[ @manojoaquin ]
To say that Madi hasn’t been sleeping well since the rescue mission was an understatement. There were so many things swarming in her head, starting with Carmichael and his memories, and ending with the different fire incidents - Teak’s swirling little tornadoes and then the touch of Cal getting out of hand and burning Madi too? She thought that if there was a place where she could escape the fire, it would be on a deserted island, but ever since she found Teak in front of the burning animal pen, it almost felt like the fire was tauting her, following her, torturing her. Or she just saw too much into it and it was her brain overthinking a couple of coincidences.
And then when she finally went to sleep, the nightmares came. One time it was running into the animal pen and getting stuck there, not being able to escape out of it. Another time the nightmare took her back to her job, a fire that badly ended and resulted in injuries left and right, this time leaving Madi stuck in the house without actually getting out like she did in reality. But most of the time she was back in her friend’s house, waking up to fire and smoke, feeling that dread, feeling, feeling that confusion, and wandering the house trying to find her friend and never being able to until she’d jolt awake and not get any sleep for the rest of the night.
It was one of those nights once again. She spent a long time tossing and turning before she even went to sleep, and then she was back in her friend’s bedroom, first laughing and talking about boys and sneaking off to the kitchen to get snacks, but then as they came back to the room, the fire seemed to have came with them and then there was no going back, suddenly the room was on fire and Madi was alone, all alone while her friends’ screams and cries - that sounded a lot like the ghosts’s wails from the jungle -, came from the distance. And she tried getting out, but the room didn’t have any door or windows and then it even started shrinking and she could swear she’s never had this vivid of a smell of the smoke in any of her nightmare than she did now.
It was so real, too real, while the heat of the flames were reaching for her, warming her skin. The popping of the fire came next and she always had vivid dreams, but this felt like next level, this felt like something completely new, something she’s never experienced in a nightmare before.
There wasn’t a big jolt, a big shift between nightmare and reality. She was looking at the moving, flaming walls one moment and then she blinked and the next she was lying on her side, looking at the flames around her engulfing her shelter and she thought she was still sleeping, must have still been in the nightmare, struggling to get out, the nightmares getting worse.
“Jenny?” she croaked, half dazed, a coughing fit coming onto her. “Carlota, where are you?” Just because this was a freaking nightmare, didn’t mean she couldn’t try to save them now. “We need to get out of--”
A huge sear a pain hit her on the arm, where she reached forward, trying to reach for her friends. But it was real fire that wrapped itself around her hand, realy pain that seared her skin and she snatched her arm back, suddenly panic like she hasn’t felt in a really long time. “Get o-ut... I need to get out,” she groaned but she couldn’t move, she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything in her panic.