Sleepwalking

Alyssa schlepped fuzzy-minded through the swamp. All the portents had led her here, everything pointed to these muted marshes. Struggling to lash down her mind and fortify it against the ever-present drift, she became slowly aware that she wasn't alone. Another hazy traveler was approaching, clothes all caked in vagary. Neither spoke. A grudging nod from her new companion. One brief movement of his head communicating everything, identifying him as one of her own. They saw each other now: two pairs of outstretched hands, grasping at something that had, thus far, always managed to squirm away.

Her younger eyes saw it before he did, but the interrupted squishing of her boots alerted him. They were here. The shimmering outline of the wooden structure bloomed into view with the sudden ferocity of a torch shone in the face upon waking.  She turned to him, tilting her head to indicate her discovery. There was no reason to believe only one of them could reach it. This wasn’t a time for friction.

Entering the hut, both saw the battered tin bowl sitting central on an oak barrel, filled to the brim with the object of their mutual, decades-long hunt. She heard him gasp, and shivered in agreement. The berries had a clarity to them, a sharpness of image neither had seen before. Driftless. This hadn’t been for nothing.

He reached out first, but his hand paused by the rim, his head turning to her, eyes flooded with a sudden disquiet.

        "They'll change you." he spoke, breaking the mutually agreed rule of silence. "I've seen others. They come back altered."

 She didn't care. Her maintained silence said alteration was what she craved. Shouldering through his hesitation, she picked up one of the purple berries and placed it on her tongue. Rolled it back to the molars, and bit down hard. Fidelity flooded across her tongue like juice.

Alyssa never saw whether he followed, and it didn’t matter. She was in a new world now, with new possibilities.