Perception

LXXIII

The drive over the A15 took so long, so very long that she started wondering if she'd gotten it wrong, maybe she'd misinterpreted the vision, or her St. Bernard-sense was broken... she stared out of the window morosely, willing herself to feel something, anything. Anything that would help. But it was resolutely silent inside her.
She reached back without really thinking, her arms moving of their own accord, to pick up the bag of fruit and veg on the back seat. She handed a carrot to Eli and started eating one herself. She had a body; she needed to eat, and so did he.
She was reading the road signs mechanically. Tiel. Echteld. Ochten. Dodewaard. All names of places she couldn't really pronounce, names of places where people were living their everyday lives, knowing nothing about visions, strange voices and spidey senses.
Must be nice.
But yet, somewhere through the fog of morosity, she recognised how alive she felt, how awake, how different.

Suddenly, after what felt like forever, so very quietly but yet so clearly there, there was a slight tingling, pulling at her from the inside.
"I... Oh God, I think that's it, Eli. Go left?"
"What, onto the A50?"
"Yes, I think so."
Dusk was coming fast now, and not for the first time she was glad they lived so far north. Twilight took forever, here, and they'd need light, to get themselves set up, to put the tent up again.
Eli drove securely, calmly, but he was quiet, too. She could sense as well as hear that.
The tingling feeling was getting stronger now, and with it that strange calm came over her again. The fear was there still, but so much easier to ignore now that she at least knew what she was doing.
"Turn left."
They left the motorway now and started driving down ramrod straight country dual carriageways.
"It's a bit different from France here, hey? Turn right."
She led him with calm certainty until they took a right on a roundabout, down a small road under an overpass. The motorway traffic on top of the overpass rushed past as she asked him to go right again, into a small forest road. Yes, there was a sign at the beginning of the road saying 'campsite', but she hadn't needed it. She knew it was there, she knew what she would find at the end of this road, and she knew what she would see.

Eli got them signed in at the wooden cabin that housed the reception, and they drove under the barrier down a narrow lane, the white uniform mobile homes and wooden cabins already visible up ahead. There was a miniature golf site on Anna's right, and a small shop and some sort of restaurant. Was that a swimming pool, behind there? There were caravans of course, dotted around the fields they were driving past slowly, the lights in their front tents already on, and there were tents, with people on camping chairs in front of them. The toilets blocks were square and white and spaced quite wide apart.
They drove over the narrow lane with its harsh speed bumps, all the way towards the end of the campsite, where it became even quieter. There were still a few children playing in a playground in the middle of a field. It was just tents, here. Right at the end of the lane, quite close to a gate into the forest she saw their place coming up, and she didn't need him to find the number on the little wooden pole to know it was theirs. Eli wordlessly turned into the space and stopped the car. She got out and stepped on the slightly yellowed indentation of the previous tent, looking right at the view she'd seen in her vision. 

She nodded as she turned around to him, exhaling with a bit of relief. She had found it.
"Yeah, this is the place."
He embraced her quickly, warmly, and kissed her on the cheek.
"So, no river to swim in here, hey? Well, I'll put up the tent anyway and then I'll see if I can find some chips or something to eat."