Page 104 of Bewitched By the Sea Monster
“You can sleep,” Alistair said.
“I probably won’t.” I blinked blearily at the stars. “They are pretty. The stars. And you look pretty too, when the moon hits you.” My tongue struggled to carry those leaden words. “I should start writing again.”
“You should.”
“No more sad endings, though.”
“No. Ha-happy endings only.”
“I can manage that.” I closed my eyes, because it was too much effort to keep them open. “Hey, Alistair?”
He hummed softly.
“I really like you.”
“I like you as well.”
“I wish you were human, though…”
Sleep wrenched me beneath the surface. And I didn’t have the strength to swim, so I sank.
Alistair’s mournful response followed me down. Words I was convinced my snoozing brain had muddled and reshaped.
“I am human.”
“I am human.”
In the dream, it was a man saying those words. The tall, long-limbed man sat with me beneath the stars, his body glowing beneath the moonlight as we listened to the waves tumble beneath the inlet cliffs. I turned to him as he spoke, wanting toseehim. But no matter how I squinted and strained, the details of his face kept slipping out of my brain. Like creamy yolk sludging off a half-cooked egg.
“You’re not human, though,” I said to him.
The man huffed and pulled me to him, nestling my rump between his thighs and twining his arms around my torso. Wrapping every part of his body around me.
“I am.” His chin rested atop my head. “Pippi!”
His voice sounded different when he said my name. Distant. As though he’d slipped away from me.
I nestled back, burrowing myself into him. But his warmth vanished.
“Pippi. Wake up.”
I jolted, my eyes springing open, and I grimaced when my cheek scraped against the scraggy scales on Alistair’s head. “Was I asleep?” I croaked, dumbfounded. My voice definitelysoundedsleep squeaky. I had grit in my eyes—my very swollen and puffy eyes—and wet drool painted my cheek.
“You were,” Alistair said. “And yous-s-s-snore.Did you know that?”
Err…yeah. Jackson might’ve mentioned that at one point.
“It’s…cute.”
I wiped the drool from my chin on the sleeve of my crusty shirt—crusty, because it’d dried with the salt from the sea clinging onto the fabric, making it gritty and stiff.
Gross.
I sneezed when a bit of the salt flaked off and floated up my nose. And then I sneezed again, because the first one didn’t clear the gunk out. And then three more times, because my nose was generally a jerk when I first woke up and threw a hissy fit over every particle of dirt and dust it had to inhale.
“Oh dear.” Alistair laughed once the fit had subsided. “Waking hurts?”
“It does today.” Because I’d beensoundasleep. A slumber so deep, it was almost a coma.
