Dreamer Prologue // The Dream

My friends didn’t wave back at meeeee. We waved through a window, and they were walking away, and they didn’t see me. And it was so sad. And- and- and- this has nothing to do with this post. Ohkie, ohkie, starting again.

Heya! ‘Tis Naomi, and today’s post is the possible first of a much longer series. I’ve finally gotten to the point where I’m actually going to begin sharing a cli-fi story with you. But only if you want me to! If I do post this entire story here, it will make up a lot of the posts on this blog. So… read through the prologue and tell me what you think of it in the comments? Thanks!

Oh, and if you don’t know what in the world is happening: I’ve been working on writing a cli-fi (climate fiction) story of my own for a while now, and it’s finally ready to share! I won’t be offended if you don’t want to hear the rest of it, but if you do, I’d be really excited to have you all read my story. It incorporates a whole lot of real things, but the characters are fictional and so is a good bit of the plot.

Anywho, since I’m doing a long intro again, without further ado…

NOTE: I submitted this to the Scholastic Competition as a work of flash fiction. It is my own original work and I didn’t copy from anyone else.

Everything was on fire.

Everything was on fire, and they had seen it coming. But they had thought they were safe because everyone said so

Her safety-freak grandparents had even said they were safe, and she didn’t blame them. They’d called 911 that morning when they’d seen the grey sky, the bright blaze. And the people at 911 had said they were safe.

So they hadn’t gone anywhere or done anything about the fire, even as the thick grey clouds began to creep closer, as they could see the light of fire bouncing around. They were safe. They had signed up for the evacuation calls. They would have gotten a notification if something was seriously wrong. Everything would be fine.

That’s what they had thought. But she was sure they’d thought wrong. Because when everything’s on fire, everything is not exactly fine.

Everything is very, very far from fine.

She called to her grandparents but got no answer. Where were they? Were they burning with everything else? No. They couldn’t be. They had to still be alive. After all, this was the trip to Paradise that she had bragged to her sister about going on. This was going to be a fun time to connect with her grandparents.

Not… not whatever this was.

She yelled for her grandparents, further scratching a throat raw from the smoke seeping into the building. Maybe they just hadn’t heard her. They were old, right? And old people can’t hear well. She had to find them. They had to be here somewhere.

But she was stuck. And the fire was in the house now. Everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. She had to get out. They would find their way.

Trying desperately to remember the lessons they gave you in elementary school about how to get out of a burning building, she dropped down so the smoke wouldn’t get in her lungs. Although it already was, and now she was really coughing. What was happening to her vision? And she couldn’t breathe. Why couldn’t she breathe? She needed to get out.

She gasped for the nonexistent air, thinking about her sister’s asthma attacks. Thinking about telling her to calm down, to breathe, rushing to get the inhaler. Now she was the one who couldn’t breathe. And her sister wasn’t there. And the flames, and the air, and she couldn’t, she couldn’t…

The world went black.

And Kurota woke up.