Surviving the Dreams

Chapter 1 - Déjà Vue with a Twist

Susan Cooper awoke with her face pressed against hard, wet sand. Rain pelted down upon the back of her head, arms and legs, while the gentle pressure of a friendly arm lay protectively across her back. She blinked as she came back to herself wondering, just for a moment, where she was, looking into the face of her friend. Greg Gaffney, a man with an overgrown thick black beard and longish sort of hair lightly peppered with gray, lay by her side. He too had his face pressed against the sand, and though his eyes were closed, he was smiling, as though happy just to be there.

It was daylight out and Susan rolled onto her side, easing herself out from under his arm as she sat up, looking around. She was on a beach with tall tropical palms lined up behind her, looking out onto a crescent shaped, almost circular bay, sitting in the pouring rain. Aside from Greg, and a hand full of shorebirds braving the storm, she was alone.

“I don’t believe it,” she murmured, trying her best not to disturb her companion.  

It was hard to sleep in the rain, and if he was managing it, she didn’t want to be the one to wake him. But her efforts came to naught as she discovered he was already awake. Greg’s brown eyes fluttered open and the dark haired man rolled to his side, brushed sand from his beard and face, and Greg Gaffney sat up too.

“What don’t you believe?” he asked in his deep baritone voice as they awoke together in the pouring rain.

“We’ve done it again. Somehow we’ve managed to become shipwrecked … castaways for the second time in six months. I was so hoping for a change … not the same thing over again,” Susan grumbled as the rain ran down her face, plastering her normally golden colored hair to the side of her head.

“I for one am pleased,” Greg said.

“How can you be!” Susan protested.

“We are alive. Both of us. I feared you were ready to give up,” Greg told her seriously.

“I was. That at least would be a change. Maybe then I could ask the Lord directly what he wants from us … because in all honesty, I really don’t understand,” Susan said in an exasperated tone. “I remember, but I still do not know what he wants.”

Greg cocked his head. “What do you remember?” he asked.

“More than I did. I think maybe I bumped my head again when I fell off the boat,” Susan told him as she touched a hand to her brow.

Greg nodded. “You are bleeding, ever so slightly,” he noted as he noticed a cut above her brow. He touched it with a forefinger and it came away tinged with blood. ‘Does it hurt?”

“Not much,” Susan told him. She blinked out into the rain. “I suppose I fell asleep?”

“You were dreaming?” Greg asked.

“I must have been … to remember …” Susan frowned slightly.

“I am grateful you were only asleep, Susan. I feared I’d lost you,” Greg told her honestly. “But as for being shipwrecked again …” Greg followed Susan’s gaze as she stared out to sea. “You are right, we are.”

Susan shrugged slightly, but she didn’t answer. What more was there to say? They were shipwrecked again. For the second time in less than a year, they were castaways on a foreign and unknown shore.

Lost somewhere in the South Pacific when their plane went down six months before, they knew they were roughly six hundred or so miles south of the place their plane crashed, but they were still no closer to learning where exactly in the world that was. All they knew for certain was that they were somewhere between Los Angeles, California and Sydney, Australia, probably more than half way there; roughly two thirds the distance according to the flight crew before they went down. But their flight had been blown significantly off course, so that was at best a guess. The island where they’d first washed ashore following the crash was an island much like this, with a wide sand beach enclosed by a reef. It was an uninhabited place, the place where they first met, for they’d been strangers before. But after six months living and working together in the effort to survive, they’d come to know each other very well. Upon making the decision to leave their island under their own steam when no rescue came, they became partners on an incredible journey. After sailing together these past few months on a home-made boat they named the Oyster, they’d gradually become friends.