Oceans by Rose Moczygemba
She knew it was a dream the second she opened her eyes - the ocean had never been so still.
She would know; she had lived by the ocean her entire life. She was familiar with the water the way that other people could walk through the woods of Maine with their eyes closed. The ocean wasn’t something you could step into and then close your eyes. You could learn the currents; you could go out of sight of land and still know the way back by the position of the sun and the shadows thrown on the deck. But she knew, the way that all seafarers know, that the ocean was alive, always flowing, always shifting. Always awake, never tiring.
This water may expand to the horizon, as far to either side of her as she could see, but it was sleeping. The sea never slept, even when night fell and stars dotted the sky.
She’d never known when she was dreaming before. But then, her dreams were never so obviously dreams. They took place in the hospital, where the surgeon would come out and tell her family that her brother hadn’t made it through. Or they would be back in the car, Max throwing his arm across her chest to try and protect her from the impact. Her hands were always curled into fists in her dreams, mirrored in the moments between sleep and wakefulness. In four years, dreams never felt okay like this.
That was the second sign.
People always have the wrong number of fingers in dreams. She remembered the words, spoken in the darkness by the friend who never left her side after the crash. She remembered the words, breathed in and out three times, and lifted her hands to eye level. It took two careful counts and one pinch of the skin on her arm for the wave of cold to wash over her. Not a dream. But the ocean reflected the stars and moon perfectly, not a single ripple in sight, not even with the light breeze that stirred her hair and raised goosebumps on her skin. She closed her eyes and stepped into the water, where the grass blended into it, and opened them to her own reflection.
She was naked, but it wasn’t as surprising as she felt it should have been. She relaxed at the sight of the tattoo scrawled across her collarbone in her own handwriting. Her body was still hers, even if the ocean was all wrong. The only thing that she didn’t understand was her violet glowing eyes, transforming her entire face even though her lips, nose, cheekbones were all the same. She looked fierce despite how exposed she was. Looking into those foreign eyes somehow relieved her, because this girl, this woman, was her. This was a woman who could and would fight. Maybe she would even hold an advantage, shock the enemy with her bare skin. It startled a laugh out of her, dispelling the anxiety entirely, because even in this weird, not-real-not-dream, she was still herself. She still possessed the dark sense of humor that came with loss and the determination to come through it intact.
She turned to the whispering grass behind her, so out of place with the silent ocean at her feet, and thought for a moment to walk where she knew she would be met with solid ground. But the urge to swim was strong, and she had never been great at impulse control. So she grinned, looked one more time at the violet eyes that somehow belonged to her, and clumsily walked further out, until the water met her thighs and she could throw herself fully into the ocean. She dove forward, dipping underneath and opening her eyes to the burn of the salt. She counted her strokes and then stopped after a thousand, choosing not to think and just to feel. Feel her hair clinging to her neck, the water lapping at her chin when she rose for air, parting for her as she swam only to close right back up as soon as she was within its grasp. She swam for hours, or so it felt, and didn’t stop until the sky was lightening all by itself and she had to search for the sun.
There was no sun.
Her first thought was to let panic well up in her throat and choke her, seize her limbs and drag her down. But the memory of her strange violet eyes coupled with the blue-purple sky stopped her. The purple didn’t fade the lighter it got; the ocean took on a lilac sheen. It still did not wave, ripple, or flow, but she could see her legs underneath the surface now, treading water, keeping her afloat. She wondered what she would see if she held her breath and sank down as far as she could. The longer she stayed, surrounded by the blue-purple sky and lilac ocean, the more immersed she became. She could feel herself falling, but without the fear that she’d come awake on shore with, she had no reason to stop. If she stopped treading water and just drifted, she might see something amazing.
In the end, she swam on, beckoned by the lone albatross that flew overhead. The seabirds knew their way; she would find what she was looking for with them. She only briefly considered the fact that she herself didn’t know what she was looking for.
She breathed in the salty air and slowly, the sound of waves crashing on the beach filled her ears. Her vision of the lilac sky became dark, the breeze ran over her whole body, whistling slightly through the open window. She fell forward mid-stroke, only just managing to catch herself on the smooth hardwood floor, and stayed there for a moment, just breathing, just feeling. Water dripped from her hair to the floor between her hands. Droplets trailed across her bare skin, raising goosebumps in their wake, leaving her all too aware of herself in the way that she hadn’t been standing in the grass at the edge of the ocean. She exhaled, breath rattling in her throat. One more minute of weakness, and then she would stand.
Thirty-three seconds later, she was on her feet, staring at her face in the mirror. Her eyes were stormy grey, the left with a tiny sickle-shaped scar curved around it. She still looked fierce, but the violet that had convinced her that she could fight had vanished without a trace. The breeze reminded her of the open window, of her skin, and she wrapped her comforter around her shoulders. It was damp, like it sometimes was after she woke up sweating from a bad dream. A deep breath with her nose turned towards it confirmed that it wasn’t sweat; it was saltwater, dripping from her hair, running down her body, soaking into the soft fabric. She shivered, looking back at herself in the mirror, and then out the window to the ocean. It was not still; it ebbed and flowed, never stopping long enough to catch even the reflection of the setting moon.
It was just a dream. But she was standing in the middle of her room with the smell of salt heavy about her, wet hair hanging in front of her eyes. There was a trail following her from the bed, the floor next to it where she’d landed on her hands and knees, to the full-length mirror she stood in front of now. She was naked but for the comforter. A scan of her room revealed no wet pile of clothes, no shorts or bra that she wore to bed.
As she watched, the determination melted from her face and left her terrified. She closed her eyes to the mirror, to the room, and forced her heartbeat not to skip. She ran a hand through her drying hair, coarse, and opened her door to go to the restroom, intending to shower away the evidence of the not-real-not-dream.
The sun was coming up by the time she had completely stripped the bed and mopped the floor, and her father never suspected a thing.