AN- This story is the product of too much time watching Pirates of the Caribbean. Hope you enjoy!

The rain was beating against the wood; the entire world seemed to be pitching to one side and another. Cries of men sounded in the dark, though all words were carried away on the howling wind. She stumbled against the slick deck with one thought in her mind; she had to get to the wheel. All would be fine when she got to the wheel.

--

“Anna?” called a voice which wafted from below. “Anna you better get up or you’ll be late for the first day back!”

Annabelle Moore rolled over and sighed. She didn’t want to get up at all, she was in the middle of one of the most vivid technicolour dreams that she had ever had. She could still smell the salty spray and the sea air. She could hear the thunder rolling in the heavens and she could see the riggings of the ship illuminated against the sky by the bolts and flashes of lighting. The sense of utter urgency and panic was also still with her…her heart was beating wildly within her chest even as she lay upon her own bed in the wide open plains of the Canadian Prairies. Annabelle had never seen the ocean, nor had she ever been sailing, but the details of her dreams were so real; much too real.

“Anna!”

“Coming mother!” she called back as she opened her steely-grey eyes. With a sigh, Annabelle pulled herself out of bed and began frantically getting ready for the first day of second semester. It was mid-February and her little town was buried under about fifty inches of pure white snow despite the fact that the temperature was about fifty below with the wind-chill. Still, she thought to herself as she pulled a brush through her tangled, shoulder-blade length mousy-brown hair, thanking her lucky stars that she had had a shower the night before after she had come home from her fencing class. Still I’d be willing to trade the bitter cold for that ocean in a heartbeat…

But Anna knew that it was a dream. A wonderful dream but a dream nonetheless, and therefore she tried to put it out of her mind. However, by the time she got to school, the dream was beginning to work its way into the forefront of her mind as she began to ask herself questions to which she had no answers. Annabelle wanted to know where she had been, she had been on a ship for sure- but the riggings made it seem to be a ship from the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. She knew that wherever she was, they were in the middle of a vicious storm and she also knew that she had to get to the wheel. Annabelle felt as though her entire life had depended on getting to that wheel.

I wonder who was waiting for me, she thought to herself as she slid into her homeroom class just as the bell rang. I wonder if I was going to the wheel to wait for someone…

“Annabelle?”

Annabelle turned to her right, startled out of her thoughts. There beside her was her bestest friend in the entire world; Jamie Bradbury. Jamie and Annabelle had been tight since preschool and they had gone through almost every major event together. They started school together, they both lost their first teeth together, they both got their first A’s together, they both got their first F’s together, they had both gotten their periods within months of each other and perhaps most important of all they had both snagged themselves the two most sweetest guys as their boyfriends for the Christmas dance just two months before.

“Anna?” Jamie asked again, watching as recognition flashed across her friend’s eyes. “You okay?” she asked, her irritation turning to concern. “You seem out of it.”

Annabelle nodded. “Yeah,” she answered with a sigh. “I guess I am kinda out of it. I had the most vivid technicolour dream last night and-”

Good morning students of Riel High. Please stand O Canada.

Knowing that she couldn’t continue talking, Annabelle shut her mouth and stood along with the rest of her twelfth grade class. As the melodic notes of O Canada rang out over the PA system she felt herself drifting back to the dream. As she thought about it, she felt as though she could feel the deck pitching this way. She could almost feel the sting of the spray and ever single nerve was on edge. Then, suddenly- it was gone again. Annabelle regained her senses and blinked a couple of times, realizing suddenly that her teacher’s eyes were on her and that everyone else was sitting.

“Um…sorry,” she murmured with a blush on her cheeks. “Daydreaming.”

Her teacher whom they called Old Man Winter nodded curtly and motioned for her to sit down. Annabelle of course did as she was told and opened her notebook to a clean page. Old Man Winter then turned to the board himself and began going through the morning’s math lesson. Jamie tried to get Annabelle’s attention several times during the first half of the class but Annabelle wasn’t having any of it. I’ve already gotten in trouble once, she thought forlornly to herself as she concentrated on taking notes. I really don’t want to get in trouble again.

And so she ploughed on ahead with her notes and when the lesson finally ended, Old Man Winter announced that he had to go to the office for ten minutes or so but he expected the questions that he had assigned to be done by the time he got back. Knowing that he meant business most of the class got straight down to work knowing that if they didn’t complete it all he would assign twenty more questions for that night. Jamie however didn’t care if she got more questions; she wanted to know why Annabelle had spaced. “So what happened?” she asked, poking Annabelle with the eraser end of her 2B pencil. “You seemed so out of it during the anthem.”

Annabelle smiled sheepishly. “I was thinking about the dream.”

“That must have been some dream,” Jamie stated suggestively, earning strange looks from the people sitting around her.

“Oh hush up,” Annabelle stated with a frown, even though she was trying to suppress a laugh just as much as Jamie was. “It wasn’t that kind of dream.”

“No?’ asked Jamie with a raised eyebrow. “If it wasn’t that kind of dream then what kind of dream was it exactly?”

Annabelle shrugged. “I don’t know. I only remember the last few moments before I woke up. I think I was on a ship and not a modern day ship but an old-school rigging and sail type of ship. We were in the middle of this wicked storm and I had to get to the wheel to uh-”

“To-uh-what?” asked Jamie, flipping to a new page in her notebook and taking down dot-jot notes of what her friend had already described. “What was at the wheel?”

Annabelle shrugged again. “I dunno,” she answered. “I woke up.”

Jamie groaned and slammed the pencil down. “Girl, you have to give me more than that. How do you expect to be my muse if you leave me with half a situation?”

“I dunno,” Annabelle stated with a grin on her face. “You’ll have to use your imagination I guess…”

Jamie scrunched up her face in mock anger and stuck her tongue out at her friend. She was the writer of the two of them while Annabelle was the dreamer. Jamie would often prod and poke Annabelle till she relented the details of her dreams and then she would write them down. Her biggest dream was to become a writer and every time Annabelle was her muse, Jamie came ever that closer to achieving her goals. But for the time being, Jamie knew that she would have to make do and therefore she went back to the math questions, same as Annabelle was doing. However, unlike Jamie, Annabelle found her eyelids closing of their own accord.

--

She climbed up the steps, nearly tripping along the way. Yet she made it to the upper deck and saw the captain commanding the wheel as best he could. But she could see that he was having a hard time of it. “Captain!” she called out, fear clearly evident in her voice. “We cannot continue in this storm for much longer.” She waited for a response, but all she got was a knowing look and a devilish smile.

--

The bell rang and startled her out of her day-dream. Annabelle looked around and to her dismay saw that her class was packing up. She had dozed the entire period away and now she would have to do her homework during lunch. Unfortunately for Annabelle, staying awake though the next class was hard, made all the more difficult by Jamie’s incessant talking. Who knew that silence is preferable to chattering, Annabelle thought to herself as she and Jamie went through their science lab together. I never thought that I would want her to shut up…

But Jamie didn’t shut up and it was only by lunch time that Annabelle was able to get some rest. After scarfing down her homemade ham sand which she made her excuses to Jamie and her other girl-friend Helena and then made her way to the library. Unfortunately, for Annabelle she ran into her boyfriend John. “John!?” she exclaimed as she found herself face to face with the tall, dark and handsome boyfriend of hers. “What are you doing here?”

“I uh, ran into Jamie in the lunchroom,” he began. “She said that you’ve seemed out of it all day. Is anything wrong?” he asked concerned. “Are you alright?”

Annabelle sighed. “Of course I’m alright. I didn’t sleep that well last night.”

John smiled. “Jamie said. She said that you had some wicked cool dreams.”

“Not dreams,” Annabelle corrected. “Dream. Singular. One dream…and yeah it was wicked cool. I was on the sea and I swear to god John, I could almost taste the salty spray and I could feel the sea breeze and the cold biting rain.”

“But you’ve never been to the coast,” John pointed out. “How could you possibly know what it tastes like?”

Annabelle shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “I have no idea. I just know that it felt as though I was really there.”

“But it was a dream,” John pointed out as he touched her arm, gently. “It was nothing but a dream, right?

Annabelle sighed. “Of course it was nothing but a dream,” she paused and looked up at her boyfriend. “Why do you ask?”

John shrugged. “No reason…”

Annabelle knew that John had a reason. Unlike her he was content to stay on the prairies and farm for the rest of his life. Annabelle on the other hand wanted adventure and new experiences. Little did she know however that her dreams were going to provide the most amazing adventure yet.