Will and Emily were lying cuddled up uncomfortably in the backseat of their car. Too tired to go home, they had stopped along the side of the road near the edge of town. "Just for a quick nap," Will had said. Before they went home to go to sleep. The road had kept swimming around when he had tried to drive.
"I wish we hadn't given that werewolf our blanket," Emily said as she drifted off to sleep. Not that she was cold. They'd left the car running and the heat on. But she liked to be covered with something while she slept. It was all psychological.
"Mm-hmm..." Will answered.
They slept for a while. Long enough to get entangled in dreams that seemed real and very complicated. So much so that they barely noticed when a rumbling from the Earth gently woke them up. Then, the way sound does when a person wakes, it grew louder as they came back to consciousness. It shook the car. The rumbling was almost deafening. Like a downpour, but not. Suddenly the paranormal alarm went off from the front seat. Barely audible.
"Thank you!" Will shouted at it.
The windows were fogged from their breathing, but they could see dark shadows going by quickly. Shadows made by moonlight. Nothing made sense. It was like waking from one dream into another. Like they were in the pocket of an earthquake or an avalanche or... conscious reality started to become clearer.
Will took his sleeve and rubbed fog off one of the side windows so they could see.
"Oh," Emily said, realizing. Legs and hooves were going by.
"A herd of something," Will said loudly. "Something white."
They both leaned closer to the window.
"Oh, my God," Emily said. It was still a little foggy on the window, but she thought she could see something extraordinary. Something she couldn't really be seeing.
The herd was past them now and the sound was less thundering. "Were those unicorns?" Emily said.
"Wow," was all Will could get out. He opened the door and they both climbed out.
Their limbs were stiff and the night air was cold, but they barely noticed as they stared after the unicorns.
"I didn't know they hung out in herds like that," Emily said.
Will gave her an exasperated look.
"Oh, right," she said, realizing, "Unicorns aren't real... except," she gestured toward the galloping herd.
"Oh, yeah," Will realized. He'd forgotten they'd entered this new world of paranormal creatures and phenomena. "Not a dream," he mumbled to himself. "Ugh," he said, "Let's look up unicorns." He opened the front door of the car and reached in to get their backpack and books. He handed her a pocket guide and she got back in the backseat to read, and closed the door.
Will got into the front seat and closed the door to keep warm. The lights went out. Emily cleared her throat from the back seat.
"Oh, sorry," Will said, turning on the dome light.
Emily read for a few minutes in a sleepy kind of way. Her eyes began to light up slowly as she read. A little smile crept over her face. She looked more awake.
"Will," she said, leaning forward to tap his shoulder. He had actually almost fallen asleep again in the front seat, clutching the backpack.
"Hmm?" He said, his eyes popping open again.
"This is so cool," Emily said excitedly. "The unicorns have a dimension of their own. Or they belong to this other fairy mystical dimension with other beautiful serene creatures. It's so cool!"
Will smiled in spite of his tiredness. He liked it when she was like this.
She read some more. Her face fell. "Ugh," she said. "We have to track the herd, and encircle it with a force field and send it back to magical fairy land..." She looked very tired again. She leaned back in the seat. "I don't remember this many weird things happening before," she said. Then she snapped to life and leaned forward and grabbed the alarm and looked at the GPS.
"Okay," she said. "It looks like they have run way the heck out of our reach. Dammit."
He grabbed the book from her and read some more. "Okay," he said, "There is a solution." He set the book down and turned around to put the car in gear. "We have to go home for some supplies first."