“Carine? Carine!”
Carine opened her eyes again. The tree was gone. So was the dress she had been wearing. At some point she had transferred herself into her fuzzy sleepwear with the blue little whales on them. Something she had never grown out of. She remembered how her father had sighed trying to help her find something similar for an adult body as she had worn as a little girl.
There was her father’s face, right in front of her. Even if she couldn’t see anything other than the greying mustache she would know.
Carine sat up. “Dad?”
“Carine, thank God!” He, a man who didn’t often do so, engulfed her in a hug. She would have felt more awkward about it if she could have gotten past what she felt like just happened. It was a dream, right? “You are all right! When did you get home! I’d tried to call you and…”
She looked down at her hands. There were flecks of blood on them. Now that she thought about it, she could see the tips of her brunette hair, braided in front of her shoulders, with blood hardening the tips of them. Oh, it had happened. It had happened. And she had only cleaned up enough to get into her pajamas.
“What happened?” she asked her father.
She didn’t like hearing the answer.
