prompt: when i woke up

I'd had this really violent dream the night before, so that night I was just lying there on my bed with the ceiling fan going, not wanting to fall asleep, when my sister Sara came in. She shut the door very quietly and made her way towards the bed with slow and careful steps, her arms held out in front of her like people do when they're sneaking around in the dark. I'd been in there with the lights off long enough that I could see her, though. I watched her feel around for the bed and then felt the mattress sink and bounce a little when she crawled up beside me and plopped onto her side, sighing. I handed her a pillow, and her breath caught for a moment before she whispered, "Did I wake you up?"

"No," I said. "I was just thinking."

"Oh." She yawned and shoved the pillow under her head, and then a moment later shifted around to get under the covers. Whenever either of my sisters came home from college to visit and we had to share a bed, they always complained about it being too cold in my room to sleep. Sara would have stayed in the guest bedroom that weekend, but she'd brought her boyfriend Scott home with her, and he got the guest bed instead. Our mom would've had a fit if she'd known Sara'd been in there with him this long.

I watched the ceiling fan turn in the dark, trying to follow one blade with my eyes. It wasn't turning at the rate I thought it would, but I couldn't tell if it was going faster or slower than I'd expected. I could follow it all the way around six times before I lost track of the blade I was following and had to start over. I could hear Sara breathing, even and deep, and I figured she'd fallen asleep already. Between listening to Sara breathe and watching the ceiling fan turn, I was doing a pretty good job of not thinking about that dream I'd had.

And then out of nowhere, after having not said anything for several minutes, my sister murmured, "I love you," in this real sleepy voice that was half spoken into her pillow.

I was surprised, because it's not something that we said very often. In fact, we never said it - at least not to each other. I think by that point in my life I'd only ever said "I love you" in undelivered letters to boys or in crappy teenage poetry or to my cat in that babytalk voice you use with animals. But the way Sara said it to me didn't sound forced or unnatural. It was just a simple statement of fact, a phrase that came easily to her even while half-asleep, apropos of nothing. And hearing her say it to me in that half-asleep moment, as she sank slowly into the state that I was trying very hard to avoid, struck me as kind of beautiful.

So I said, "I love you, too."

At the sound of my voice, Sara's body jerked a little like she was waking up. Then she said my name like it was a question, and started to laugh quietly.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing," she said, and laughed again. Then she said, "I thought you were Scott."

Sara fell fully asleep again within moments, and when the blinds over my windows started to lighten at sunrise, I finally fell asleep, too. I dreamed about screaming and about sharp things cutting my hands and about having bony wings that broke against the force of the wind.

When I woke up, like always, it was just before hitting the ground.