"You know that saying about dying twice?"

Gray's eyes watched as the man behind him palmed the smooth stone in his hand, weighing it for a bit before hurtling it past Gray's head towards the lake. It broke the glass-like surface of the water with every skip, sending ripples in its wake until it reached an eventual halt and plummeted towards the bottom.

"I might have heard it before," Gray replied back.

It was his turn now. He kicked the ground under him, looking for the next stone to throw.

"The basic idea's that you're alive as long as you're remembered. You may die and no longer be here, but the idea of you will continue to be carried on. Until no one alive knows you - that's when you'll truly be dead. When you exist in no one's memories."

Gray's foot kicked another pile of dirt away, this time revealing a perfectly flat rock underneath. He picked it up and adjusted him arm for the perfect angle, as if he'd made the shot a thousand times before. He launched the rock, watching it skip over and over until it fell just short of where the previous stone had stopped. He clicked his tongue.

"Yeah, I remember hearing something like that. What about it?"

The man behind him let out a slight breath, maybe the sound of him sighing or breaking into a slight smile.

"Have you ever thought about what would happen if it was the other way around? What if everyone forgets you before you're gone?"

Gray thought about it for a bit. There were some ways he could think of it happening. Perhaps a monk who lived in solitude a majority of his life, outliving anyone who had interacted with him before. Maybe a newly born child who barely outlived their mother, struggling for a few moments on their own before passing away, never being acknowledged by the world.

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"I'd pity someone like that," he said after some thought. "For that to happen to someone, they'd have to have lived an incredibly sad, lonely existence."

He stared at the glass-like surface of the lake again, a surface which stretched out neverendingly, never changing.

"It's your turn now," Gray told him after waiting a bit for the next stone to be thrown. After a brief pause, his head turned around. "Hello?"

The empty shore of the lake stretched out behind him. In the distance, he could see the lights of his hometown, gently illuminating the darkness behind the masses of trees. A sense of dread began to creep over him.

"Dad?" Gray called out. His feet started to move forward, slowly at first but quickly turning into a sprint. "Dad, where'd you go?"

Anxiety started to grip his heart as his feet pounded against the sand of the lake's shore. He made a beeline towards the path that would lead him through the forest and back to his hometown. As the line of trees grew closer, a low frequency began to reverberate through the air, quiet at first, but slowly growing louder and louder. Eventually, his gaze was finally pulled upwards to where the noise was coming from, and his feet slowed to a halt as he looked towards the sky.

In the distance, the clouds above his hometown had been split apart. A giant white whale the size of a small city was plummeting downwards with its maw wide open. Its cries resonated throughout the sky, sending chills down Gray's spine. He watched the beautiful, horrifying creature dive down through the air, its descent seeming almost slow due to how impossibly big it was. It grew closer and closer to the ground, like a star falling out of the sky.

And then, it swallowed the town whole.

Gray rubbed his eyes, the cold morning weather nipping at his face. He pulled his comforter up as he reached for his alarm clock.

As his hand hit the switch on top, his barely open eyes briefly shut, the scenes he just experienced flashing by in an instant. As the memories faded away, his eyes opened once again and stared out the window.

It wasn't his first time having that dream, and yet, he didn't feel the need to stop it from slipping out of his mind. There was no need to stay hung up on it after all, and he trudged out of bed and started to get ready for work.

In the end, it was all just another strange dream.