Raging Seas [pjo au] || 1

τρία

CHAPTER THREE
( NIGHTMARES FOLLOWED BY
A SHOCKING REVELATION )

THERE WAS A STORM. A hurricane with winds that howled and sheets of rain that beat down onto the ground. Kali was soaked from head to toe – her hair was matted to her head and face, and her clothes, her pajamas, stuck uncomfortably to her skin, and water dripped off of her steadily. The clouds were dark, ominous. Lightning struck every so often, putting what she began to realize was a beach in false daylight. Swells of large waves crashed against the shore at an unsteady rhythm against the booms of thunder.

Through the rain Kali saw two animals, beautiful and powerful: a white horse, and a golden eagle. They fought each other violently. She could hear a voice below the earth urging them on as it chuckled, the ground rumbling along with it. A boy was there too, no more than year older than herself but otherwise too covered by the rain to tell anything else about him. He began to run towards the animals. The only problem was that it was happening in slow motion. She started forward, wanting to help somehow.

"Kalliroi..."

She froze, then whipped around. It was a whisper so quiet she shouldn't have been able to hear it over the storm, but she did. Clear as day. She looked until she spotted the person.

Behind her stood...someone. They were a good distance away from her, and they stood on more solid ground than the shifting, wet sands of the beach. Kali couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman or something else, but either way the sight made her uneasy. She took a step back nervously. At that same moment, the boy shouted, "No!" and Kali turned once again to see what happened only for the scenery to shift.

Suddenly she no longer stood on the beach, but on a familiar cliff formation. It looked different than what she remembered, though. Everything looked and felt darker; the storm still raged on, but rather off in the distance with a sense of foreboding. As she looked out, she could they were taller than they were supposed to be. More jagged in areas. Waters rougher than ever before at the bottom.

"Help!"

Kali's stomach dropped. She knew that voice. In an instant, she moved closer to the edge and got on her hands and knees to peer down. Lana, her first ever best friend, clutched a protruding rock with a death grip not too far down the cliff. Kali laid down on her stomach and stretched her arm and hand down. It wasn't too far of a reach at all.

"Grab my hand!" Kali shouted. "Please, Lana!"

Lana shook her head. "I can't!"

"Yes you can, come on!" Kali stretched further. The rock Lana held onto began to crack, and the distance between them seemed to gradually grow inch by inch as the seconds went by. "Lana, please," she begged and it was then she realized she was crying.

She shook her head again and repeated, "I can't! I'm already gone, Kali."

Before Kali could even respond, the rock broke off. Lana fell with an ear piercing scream, and Kali shouted her name, ready to jump after her. But she was stuck. She looked over her shoulder to see that her feet were being sucked into the ground by quicksand. She stood as struggled to get out, which only made it pull her in faster. The Kindly One appeared, then, holding a crying Naia and Makoa. It kept asking her were it was, threatening her brother and sister's lives so she would give an answer quicker, but Kali didn't have one.

She wanted to get out of the quicksand just as much as she wanted to wake up from the nightmare, but neither were happening. Just as the Kindly One – no, it wasn't the Kindly One, it was Ralph with it's voice – screeched, "Time's up," and just as he made a move to hurt Naia and Makoa, the quicksand covered her completely.