The swamp is gone as you open your eyes. Beneath you, sand—warm and fine—cradles your waking form. Around you, the repetitive break of waves attempts to lull you back to sleep, but there is an urgent sense of doom that wells in your stomach. Lifting your head, you see that you are trapped on a sandbar that is quickly being swallowed by the sea. Beside you, a whale shark wails and you know that this creature is the only chance you have to survive. Do you befriend this animal or is it a fiend? Are you even a kin or are you a whale shark, too? Do you survive?

[imgleft]http://matope.pixel-blueberry.com/image ... uncert.png[/imgleft]Shiny Thing is hesitant to heed the slowly growing feeling of danger growing in her chest. She groans in her half-sleep, pressing her face deeper into the warm sand in a futile attempt not to wake up. But there’s no sense in trying to ignore it. Her heart starts pounding and finally her eyes snap open. Now in a panic, she sits up abruptly with ears alert as she scans the horizon for this sudden sense of fear. The sea is before her. That’s to be expected. It was there when she fell asleep. What isn’t expected is that the sea is also behind her now. She’s trapped. And she’s not very good at swimming.

But maybe the water isn’t deep yet. Kicking up sand as she scrambles to get to her hooves, Shiny rushes into the water in hopes that she can still make the crossing to the beach. It seems shallow enough at first. But then the sand beneath her suddenly drops off and she sputters as her muzzle goes under for just a moment. Dragging herself back to the safety of the sandbar in an absolute frenzy, Shiny collapses onto the dry sand again, huffing. She can’t make it across all that water. Even if the ocean between her and the beach is completely calm- which it isn’t -she’ll still likely drown if she attempts to cross. Not that her fate will be much different on the shrinking sandbar…

A sound pulls Shiny out of her despair and sitting in the shallows off to her left is a familiar shape. A whale shark- one of those with the wide mouth and empty-headed expression -wails at her in a mournful tone, though its tail swishes back and forth in an almost happy manner. Memories of the Winter Market flashed in her head. A pretty mare she had tried to impress. And a school of whale sharks she’d tried even harder to impress. Relief washes over her at the sight and she bounds over to the shark.

“Hello friend! You’ve come at the perfect time.” The shark wails at her again, as if it understands her somehow, and she wades into the shallows to gently press her nose against its wet snout. “Can you help me get across the water?”

Again, it cries out at her and swims into the deeper part of the ocean. Shiny follows it without fear, completely trusting in this creature. As it reaches the area where the sand drops off suddenly, something strange happens to the fish. This completely normal sized whale shark grows into an enormous whale shark. Large enough that she could feasibly sit on its back if she wanted. The whale shark submerges itself under the surface and she swims until she’s right above it. Lifting her up out of the water, it lazily makes its way towards the beach. This is much less terrifying than trying to swim herself. Shiny nuzzles her face against the shark’s back.

“You’re a lifesaver, buddy. Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

The beach gets closer and the details start to get fuzzy. The scene darkens. The dream ends.