Not a Fan (Wilbur Soot)

Careless

Aurora was completely unaware she had fallen asleep. Her dreams were filled with pink and green mist that felt like it was suffocating her. She knew it was her subconscious representation of how hearing Wilbur and Niki talk about her was still at the forefront of her mind. She wanted to change the dream, she wanted to go back to when the green of Wilbur's voice would pass her in whispers, leaving her constantly searching for him. 

She was trying to run in her dream, to escape the grasp the clouds had on her. Aurora's legs were slow and weak, her feet began feeling like ice. She was cold, unbearably cold. The freezing came in passes over her, like waves of icy air would rush through her veins.

Shit. 

Waves. 

Aurora's eyes shot open just as another wave of ice cold water lapped over her feet and all the way up her calves. She sprang up, pushing her hands into the uneven sand below her to move backwards and away from the rising tide. 

"Christ." She mumbled to herself once she was out of the tide's path. The sky seemed darker now, the moon no longer reflecting over the water. She turned to her side, relieved and honestly surprised to find her purse untouched next to her. The first thing Aurora did was reach for her phone, attempting to check the time. 

"Well, that's not good." She continued to mumble to herself, seeing that her phone was dead. The sand on her palms scratched her skin as she rubbed her eyes, still trying to get used to being awake. The sound of the splashing tides acted as a nuisance, clouding her already limited vision with flashes of deep teal.

She couldn't have been asleep for that long, right? It was still dark out at least, the moon now directly overhead instead of just cresting above the water. She didn't know much about how to tell time from the sun or moon's placement in the sky, but she assumed it couldn't have been more than a couple hours.

Her feet and calves were still aching from the cold water that had been continually lapping over her while she slept. Regardless of the pain, Aurora forced herself to stand, doing her best to brush off the cool sand that had clumped around her wet clothing.

God, who was she to feel hurt and humiliated that her only two friends perceived her as being held together by tape and glue? She literally fell asleep on a beach, alone, in the middle of the night, and literally could have drowned from the rising tide. 

Aurora scoffed to herself, pulling off her wet socks before slipping her shoes on, wondering if this should be her opening story to her therapist later that week. The whole situation clearly summed up how unstable she was. 

Just as Aurora was slipping on her second shoe, her wet socks now stuffed into the pocket of her jean jacket, a car with it's high beams on started driving down the road that paralleled the beach. Aurora squinted, using her hand to block the light from the car. She may have been careless enough to fall asleep in a public place in the middle of the night, but she at least knew better than to walk in the direction of the slow moving car- even if it was coming from the direction she needed to go. 

Aurora quickly walked over to a building that sat just at the beaches border, doing her best to get out of the car's line of sight. She walked quickly, her head sinking lower, as the car let out what would be normally considered a few burnt orange colored 'friendly' honks. 

The car continued to approach, making Aurora feel more scared than she had in a long time. More scared than she felt when she over heard her friends exposing that they knew the truth about her. More scared than when her plane was landing in America after her semester abroad and she could feel the life draining from her. 

The only time she felt more afraid than she did at that moment, was when the doctor came into her dad's hospital room, telling them both that there was nothing they could do for him.