Walking On A Dream

• Isobel Dunbabin, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2014

You step, trance-like, along the sand. Smoke fogs the air and its woody smell solidifies to taste as it hits the back of your throat. The evening remains warm after a blistering day. Children still splash in the shallows; adults admire the eucalyptus-bark sky and its ribbons of red. The whole vista hangs heavily over the horizon. It seems suspended, likely to collapse at any moment. Nature often mimics a movie's protagonist's mood; why should this not be the case in real life?
You are wandering amongst a multitude of walkers, each certain of their individual path as you stick to your parents' shadows. Parent's shadow. Autonomy of movement and of thought are achievable, the two together are more than you are capable of in this instant.
'Oh, hello! It's such a gorgeous evening, isn't it?'
Familiar feet, familiar face. You wince at her words.
'Yes, it's fantastic to have a proper summer for once.'
You resist the urge to comment and instead smile blandly. Polite, you can remain. Even if they don't care. Even if your skin is so numb it feels as though you can't feel anything and ice water sloshes darkly in your stomach and your skull is stuffed with cotton wool and toothpicks prop open your eyelids.
If only you were as brave as Odysseus.
'Where's David?'
You open your mouth for the first time. It isn't as gummed-shut as it had felt. But you are too late; stuck in slow-motion.
'He's helping down at his nephew's farm, near Dunalley.'
'Oh, yes, all that's so terrible, isn't it?'
Finally. Acknowledgement. You can live with the understatement.
'Yes, he called us up after he'd driven through. The whole town's just decimated, apparently. The school's gone, and the bakery...'
You used to stop at the bakery almost every time you went down there, to buy bread - or a sausage roll for your brother. Think Dunalley, think bakery: curved, corrugated, blue. Dunalley without the bakery? Obviously unthinkable.
The conversation has finished without your notice; both parties have moved away. You jog after your mother, simultaneously limply and solidly. A bizarre feeling, like being underwater. Lying on the bottom of the pool, blowing gossamer bubbles upwards. If the need for breath is ignored that activity feels oddly safe. Similar rising slowly out of sleep, cocooned in a warm blanket. You could stay there for an eternity.
But you have no right, no right at all to feel this way. Were you huddling under a jetty whilst flames sprung up around, praying for your life? Were you watching your home, fifty years worth of memories, turn to literal ash? No, you were swimming, playing, sun-baking. Concerned only with getting a tan, enjoying the unexpected heat. You were luxuriating in life whilst others were fighting for it. You're being overdramatic. A teenage girl. But the whole thing feels so surreal; it all feels so surreal.
Walking on a dream/How can I explain?