April 3077. 07:00. Three hours after the arrival.

Kiri awoke the next morning, blinking away the blur of her surroundings and feeling an ache in her lower back. She lifted her hand slowly to her face and shaded her eyes from the blinding sunlight. Groaned as though an alarm had rudely awakened her way too early in the morning.

She still lay in the boat. She was still in the plains. She had literally slept in the middle of the plains in a boat.

What in the world has gotten into me…? she thought.

Nothing had changed since last night. She would still need to go back to her town with all the people who’d apparently hated her since elementary school. Not to mention, she would need to deal with the embarrassment of having been a reckless idiot while listening to a lecture from Uncle Jim.

What was she hoping for exactly when she ran from the party and decided to sleep in a boat? The possibility that the legend of the carriage in the plains was true? Maybe that a portal would transport her to some other world? How dumb. Even she wasn’t the type of person who would act on superstition like that. And yet here she was.

However, she recalled the inherent strangeness of a boat being in the grassy plains at all. And then she remembered the dream. Something about these facts re-initiated the unsettling feeling in her stomach.

As she continued to wake up, something felt off. No, not just that—something sounded off and even smelled off. The usual rustling of the grass sounded more like burbling. Her nose picked up something she would smell at seafood restaurants in town.

When her eyes adjusted to the light, she brought her hand down from her face. The boat shifted. No, it didn’t just shift—it undulated. She widened her eyes. With one swift movement, she sat up and the boat rocked violently. She grabbed the rim on either side of her and looked around frantically. Water sloshed around the boat.

“I’m still dreaming?!” she yelled.

She scanned her surroundings. The sea was all around her just like in her dream. But this time, the water seemed a lot heavier and more gritty-looking.

“This can’t be right. This can’t—”

She turned her torso and looked behind her. Caught sight of some islands in the distance. Those definitely hadn’t been a part of the grassy plains she knew. She stared at them. Inclined her head and furrowed her brows.

The islands were of different sizes and scattered as far as the eye could see. One of the islands seemed incredibly large and even appeared inhabited judging by the numerous tall buildings all over it.

But inhabited by what? She automatically assumed humans, but if this was indeed a dream, perhaps they were something much crazier.

She squinted for a better view of the largest island with the tall buildings on it. Her mouth opened and closed as if she were trying to speak. There was no possible way to rationalize this situation other than calling it a dream. A sea covering the grassy plains? A city on an island in the middle of nowhere? This was the stuff of Uncle Jim’s bedtime stories.

She suddenly recalled the GPS, which that boy had lent to her. To confirm, she shoved her hand into her green jacket pocket and whipped it out, fumbling for it as she almost lost it in the water.

The screen flashed and glitched as she tapped it awake several times.

“Work, please…”

She stared, unblinking. Flicked it with her nail a couple of times.

Unable to know what to make of this, she lifted a hand to her face and rubbed her eyes harshly. The GPS went spastic, then shut itself off.

Never in her life had she experienced a dream as vivid as this one. The only thing she really questioned at this moment was her growling stomach and the pain it was bringing. Everything about that was real and physical.

She bent over and clutched her stomach.

That was when the real doubt hit. If she was this hungry, surely she would simply wake up intent on eating. But she didn’t. Maybe she was some biological exception who could sleep so deeply that even hunger couldn’t get in the way. Maybe this boat was a prop from some plains drug dealer who’d slathered it in hallucinogens, and as a result, she’d become the victim of a horrible trip. Or maybe her brain was simply degenerating.

Her imagination ran wild. But at some point, she slapped her face and regained whatever sanity she had left. She shook the oars from their stuck positions on either side of the boat, then clumsily attempted to move it through the water. She began to head towards the nearest island—one with what looked like human-made structures on it.

Anything would be better than sitting in a boat for the rest of her life at this point. The choice now was between possibly dying on some hallucinated island in the grassy plains or definitely dying in the grassy plains with a little bit of water on them.