Traveler - The Premonition (Book 2)

CHAPTER 3

I was woken up by Ivy's voice. She was sleeping next to me and talking in her sleep, but I couldn't understand what she was saying. I got closer to her, trying to understand what she was grumbling. She shivered and woke up, and I was caught staring at her.

"I will pretend that this is not weird at all," she says. 

"You were talking in your sleep!" I excused myself. 

"Oh yes? I have some weird dreams since I got here," she explains.

"What kind of dreams?" 

"I dream of a woman, but I can't see her face. Every single time she's about to turn around I wake up. She's running into an abyss. Something chases her, but I can't see what."

"What do you think it means?"

"I hope it's just a dream that just repeats all over again."

Our conversation woke Aaron up, who made a long sound of pain. Everyone was sleeping, and Ivy didn't know him, so she told me to check on him.

"Sorry, we didn't mean to wake you up," I say.

"How polite you've become to me," he says smiling.

"Shut up!" I said and wanted to leave. 

"Why?" he asked me and grabbed my hand.

"Because I thought it was polite if I said sorry for waking you up," I said.

"Not that" he laughs. 

"Why didn't you leave me there?"

"Because that was the human thing to do and despite what you would say, I know that you would have done the same for me."

"I didn't know that you had such a good opinion about me" he smiles again.

Damn, I wanted to tell him to stop smiling because I couldn't recognize the person I was looking at. He was different from Aaron that I knew.

"Don't make me regret I saved you," I said seriously.

"Thank you," he says letting go of my hand. 

I remained there, looking at him. Something was different. He was another person. Maybe he was that man long before, and the cave just made him show his real face. I found myself smiling. At that moment, he opened his eyes, and his look met mine. I felt my cheeks on fire. I turned around and went outside. I felt embarrassed because I remained to stare at him. He once called me "weird," and now he had all the reasons to believe that.

"What's up with you two?" Ivy surprises me.

"We don't like each other... didn't like each other... After what happened in the cave, I'm not sure."

"I saw something else," she smiles.

"No... he's just... different..."

 Ivy made me think about that. She went inside, and I remained there. It was a quiet place. I laid down and looked at the sky until the sun came up. I felt it on my skin. I looked at my hands. The scars from the island were visible, at least on the left side. Every time I saw them, I thought about Adam. I felt guilty. I got up and went inside.

"Ivy says that beyond the woods it's a town," says Andy.

"I want to go there to get something to eat or something useful," says Kate.

"I'll join you," I said.

"I will come too, to show you the way" adds Ivy.

The others stayed at the cabin with Aaron, and we left. Ivy was walking first, with me behind her, and Andy and Kate found something to talk behind us. I looked at them, and I saw that Andy didn't have that feeling of hate around her anymore. He finally understood that what happened wasn't her fault. I even saw him smiling, a thing that he had never done around her or because of her. I was happy for them, especially for Kate.