Was It Just A Dream

Chapter 31

"Are you serious. This is the stupidest thing in all of history." I could hear Cali complaining not far behind me, even with the loud shrieking of the sloths from all around me. Apparently, the creatures were pretty smart for their size. They had tied my wrists and ankles together with some sort of rope and were now carrying me and my friends through the forest. Tiny hands held me up about a foot off the ground. I would have fought back if one of the pesky things hadn't put some sort of strange blue flower right up to my nose. Not even a minute after breathing in the tangy scent of the flower, my whole body went numb. I was practically paralyzed, my head staring straight up at the tops of the trees and my body as stiff as a board. Thankfully, it seemed my face was the only part of my body that was unfrozen, and we were free to talk. But that was it, there was no escaping those psycho sloths. 

It was quite a predicament. 

"Nah, Cali! This is great! I always wanted to be the victim of a sloth kidnapping!" Jimmy's voice shot out. He actually sounded happy, and I had a feeling he wasn't being sarcastic. Leave it to Jimmy to have his mood improved by something as strange as this.

"These animals actually seem really smart. It's interesting..." Lincoln was nerding out, as always. Apparently, being kidnapped by sloths was cool compared to being kidnapped by an English teacher.

"Well. I have to agree with Cali for once. Maybe we should take this more seriously?" I raised my eyebrows, even though no one could see me. I was becoming more and more uncomfortable with the sloths' hands all over me, and I was also worried they would drop me.

"Mira! You can't side with Cali, that's against your nature." Jimmy laughed. He was clearly enjoying this, which made me slightly happy. On the other hand, why couldn't simpler, less dangerous things lift his spirits?

The sloths carried us on, marching us to some unknown destination. Every now and then, I caught sight of a sloth out of the corner of my eye, swinging through the trees. They were so strange- they looked like sloths, but they had the physical abilities of monkeys. What they were, or why they had decided to kidnap random teenagers they had found in the forest was a mystery to me. I just hoped to God that it wouldn't put our lives in danger.

After quite a bit of time, Jimmy started to complain about being bored. Cali started to argue with him, whining about how he never shuts up. Their quarrel was friendly though, and I could tell they were mostly just doing it to entertain themselves. That warmed my heart, knowing that things had finally changed with them after all.

Soon, the trees overhead starting appearing less and less, and I could see long grass poke into my version occasionally. We had entered some sort of field, and the sloths began shrieking louder, excited. We were nearing their goal, and soon we would find out the fate they had planned for us. 

Our group of sloths, which was quite large in the first place, was seemingly engulfed in an even larger swarm of the creatures. They dropped me down with a thump into the dirt. I still couldn't move, and there were sloths crawling everywhere, pulling at my red hair and shrieking in my face. I started to yell, closing my eyes as hard as I could to prevent them from poking out my eyes. There seemed to be hundreds of them, pulling and pinching at me, as if I was some sort of toy. I couldn't hear my friends over the deafening sound of all of the sloths shrieking at the top of their lungs. Jimmy couldn't possibly have enjoyed that.

Suddenly, like small children being scolded, the sloth creatures scurried away from me, and the shrieks started to die out. In seconds, everything was silent, and it was just me, frozen on the ground staring up at a cloudless blue sky.

"What-?" I heard Lincoln start quietly somewhere to my left. He was interrupted, however, by the sound of a walking stick thumping against the ground. Someone, presumably not a sloth, was walking towards us, taking their merry time. Whoever it was, it seemed they weren't in any rush to help us or worried about our well-being.