Andrea was on his uncle's vineyard, among all the plants - the fields were flooded as they should be this time of year, and the surface of the thigh-deep water was covered with floating red berries. He was standing among them, and somehow, he knew the water was chilly, but could not quite actually feel the cold. The berries made for an interesting sensation, though, as he moved through them.

Gabby was ahead of him, and he was it. Somehow, though, she seemed to move through the deep water with greater ease than him; the elder brother worried about stepping on the plants, in addition to the water seeming to try to hold onto him. Up ahead, Gabriella stopped and turned to giggle and blow a raspberry teasingly. Then she lifted one arm over her head and used the other hand to hold her nose like she was jumping into a pool, and dropped down beneath the surface.

Andrea struggled closer to the spot, but the ripples she had left in the flooded field grew stronger as they expanded outward, and water and cranberries together tried to push the boy back. He pushed his way through some of the berries, then ducked under the surface himself - hopefully it would be easier to move swimming under the waves.

The water had been about two to three feet deep before, but once Andrea ducked under it and lifted his feet, he could see that it was, in fact, hundreds of feet deep. A small city was laid out there before him; he could see his sister, dressed in her brilliant pink ballerina outfit, swimming downwards towards the tallest spire. He would not be able to reach her before she got there, but he swam in that direction anyway.

He held his breath for as long as he could, and abruptly realized that he probably should have started heading towards the surface sooner. Sudden panic set in as he looked upwards - the surface was maybe fifty yards above his head, solid red and rippling, and there was no way he could reach it in time. Andrea gasped then, a shudder running through his body ... and miraculously, he could breathe just fine. The water pressed in close around him, resisted as he swam through it, but was still as breathable as air.

With this newfound freedom, he kicked harder to swim down towards the city. A few moments later, he swung his feet forward and landed with his feet lightly and gracefully on the railing of the tower's balcony. His sister was just inside, waving at him from the window and grinning. Moving in slow motion in the water, Andrea reached out to grasp the doorknob and pulled it open....

And found himself in the room whether he wanted to be or not, pushed there by the surge of water into the room. With some effort, the dancer managed to shut the door again, and shook water out of his hair as he looked around for his sister. Gabby was nowhere to be seen, but as his gaze fell on the railing of a stairway leading down, he knew that she had gone that way. He started down the stairs, feet moving quickly since he was after all, a ballet dancer, quick, agile, and graceful.

After a minute, though (and after catching a couple glimpses of his little sister up ahead of him, staying just barely out of sight in the spiral staircase), Andrea began to sense that he was being followed. He turned to glance back over his shoulder and heard the scraping of oversized insect feet, and started again to panic. He jumped down a bunch of stairs at once, since it seemed like a good idea to cover the distance faster with gravity on his side, but instead of falling downwards, he hung in mid-air a moment before traveling forward and downward slowly, like a dandelion seed.

The sound of the insect grew closer - a giant roach, he knew it - but he could not yet see it. Andrea kicked his legs and windmilled his arms, trying to will himself downwards more quickly, but it did not seem to make much difference. When his feet in their ballet slippers finally touched the stones of the spiral staircase, it was just in time for the massive roach to grab him from behind.

Quickly, the monster sank its fangs into his shoulder, dropped him, and kept scurrying down after his sister next.

Andrea blinked. He was wet from swimming, but now his shoulder felt even wetter, somehow. There were two gaping puncture wounds through his clothes into his shoulder - a shame, because this was his school uniform. And he knew that there was also now poison coursing through his body.

He tried to shout for his sister, but could not. He tried to get up, but a sick feeling was twisting up his insides like a bunch of rubber bands. Andrea retched and curled up on the stairs, sliding down a few. He attempted again to shout something to his sister (A warning? But surely the bug had caught her by now!) but something other than sound came out of his mouth.

Gravel.

Andrea threw up and gagged on the pebbles, and spat and retched again as it seemed his mouth was suddenly full of them. He got to his hands and knees, crawled to the next landing on the stairs, and just crouched there, hurling up more and more stones and sand, and then water, and flopping fish, until--

-- with a rather sudden gag and shudder, Andrea woke up. Grimacing, he fumbled for the cup of water he kept beside his bed as the terror of being attacked by the giant roach again faded from his mind. The rubber bands feeling in his stomach was also fading, but not nearly as quickly.

"Ugggh," he sighed, lip curling in disgust before he licked around his teeth to check for any bits of gravel lingering in his mouth. Of course, Andrea did not find any, but still, it would take a bit of time before he could get back to sleep after that one.