Awareness came back to Oasis in bits and pieces. First came the impression of thirst, which they didn’t register as a strange part of this particular dream. They had often been thirsty, after the end of the world. Once they had realized that there was no one left to make sure that the municipal water filtration system was doing it’s job, Oasis had stopped trusting tap water. They had almost entirely relied on bottled water scavenged from various grocery stores. Which was fine; it wasn’t like there were anyone else competing for the same resources, and they didn’t feel guilty about the plastic. They’d already given up on the planet. 

The second sensation that breached the dream was warmth and comfort, which was a bit more unexpected. Comfort had been sparce after the end. Not because it hadn’t been available; Oasis could have stolen every blanket in a ten miles radius, or set up shop on a Bed Bath & Beyond. There hadn’t been any comfort, simply because they hadn’t allowed themself to have it. 

The third thing was that their foot was itchy, which is the thing that finally snapped them out of the dream. Oasis didn’t open their eyes as the walls of their old hideout dissolved around them, preferring to remain blissfully unaware of the day ahead, curled up in their cocoon of blankets. They swallowed, trying to work a little saliva into their dry mouth, and reached out blindly to scratch their foot. Then they stretched their right leg carefully, tilting their foot with apprehension, expecting the sharp pain of their calf muscle seizing up the way it had done consistently every morning for the last twelve years…

It didn’t. 

They opened their eyes and stared at the ceiling, baffled. They didn’t hurt. It was morning, and they had just woken up, and they didn’t even hurt a little bit. As the reality of the situation sank in, Oasis sat up and looked around themself.

 In the light of morning, they ran a baffled gaze over all of the nonsense that their twenty years old self had decided was vitally important to keep in their room. Like a broken skateboard that they intended to repair and then never did, for example, or seven back issues of a magazine a well-meaning aunt had subscribed them to, and that they didn’t really intend to read but couldn’t bring themselves to throw out. Or that frog lamp. There was a funny story that went with the frog lamp, they were sure of it, but damn if they could remember it. Their collection of swords was missing, a veritable armoury amassed through the mean of getting the very same gift every year from cousins who thought themselves funny, and that was a shame. Swords had a knack for really bringing a decor together.

They sat in bed for a few minutes, wondering if they should stretch. For close to twenty years, they had done an entire routine of stretching every morning on the advice of their chiropractor, unless they wanted their neck to be stiff and their legs to seize up randomly through the day. Now that they were twenty though, they didn’t need to do that. Should they… get a head start on it? Would it delay the onset of the pain, or would hitting thirty still suck no matter how they prepared their body for it?

They were still thirsty, so they grabbed their phone and water bottle from their bedside table, checking the time out of habit. Huh. So it was approaching noon. Had they really slept for close to ten hours? They must really have been tired. Oasis had not once in their life slept past seven in the morning, an habit that had annoyed them as a teenager, but had turned out useful as an adult.

They decided to stretch after all, because it would feel weird not to. Then they left their room and only opened one wrong door before they found the bathroom. At least Alice wasn’t here to laugh at them. She wasn’t anywhere in the apartment, which must have meant that she was away at school. 

Oasis took a quick shower, during which they tried not to meet their own gaze in the mirror. They hadn’t anticipated many effects that the time travel would have on them, but they did know that it would be really weird for a while to see their own baby face. They rubbed a hand on their chin, then sighed. Even though they had wanted this, had needed to do it, an undeniable sense of loss still washed through them as they looked down at their younger and softer body. They closed their eyes, took a deep breath, and let it go. There was an entire mental breakdown to be had here, with a side dish of dysphoria and maybe a fun sprinkling of panic, and frankly Oasis didn’t have time for it. They gently placed it in the same compartment in their brain where they kept all the stuff that they would unload on their therapist at their next appointment, and tried to move on with their day. 

The apartment was smaller than they remembered. Maybe that impression came because they had since lived in much bigger places, while at the time the apartment with Alice had been a freedom and luxury previously un-dreamt of. It wasn’t that bad of a place to live, if you ignored the cracks in the wall that were camouflaged behind some of Alice’s paintings. Their cousin was good at decoration, and had managed to claim more furniture from second hand sales and shady facebook posts than Oasis had ever thought possible. They has a decent TV and even an electronic keyboard, which they had no idea how she had managed to find and weren’t about to ask. 

And plants. Plants everywhere, on every surface. They stopped on their way back to their room from the bathroom, and stared at some of the herbs that Alice was growing on the kitchen counter. At the time of their youth, Oasis hadn’t given a second thought to the plants. They were nice to look at, but Alice was a lot more emotionally invested than they were, and they hardly could tell the difference between a peace lily and a spider plant. But after the end of the world, they had taken a lot of comfort in these plants. They were alive things, after all. Things that Oasis could talk to, no matter how ridiculous they felt doing it. And while it wouldn’t have felt right to drag a pet along with them in their quest across Canada and the United States, searching for the archives and magical manuscripts that would deliver the answer they sought, a plant had been the perfect companion. In the first few days After, they had broken into Alice’s home. They didn’t even remember why they had done it, but it hadn’t been a good time. They had tried to keep a memento from her, but everything hurt too much, until they’d laid eyes on her gigantic spider plant. For years, she had given baby plants that grew from it to everyone that they knew, at every occasion. It had become something of a running joke, because that mother plant just could not be stopped from producing more offsprings. So without thinking much, Oasis had grabbed a pair of scissors and taken a baby. First planted in a mug with some dirt, Oasis had carried that small plant with them for more than a year, in car drink holders and the basket of bikes and the side pocket of their backpack. It hadn’t lived a great life, mind you, but it had survived.

Oasis had hated feeling like Tom Hanks with the volleyball in that one movie, but yeah. That plant had been the only thing standing between them and absolute insanity toward the end. They had lots of things to talk about with their therapist, evidently. At least they had never named the damned thing. They didn’t think that they could survive forging an attachment like that, knowing what they would have to do to the world in order to roll back time. 

They shook themself from these thoughts and crossed the living room back to their own room. The apartment was divided in three sections; a room for for each of the cousins and a central room that was both kitchen, dining room and living room, plus the small bathroom off the side of the front door. They also had a balcony, which due to the strange layout of the apartment, was only accessible from Oasis’s room. Sometimes they felt bad about it; their room was both bigger and had a door to the outside. But Alice had argued that they needed a place to practise the sword and that she wasn’t going to let them do it in the living room near the TV, which was a valid point. Not to mention that Oasis liked to use the balcony and the fire escape as a way in and out of the building on patrols.

Privately, though, they thought that Alice simply didn’t want them in her room. She had no qualms about coming in and out of Oasis’s room to access the balcony, where they kept their minuscule and dingy barbecue. She’d caught Oasis in a wide array of compromising positions over the years with absolutely zero apparent shame. They would die of embarrassment if the situation was reversed.