I was asleep under my tree, dreaming about running through my woods back home; the peaceful sound of dry, crisp leaves crunching underneath my feet, the whistle of birds singing to each other. Lilly was there; we were running together. We were laughing and talking about nothing in specific, when all of a sudden, a tree branch whacked me in my right cheek, again and again, over and over.

And that’s when I woke up to a three-toed sloth sitting on my stomach, and patting my face.

“What the…” I said.

The air felt very moist, and there were little dew droplets lingering in the air that seemed to fall out of nowhere.

He slowly drew his arm back and gestured behind him. I followed his arm, and looked past him to see a giant wave of a tsunami heading right towards me.

My eyes widened and felt as though they would pop out of my skull. My heart started pounding, and my body started shaking with fear.

I grabbed my survival bag, unzipped it, quickly but gently snatched up my new pet sloth, put him in the largest pocket, threw the bag on my back, and darted away from the nearing tsunami, the sloth hugging my neck to insure he stay put.

I was running as fast as I could. My heart was racing and my breath was shortening the more I ran. The wave was catching up to me, faster and faster; threatening to swallow me up at any second. I could feel my feet pounding the softening ground. The air around me was thick and wet and smelled like rain and ocean water. I could feel the misty spray on my back as the waves caught up to me, and then they engulfed me, submerging me under the waves. It reminded me of going body-surfing, missing a wave, and getting suctioned deep into the water until the wave draws back into the ocean; except this was not the kind of wave that draws back into the ocean, it just destroys and kills everything in its path.

Then, the miracle of the human species took place- our buoyancy- and I found myself floating back to the surface. When I reached the top, I took a strong, loud, gasp for air, then started coughing uncontrollably, trying to rid my lungs of water.

Well, Lilly, I tried to telepathize to my older sister, looking down at me from heaven, not long now.

That’s when I saw a tree in front of me, with a branch that seemed to be just in my reach. When it approached, a grabbed it and held on with everything inside me, just dangling there until the wave died down, or I found enough strength to climb- whichever came first.

“Hang in there, Marvin!” I screamed over the deafening rush of waves to the sloth on my back.

Marvin, I like that. I’m going to call him Marvin from now on, I thought to myself.

After about a minute I found the strength in me to climb. I put my left foot on a lower branch on the left side of the tree, and tried to put my weight on it. Luckily, it held, although it was quite slippery from the splash from the waters rushing below.

“Are you quite satisfied, Gamemakers?” I screamed at the sky.

Somehow, though, I managed to climb to a higher branch, where I sat and waited for the tsunami to pass.