up in a magical world...'"
Kotori trailed off as they neared the edge of the island once more and the colossal weeping willow greeted them.
The navy haired girl gulped.
"I'll b-be fine this time. Please don't worry about me."
A minute later she was on the ground below, quivering while Kotori offered "there-there"'s and other such things. Shameless as it was to admit to, a small part of her was enjoying the attention. However, it wasn't long before the majority told her to rise and contribute.
Following the streams, the pair lapsed into silence, each thinking of the sight to come.
The grand riverbank was indeed as breathtaking as they remembered. This time, however, their momentum was broken. Both girls were eager to explore further. Asphodel tugged at their clothes as they crossed the radiant field behind the cabin, but they continued unabated.
Shortly, the flowers gave way to grass, which gave way to open air. This time, Umi spotted the way forward.
"There's...water below us."
A horizontal tube of water snaked through the air just below the lip of their island, passing under it.
She felt the anxiety beginning to settle in her stomach looking down again, not as potent as before, yet still powerful.
But then she felt Kotori's hand slip into her own. She turned to find the mysterious girl smiling sweetly at her, as if to say, "Don't worry, I understand."
They stayed like that until the navy haired girl felt the bitter sensation dissolve.
"I believe I'm ready."
And she took the dive first.
Immediately, her stomach dropped, hair and clothes pulled taut and she had to hold back a scream. The water blended with the sky as she accelerated, and for a terrifying moment, she wasn't sure if she would hit it.
She felt it before she saw it. The sudden impact and resistance as she pencil-dove directly though the top. Her momentum carried her deep, and one leg pierced through the bottom and nearly dragged her though.
Kotori watched Umi's head reappear on the surface and wave her down. As was to be expected from her previous display, she managed to make it look easy.
A faint current pulled them, identified the water as a stream in the sky, and brought them under the island. It continued down, until they could see all the previous islands above them, and finally a new one below. Both surfaced at once for a breath and exchanged a look, already knowing their shared sentiment.
To see the glisten of water on sky, to swim through the ether like flying as they were cleared one's mind in a way Umi wouldn't have thought possible. The real world was light-years away.
And when the sky began to change like saturated pastels melting into each other, she could only dignify it with a gasp. The stream went vertical and carried them down towards a larger body of water below, and with each meter lost, she watched blue become purple, then rich amaranth.
They were deposited on the surface and carried ashore by gentle waves.
Umi propped herself up on her elbows to survey the situation. Kotori had washed up beside her, smiling sleepily in the warm sand. It was low tide; they were in the exposed home of the briny things. She watched the stream pour down from the sky, filling the tiny ocean until it overflowed off the island at the opposite end, where it tilted into the sky.
And most important of all: she was being held in perfect comfort.
Listening to the lapping waves and Kotori's gentle breathing, she closed her eyes.
A/N: You know, this didn't have as much exploration as it felt like when I was writing it, but hopefully you all enjoyed it still. I'll try to make chapter 3 a bit more adventurous. This thing is shaping up to be the second longest fic I've ever written, after Sunset.