Cheshire Blast! The Adventures of Pepper and Dot

Flying Fish

Dot strained to focus. "Pepper? Pepper? Are you there?" she asked as she fought to see through blurred vision.

"Yeah... I'm here. Are you there?" he responded, somehow able to retain his sarcastic nature.

When her eyesight returned to normal, Dot prepared to give her soon-to-be-dead roommate the beating of his life for almost making her go blind. But as her vision cleared, anger was replaced with bewilderment. Instead of the neon seared rooftops of the city, she found herself on a warm, sunlit cliff. Multicolored flowers replaced dark colored rodents, and wall-muffled bar fights had given way to cheerful songbirds.

Dot looked around. "Where the flying fish are we?"

Pepper appeared from behind her. "I... don't know."

The astronomer pressed his glasses against the bridge of his nose and pondered their whereabouts. Was this a wild hallucination? Were they somehow being affected by drugs? Or did the decrepit building finally give up and crumble beneath their feet, sending them to the great beyond? He took several steps forward but came to a sudden halt.

Dot frantically scanned the environment for any recognizable landmark. "Pepper? What did we do? What did you do!"

The bespectacled man ignored the question and instead beckoned her.

"Shut up and come look at this."

The bewildered girl walked up beside him and saw they were at the edge of a cliff. Stretched before them was a gleaming ocean of azure with massive purple crystals jutting from below like miniature islands. Dozens of colorful fish leaped from the unknown sea to catch their insect prey, but these fish didn't just jump... they flew. Pepper smiled and pointed to a great shadow that moved below the waves. Dot's eyes widened as a magnificent whale breached into the air, its body wrapped in chalk-colored skin and multiple fins stretching from its sides like the oars of a mighty Viking ship. The whale too set sail over the great sea and let out a deep bellow as it crossed the horizon. The girl's jaw dropped.

"Holy.

Flying.

Fish."

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"Pepper?" Dot asked the bespectacled man beside her.

"Yes?"

"I have one question before I strangle you with your own hands: is there a way back to reality?"

"Umm... maybe?"

"Hm. I suppose that's better than a 'no'. I'll just give you a savage beating in lieu of a painful death." Dot smiled at the idea of choking the man and tossing his lifeless body into the depths below, but remembered where she was (or wasn't), and frowned.

"Where the flying fish are we Pepper?" she asked again.

The astronomer thought for a second.

"As a man of science, I can say with 100% accuracy I have absolutely no idea."

He studied the bright skies above and the mysterious seas below. The unusual ebb and flow of its waves seemed as if trillions of tiny blue diamonds were scattered across the water while the skies were void of the occasional cloud ship or gyrocopters commonly found over the city. The astronomer's eyes lit up as he realized <If the ocean and skies look like this... I can only imagine what the stars look like!>

Dot noticed the wide grin that had spread across Pepper's face. "Don't tell me you're actually nerding out over this, Scholar?" she said, throwing a clod of dirt at him. The man rubbed his face as the soil broke against his cheek.

"That hurt, you know."

"Your face?"

"My feelings."

"Va te faire foutre" She retorted. "Question: where are we, how do we get back home, and why am I not beating you to death right now?"

Pepper furrowed his eyebrow. "That's three questions, none of which I can answer at this time. In any case, we're certainly not going to find out by standing here." He pivoted away from the cliffside sea and walked toward the open field behind them. Dot turned to catch up.

"Hey- wait for me jerkhole!"