Chương 23: Chapter 22 - Sleepless

I had guessed right: the cabin windows didn't have any glass. They were nothing but square holes, defined by the warped boards that made up their frames. Once upon a time, there might have been shutters, but they were gone, and I didn't know what traces degrading shutters would leave behind. I was standing at one of the front windows, leaning against the window frame, gazing outside. I couldn't see much, but the collection of noises coming from the swamp played together to create a haunting, lulling ambiance.

The mood had seeped into me as the hours passed. Owl calls mingled with the sound of crickets. There was a chorus of brief rumbles and grunts that were too high pitched to come from an alligator, and a series of low clicks circled the cabin, as if some mischievous insect was teleporting around to confuse people. Occasionally, off in the distance, I could hear the chest-shuddering rumble of an alligator bellow.

There was a different kind of life out there that I knew nothing about, and it didn't know or care about me. It made me feel soft and invisible. I'd been at the window for so long that I'd become numb to the chilly air and the texture of the wood against my arm. Something touched my shoulder. I whirled around, heart racing, a gasp caught high in my chest. It was Conrad. He'd come up behind me.

Once my wide eyes and my panicked brain agreed that it was Conrad, I put a hand on my chest and tried to get my breathing back to normal.

"Did I startle you?" he asked. While smiling. Like a jerk.

"Yes!" Since Kappa was still sleeping in his nest, all I could do was whisper as fiercely as possible.

"Yes, you did! Could you make some noise when you walk? Wear your boots to bed or something!"

"I'll never be a stealth hunter if I do that."

"How much stealth does it take to hunt a hamburger?"

"You'd be surprised." I imagined him sneaking across a kitchen, his eyes peering over the surface of the table at the lonely hamburger guarding its flock of fries. The fries' only hope would be to escape while the hamburger was being devoured. I grinned, shook my head, and looked back out at the swamp. Conrad stepped closer so he could see out the other half of the window. I tried to settle back down, but the lulled feeling had been startled out of me, leaving behind nothing but the sense that I was haunted.

"Conrad," I said quietly, "are you color blind? I mean, do you see more like a human or a wolf?" He crossed his arms and leaned on the wall. There was a quiet groan from the wood, but it held.

"Why do you want to know?" he asked.

"Humor me."

"I see the same color spectrum that humans do. Why?"

"When we've been in the swamp, have you noticed any purple—like, dark purple—in the water?" At first he didn't answer. When I looked up at him, he shook his head. My stomach went cold.

"And the mist?"

"What mist?" My cold stomach went for a dive. I turned away from Conrad to watch the hazy white cloud that had surrounded the cabin. It rolled in silent slow motion, billowing up to hide more and more of the stars. As thick as it was, it never came closer than the half-board that marked the end of the boardwalk.

"I should've guessed," I said.

"You wouldn't get purple. Not even in a swamp."

"You're seeing magic?"

"I'm seeing something. I think it's magic." Conrad hesitated, then looked out the window again. I wondered what his view looked like.

"A lot of magic comes from the natural world," he said.

"Maybe that's what you're seeing."

"Then why haven't I seen it anywhere else?"

"I don't know," he admitted. I berated myself for feeling disappointed. It wasn't fair for me to expect Conrad to know about my powers when not even I understood them.

"Big Jacky said that you'd grow more accustomed to your gifts," Conrad said.

"Maybe seeing magic more often is part of that."

"Yeah," I mumbled.

"Maybe.

"You still smell bothered," Conrad said. I was suddenly tired of staring at the mist—tired of being awake—tired of everything. I turned around and sat on the floor with my back to the wall and my legs crossed. Conrad sat down beside me, resting his forearms on his raised knees.

"It's just…hard," I grumbled.

"I wake up each morning, and I don't know what normal will be. Sometimes I get tired of not knowing." The nerves in my stomach fluttered. Was that too much? Had I overshared? I squeezed the two fingers of my hand together and waited to see if Conrad would say anything.

"That would be hard," he said. When I turned my head to look at him, he stammered out his next sentence. No matter how close we got, there were random times when he was still bashful. It was stupidly endearing.

"Not-not that I would know." He rolled his arms so his palms were facing up. It was either a low-energy version of a shrug or an even-lower-energy version of a presentational flourish.

"I've been like this forever, and I don't think that's going to change any time soon. But it sounds hard. And I can smell how tired you are."

"Thank you for the sympathy." I leaned over until our arms touched.

"Got any cut-rate clichés for encouragement?" He put his arm over my shoulders. That wasn't cut-rate—that was top-tier wolfman comfort.

"You can do it," he said.

"Whatever happens, you can handle it." I smiled.

"Got any evidence to back up those claims?" His teeth clicked when he opened and closed his mouth.

"What?" I said. This time he gave me a real shrug.

"I was about to say that you hadn't died yet—" A laugh burst out of me, cutting off his statement and waking up Kappa. The bog monster raised his head, blinked his ginormous black eyes, and looked around the cabin.

"Ohhh, buddy!" I whimpered quietly—as if that could make-up for my previous outburst.

"I'm so sorry! It's okay. We're right here. You can go back to sleep." Without a word and wobbling with drowsiness, Kappa extracted himself from his nest, grabbed it, and dragged it over to me and Conrad. After throwing it into my lap, he crawled over my legs and collapsed on top of it without a moment of fussing. I'm pretty sure he was asleep in under a second. You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. I whispered to Conrad, "Now what do I do?"

He pulled his arm back and got to his feet, but he kept his body low.

"I've got him," he said. He eased his hands under Kappa so he could lift him from my lap, then turned and put Kappa down nearby. I guess one piece of floor was as good as the next. Conrad sat down beside him.

"I think Kappa's got the right idea," he said, "and I hear that sleep is good for people who are tired."

"Yeah, yeah," I grumbled.

"I've been told."

"If you want to try to sleep, you should at least lay down." My gaze dropped to the weathered boards below me. I drew in a breath and let it out through my nose as a silent sigh. Had it only been a few hours ago, that I'd boasted about how I always tried to sleep? Past Emerra was full of crap. I did not want to face whatever nightmares lingered in a decaying cabin surrounded by a white mist that only I could see.

"Is it the floor?" Conrad asked. I blinked.

"Huh?"

"You don't like the idea of sleeping on the floor?" I rubbed my eyes and scoffed.

"Dude, trust me. Compared to sleeping on the streets, these floorboards are plush." I froze. My eyes flew over to Conrad. They must have gotten used to the dark, because I had no trouble seeing the moment when all the ease and friendliness in his expression changed to concern. Oh, sure. You worry if saying that you're tired is too much, then you blurt out a line like that? Way to go, Emerra. I blamed it partly on the exhaustion and partly on the mellow mood that had seeped into me from watching the swamp.

The rest was getting blamed on Conrad. I'd become too comfortable around him. I didn't like to talk about my past, but I'd learned from humiliating experience that once you've said something, if you don't want it to be a big deal, the best thing to do is pretend like you don't care. Otherwise it would be nothing but blushing, stammering, and trying to run backwards in slick mud. You were liable to end up on your butt, covered in dirt, with everyone watching. Rule one—don't speak first.

Maybe Conrad would let me off.

"You slept on the streets?" he asked. Stupid wolfman. I shrugged.

"A few times."

"And by the streets…" I was too impatient to force him to finish the question.

"I mean the streets. Concrete. Asphalt. Cozy up to a brick wall. Benches are nice, but they tend to be out in the open."

"Why were you sleeping out on the streets?"

"I made a hobby of running away from my foster parents." I shrugged again. In case he missed the clue the first time. Not a big deal, right? Do you see the shoulders?

"Was there a reason?" Conrad asked. I rushed to answer that one, even at the risk of losing my nonchalant ground.

"It wasn't because of them! Most of them were really decent. And patient." A softball-size chunk of shame lodged in my chest.

"They didn't deserve the trouble I put them through."

"Then why did you do it?" I pointed at him.

"Wouldn't you and my therapists like to know." Conrad didn't say anything, but he watched me with those big ol' puppy-dog eyes of his. Ugh! It was worse than thumbscrews. I wrapped my arms around my chest.

"I think it gave me a sense of control." That was the first time I had ever admitted it out loud. I kept my head down as I went on. The words only came out when I forced them to, but they were all there. I'd thought about it a lot.

"I always felt like I had no choice about what happened to me, and I had issues with rejection. Abandonment. I always kind of assumed that I'd get kicked out of where I was staying at some point—which became a self-fulfilling prophecy, really, so, my fault there too—but I think I ran away to prove to myself that I had some choice. Maybe I couldn't pick where I lived, but I could choose whether or not I stayed there. And even if I was left alone, I knew I could survive." Conrad didn't say anything. My neck felt hot.

A herd of neon elephants could have cha-cha-ed through the cabin and I wouldn't have raised my eyes.

"I must smell great right now, huh?" I said.

"Sorry. I try not to be a downer—""You're allowed to have feelings, Mera." I knew that I was allowed to have feelings. But that wasn't how you kept friends. And I'd promised myself that I wouldn't sabotage the good things in my life anymore. I forced a smile.

"Anyway, that's probably why I want to help the lurkers so bad. It's hard when you feel like you don't have a home." Conrad watched me for a moment, then said, "Yeah. I get that. But you can't help the lurkers until tomorrow, and you'll be in better shape to help them if you can get some rest." He was right. And I'd be a lot less likely to thoughtlessly babble if I was unconscious.

"I'll lay down," I assured him.

"You can lay on my shoulder if you want," Conrad said. I'd just been wishing that I was curled up next to him on the TV couch in the Noctis mansion, ready to watch anime until I crashed. Could he smell thoughts now? But we didn't have any anime. And we didn't have a couch. A faint blush crept up my cheeks.

"Umm. It's—it's all right. But thank you." Conrad let out a chuff.

"You're embarrassed?" Yup. That nose had to go.

"I'm not embarrassed!" I got even more embarrassed when I heard that bold-faced lie come out of my mouth.

"Emerra," Conrad said, "how many times have you fallen asleep on me?" Many. That was one of the hazards of pairing a fluffy anime buddy with an extra small couch.

"I haven't been counting," I said.

"You weren't embarrassed then," he said.

"Did something change that I don't know about?" Yes. Unfortunately. I'd watched Ayla Davids flirt with him. But I would have rather sawed my tongue off with a rusty knife than admit it. No matter how I tried to frame it, I couldn't make it sound good. As an incurable care-free moron, I was happy to treat you like a zero-risk snuggle buddy. Then I realized that other people might be attracted to you, and that blew my image of you into smoking confetti.

I swear on the Crunchyroll icon, it had nothing, whatsoever, to do with seeing you as a pet. Where was a rusty knife when you needed one? Conrad was giving me a "sardonic" look. The word means "disdainful or skeptically humorous or mocking." The instant Darius Vasil had explained that to me, I'd adopted it into my vocabulary. I'd been searching for a way to describe the look Conrad always gave me when he told me what I was feeling and I told him that he was smelling things.

I'd come to understand the expression as "neither of us believes you, so why do you bother denying it?" The fact that he was giving me that look before I'd even come up with an answer felt unfair.

"Okay, look," I huffed, "I don't want you to misunderstand my intentions."

"To have intentions, don't you have to think before you act?" he said.

"Then I don't want you to misunderstand my idiocy!"

"And how exactly am I going to misunderstand it?" My blush was putting off as much heat as your average sun. I thought, I don't want you to think I'm like Ayla, but I muttered, "I don't want you to think…that I'm…attracted to you."

"Uh-huh." He crossed his arms.

"And what about all those times you couldn't keep your hands off me?" At first I was confused. Then realization struck. The sun went nova. There I was, dying of embarrassment, and Conrad was laughing too hard to help. Some guardian he was.

"Okay. That—" I stopped to give him a few more seconds to get his laughter under control. He didn't. I raised my voice as much as I dared—Kappa was already stirring.

"If you're referring to the times you were in your wolf form, that doesn't count." At the tail end of his laughter, he managed to say, "Why not?" There was no good answer to that. I rubbed my forehead with the tips of my fingers. Conrad nudged my knee.

"I'm teasing you, Mera. Don't worry about it. I can smell when someone's interested, remember? I know you're not attracted to me." I'd been the one who'd insisted on the point, but hearing him say it made me feel like someone had rubbed the hairs on my neck the wrong way. I didn't want my best friend thinking that he was unattractive. So what did I do, seconds after he told me that he knew I was right? I decided to argue with him.

I rolled my hand around as I tried to think how to imply my point without saying anything taboo.

"I might not…give off…the same smells that other women would. Normally. You know … cyclically."

"I know—" I got miffed. Of course Conrad would know, because of that stupid nose of his, but he was supposed to pretend that he didn't! A girl had the right to some kind of privacy.

"—but you say you aren't attracted to me, and I haven't smelled anything, so I'll take your word for it." He gazed out the window.

"Humans are so strange. You act like you're allergic to each other. You have all these rules about when you are and aren't allowed to touch people—handshakes, hugs." He shrugged. A touch of curiosity lit up my mind. I'd never thought of it like that before, and I was more than happy to change the subject.

"Lycanthropes aren't like that?" I asked.

"Not even close. We sleep with our littermates until we're too big for the bed. We walk with our arms over our friends, and we roughhouse when we're young. The roughhousing dials back as we get older, but we're always touching each other or leaning on each other. Shoulder bumps. Play hitting. We touch each other's arms or back to get someone's attention, and we don't have to know them well. It doesn't matter if you sit close to someone. We don't think about it."

His hands came together in front of his lap, and he leaned his elbows on his crossed legs.

"It was rough when I got to the mansion," he admitted.

"I felt like everyone was going out of their way to avoid me. It took me a long time to figure out they were trying to be polite." Poor Conrad. Five years of nothing after a lifetime of contact. That must have been so lonely.

"Then you came along," he said. Ahhhhh, yes. I was not famous for being polite. I tried to clear my already clear throat, then said, "Ummmm…" It might have been easier to express myself if I'd had some idea of what I was supposed to say. Was I supposed to apologize for being a touchy weirdo with no sense of personal space? Should I point out how ridiculously fluffy he was? Would he understand why that would make a difference?

Was I brave enough to admit that I felt close enough to him that, even if he'd been human, I'd probably still be harassing him? And why did I feel like I needed to make excuses? Nervousness trickled through me.

"Do you mind?" I asked.

"If anything, it's a relief. You and Kappa are the only two people I can relax around." Oh. I was still mulling over that thought when Conrad spoke again.

"I know that humans have some bizarre unspoken rules about who they're allowed to touch while they're asleep, but I give you my word as a lycanthrope, I don't care. And I'm not going to misunderstand anything. Now, can we stop talking and get some rest?" I nodded.

"Would you like to lay on my shoulder?" he asked. The remnants of my training on how to be a normal human shuddered in their death throes, but I was too distracted by the promise of a warm pillow to mourn them.

"Yes, please!" Conrad pulled over the backpack he'd been using as a pillow and laid on his back beside Kappa. I curled up on his other side with my head resting on the shoulder of his out-stretched arm. The fur on his neck cocooned my chilly scalp. I felt my body unwind as I relaxed into a cozy haze of contentment.

"Try not to drool on me while you sleep," Conrad grumbled.

"I'm not going to drool on you," I grumbled back.