Last night I dreamt of a beach. It was nighttime, lit by a full moon. The beach was wide, with about thirty meters of even sand from trees to surf. A lone, thin tree stood near the middle of the beach, almost in the water. Not far across the water was another beach. Both beaches were circled on three sides by steep, lush mountains, like a tropical fjord.

There were three others on my beach, and about a dozen on the opposite beach. There was to be a contest between our two groups, as well as with other groups on beaches out of sight. No one knew the rules yet, we were waiting. I had a swelling confidence that we would win, despite having fewer members than the other teams. I felt we would be able to bond and focus better. The other teams underestimated the four of us, which was also to our advantage.

Our group was me, another guy and two girls. We were all close in age, though they were slightly younger than me. The other guy was black, from Africa. One girl was from Northern Africa, Egypt or Libya maybe, with Middle-Eastern features. He thought that sharing the same continent made the two of them familiar, and he made an innocuous gesture of good luck to her by drawing a line across her face with wet sand. She felt differently; she was insulted. She thought it was beneath her, so she brushed his arm away. The other girl was Asian, she had an orange shirt and didn’t speak. The contest was not to begin until the morning. We slept in our clothes on the beach, near the tree.

I woke-up to shouting in the early morning, it was still dark. There was a gentle rumbling and the sand was vibrating. Three horses came into view in the distance. They approached quickly, racing across the beach at breakneck speed. One bumped another, it tripped and dove violently, snapping both of its front legs. It slid right towards me and I had to jump out of the way. The girls were becoming hysterical, but their pitched screams were soon drowned-out by the deafening rumble. Seconds later a wave of horses broke across the far end of the beach. Shoulder to shoulder, thousands deep, all black or dark brown. We were too far from the jungle, so I scrambled for the lone tree. I didn’t make it before they were upon me. Luckily, there was a pocket of space between the tree and the water. I was temporarily safe in it, as the horses flowed by me on both sides, plowing into the water. I knew the tree would soon be broken to splinters, so my only chance was to swim to safety. I stumbled into the water, it was futile though, the bay was quickly filling with bodies as the horses flung themselves in one after the other. I thrust my arms through the water, a few futile strokes before I went under. I sunk, bracing myself to be struck unconscious at any second. I called out to God for forgiveness, knowing that I was going to die. Then I woke up.