Purple Skies -Chapter 1- After the Dream

Sand stuck to Bray's palms, and gathered between his fingers. He could feel the grit of it between his teeth, and over his face. As he shifted weight to his arms and held himself up, it was apparent that he had washed up on a beach. Bray was familiar with beaches and generally thought himself to be familiar with reality in general, but as he garnered his surroundings, these certainties started to slip away.

The sky was purple. Not a sunrise or sunset purple, but a foreign purple sky that loomed over a strange beach-side of steep orange dunes. Even the ocean was purple, and a white sun reflected off the surface. Bray's eyes burned with the bright colours and the unearthly contrast between them, and his mind struggled to make sense of it.

"Purple sky..." he said aloud, and then there was silence again. He suddenly, and almost tragically realised he was alone.

"Anna?" he frantically looked around, quickly standing and searching the beach for any sign of her, "Anna!?"

The waves seemed to echo as they crashed along the shore, and Bray heard nothing else. He brushed his hands against his back, and made his way down to the water. He sloshed around in the shallows, cleaning himself of sand.

The shore looked endless in both directions, which meant Anna could have washed up nearly two kilometers away, at the very least. She could have walked off to get help, he thought, but Anna wasn't the kind to take control of a situation like that. What if she'd washed up on another set of land? Bray couldn't see anything other than the straight shoreline on which he stood. It was surreal and desolate.

"Anna!" He shouted again. He realised his voice wasn't being carried too far with the noise of the waves. His body ached and sand was everywhere. He ducked his head under the water between waves, spitting out a mouth-full as he came back up.The water didn't taste of sea water, it was clean and fresh, like rain. The waves weren't small and Bray refused to believe he was in anything but an ocean. He'd never felt so tiny against something so vast.

As he made his way back up the beach he decided higher ground would be an advantage, and so thought to make his way up one of the impressive dunes nearby. No plants grew that Bray was familiar with, and there didn't seem to be any paths down toward the beach. He wondered if people ever swam there. It was then that he realised there were no seashells. A lake, maybe?

"Anna!" He shouted as he reached the top. He stood about ten meters above the beach, and still could see nothing but beach, ocean, and more dunes. The dunes didn't get any larger as they moved further from the shore, though they seemed endless, and Bray noticed what looked like tire tracks tracing down several of them. As he reached them, they weren't tire marks at all. He wasn't sure what made them, but it definitely moved.

"Anna!"

There was a loud revving noise from beyond where he stood, and Bray nearly fell backward when he saw the vehicle rise above the dune. It looked like some kind of hovercraft, and seemed to float above the sand. The noise it made was like rapidly shaking dry sand in a tin, and he could make out what he thought were huge peddles, churning through the sand like an old riverboat, but exponentially faster. He could see two figures, one driving and one standing. At first he thought the standing figure was raising an arm. As he waved the craft down and it moved closer, he realised the man was standing behind a gun.

It violently pulled up beside him and before Bray could get a word out, the gunner jumped off.

"Present your identity mark and pledge your allegiance to He, Wolsa!" He demanded, holding out what looked like some kind of remote.

"I... I'm sorry, I don't..." Bray wasn't sure what to say, "I don't have a..."

The man's face was hidden behind a dark blue helmet, but Bray could see his fierce eyes.

"Where is your mark?"

Bray felt a surge of uneasiness in his stomach. He didn't feel like it was a joke, and he didn't think this man was insane. He was afraid, and felt utterly alienated and fearful. He'd never felt fear like this in his entire life; not after his father's beatings, not after his car accident, not after he was mugged at knife-point. He'd never been in such a foreign place with nothing remotely familiar, no-one sympathetic, and nothing to fall back on. He'd heard of people shitting themselves with fear, and could never understand being so out of control like that, but he'd never felt so close. Worst of all, he was alone. If Anna was around, she'd know what do say. Bray just stood there, clenching his teeth while trying to form words.

He nodded, taking a step back, "I don't have a mark."

"Halt, do not move!"

And Bray ran.