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It was 8 a.m.
She really should be getting up. But five more minutes.
Five more minutes and she’d be ready to start the day.
But, oh, she didn’t want to start the day. At all. With enough discomfort from a mild cramp, enough grossness of blood, enough disruption of night’s sleep…
And don’t get Cleo started on the chaos that was the group around her.
It was far easier to allow herself thirty more minutes. What was 8:30? It wasn’t like she was missing out on anything. Everyone would be busy with their projects. She wouldn’t have to interact with anybody.
Yeah. Another thirty. Sounded good.
She woke up again from those few minutes more of rest. It didn’t do much, if not make her more tired. Cleo stumbled out of bed, ignoring the feeling of more blood pooling up. Not that she couldn’t care less, but she wasn’t willing to take a trek across the mini-empire of Hermittopia just to make it to the one bathroom of the area (seriously, why one bathroom at the bottom of the base off to a corner? There wasn’t a more convenient location? There weren’t enough living here to warrant at least a second one?)
Cleo continued her way lazily to the “kitchen area”, really just a side of the storage building that had a few kitchen utilities. The most important being the coffee machine. She got to work, fixing the drink that just might make the cramps worse — but it wouldn’t be too hard to take something for the pain, better to have the caffeine than not. Pain was worth boosted energy.
From the opposite line of chests, Cub lurked in the shadows of sculk, giving a very ominous, “Hey Cleo.” She glanced up at him and his sculk infested-ness, quickly deciding to ignore him. She didn’t have time to get involved in any weird shenanigans.
“Pretty late for you, isn’t it?”
She stirred at her coffee. “Anything wrong with that?”
Despite it being likely that Cub was possessed by something (wouldn’t be the first time), he seemed a bit surprised at Cleo’s snappiness. “Didn’t say there was.”
“I can be as lazy as I like, thank you.” She picked up her mug and headed back to the bedroom.
Cleo kept the workload light. She was still sending messages over to Shubble. Tensions had been on the rise between empires, and the war between her and Joey had appeared… less than pretend.
As such, Cleo had kept up with the two.
And messaged back to Scott, and a few others, to see what she could get a hold of and sell at the black market. She had yet to finalize decisions for her pop-up shop.
Following that, the work she got up to was more tedious and demotivating. It made her want to curl up again and watch movies all afternoon. Being absolutely lazy and unproductive sounded amazing despite her need to finish projects. But prices needed to be set. She had to sign contracts to have legal involvement in Scott’s venture (seriously, who needs legality in a black market?).
Once she got to a stopping point, she decided it was high time she actually got some food, instead of just living off of coffee. There wasn’t too much to choose from. A few bland cereals, oatmeal, and excessive amounts of eggs. She mindlessly poured a bowl of cereal, deciding she wouldn’t put in the effort of adding milk.
She took this dry cereal and walked outside, sitting right next to the “house”. Even if she had no intentions of going anywhere, getting fresh air made her feel a little livelier. Her misery wasn’t as great, despite the small, nagging pain or squelching blood that she was still left with.
By all means it was incredibly uncomfortable, but she wouldn’t make it her whole life’s problem if it didn’t have to be.
The rest of the morning (rather, almost lunchtime) was spent sitting outside, watching as every so often someone would fly past. Nobody ever stopped by to greet her, fortunately.
Eventually she got bored and decided it’d be best if she actually made herself presentable instead of rocking the “I just got out of bed five minutes ago, deal with it” look. While she didn’t care if anybody saw her like this, usually she’d be functionable by this hour, and it’d raise questions of her sanity if someone passed by. (Of course, she was never sane, but at least she could pull it off often.)
After much internal debate of whether or not she could get away with just changing and loosely brushing out her hair, Cleo did decide it’d be best for hygiene’s sake that she actually took a shower. Time consuming as it was, she convinced herself it would make her feel better, instead of staying a slob of a zombie-being.
Throughout the day she did get a few questions.
To be fair, it was unusual to see a half-asleep Cleo walking around with hair dripping because she couldn’t care less if she did it up nicely today. Though not vain, she didn’t commonly go about life half-heartedly.
“Haven’t seen you all day. How’ve you been?” Xisuma asked her as she walked in. He was far into making a lunch that looked far healthier than anything Cleo was planning.
She didn’t have the time to experience any sort of guilt or shame towards her cold pizza.
“Fine.” She filled up a Hive-dr8 cup from the prior season. It served her well, especially in days like these. “You’ve been busy?”
“Fairly, yeah. You?”
“Eh.” She took a bite of the pizza, watching Xisuma as he continued his way through cooking. Very methodical in his approach. Intentional about his day. Probably judging her about her health choices — promoting body building yet hardly taking care of herself.
Who cared if anyone judged.
“One of those days?”
“I guess.” Cleo left him for his healthiness and intentional day planning. She would not compare her workload or lifestyle to anyone else’s. Today she was just going to get through the day, spiting it by saying, “I survived” while still putting in as little effort as possible.
It may have not been the best use of her time, but Cleo decided with the day she had left, to look for all the catalysts Cub had hidden. Sculk was growing everywhere, and it made her feel just about as crawly as blood did. No matter how hard she’d scrub, it’d still be there, somehow embedded in her skin.
It was sticky, near impossible to escape when she took a step into the muck.
“You found all the catalysts yet?” Joe stooped down next to Cleo, making work of clearing the blocks himself.
“There’s no way we’ll find all of them.”
Joe shook his head. “You’ll find that you’re wrong then, because I have a method. Or a tool, rather.”
She had two options. Let Joe talk or force him to shut up.
“Okay. Well, you do you. I’m just clearing it up anyway.”
“So I’ll do the pass for catalysts and you’ll clear sculk?”
Cleo lightly hummed.
“Thanks for your help. There’s a lot of it,” Joe said, walking off to a grassy patch, undisturbed by the creatures that sat beneath it.
Yes. Sculk was much worse to wipe up than blood. By all means, far more annoying.
What was Cub thinking?
Cleo had been… semi-productive, all things considered.
Which meant she was well deserving of some time off. She could be as lazy as she wanted with no judgment. She could sit in the dark of her room and not be questioned for it because she was tired and felt incredibly gross after so much labor at the sculk.
Another annoying thing to note was a significantly heavier blood flow. One mess taken care of, leaving her with yet another.
Another problem was how hungry she’d been getting. She knew she fed herself essentially junk all day, but she had no motivation to fix anything that would actually serve helpful.
It was all laziness, she knew, but she was tired and couldn’t be bothered.
She munched on some stale popcorn as she watched some old sitcom she’d found. She’d never heard of it, but it was decently interesting. Plot was predictable enough that it didn’t cause insane mental effort.
Cleo pulled her blanket around her and curled up into a tight ball as she stared at the small screen right in front of her. The light pain from earlier became harsher than a nagging. Not bad enough that she’d groan out about it. Bad enough that it couldn’t be ignored. Bad enough that it kept her from getting up.
She tightened up this curled up position more, trying to focus more on the comfort of the blanket or the show. If she could just get some sleep maybe she’d have more energy to function tomorrow.
Never mind that it was hardly 5 and most people were still very active.
The pain clinched a little tighter. She stuffed a few more pieces of popcorn in her mouth. It was too stale to be good enough to overpower the unpleasant experience. She continued readjusting to get more comfortable, nothing really stopping the pain.
She could probably take something for this again (it’d been more than enough hours) and feel fine in a little while. She really didn’t want to get up and make the trek though. It was much easier to let it subside on its own.
Cleo tried to refocus on the show in front of her, giving up after about ten more minutes of mind wandering. Maybe she could just close her eyes for a while and just…
The door opened and a few members of Hermittopia walked in.
She glared up at Impulse and Pearl before burying herself into her blanket.
The bed sunk under one added weight, then another.
“Hi.”
She didn’t bother to turn around, the one look before being enough to acknowledge their presence.
“We’re here to check on you given nobody’s really… seen you around all day,” Impulse said.
“I saw Joe. And Cub. And Xisuma.”
“Usually you’re around more,” Pearl said.
“Yes, and usually I have the energy to do so,” Cleo answered stiffly before stuffing a few more kernels in her mouth.
“What’s wrong?” Impulse asked.
Not that he or anyone else could do anything. “I can handle it,” she said just as firmly. Another onslaught of pain came at her, enough to make her take in a quick breath. “There’s nothing to be done, just let me sleep in peace.”
Pearl pried the tightly wrapped blanket off Cleo, exchanging it as to be a human blanket. As much as she was only trying to comfort, it was in Cleo’s favor to actually be alone. “Just because there’s nothing to be done doesn’t mean you can’t complain about it.”
She fought an annoyed sigh. “I appreciate you coming to check in on me, but I don’t want your company.” She shifted a bit, as if that clench of pain would ever go away with enough repositioning.
“And there’s nothing we can do. At all?” Impulse asked.
Actually, if she asked for things, maybe they’d leave after they knew Cleo had what she needed. “If you have to do something,” she said in an exasperated tone, “dinner, please. And pain meds.” She gave Pearl a look. “Something light to eat, preferably.”
With the task given to them, the two left and the room was filled with silence again. She closed her eyes even if the room wouldn’t get any darker. Sleep even for five minutes would…
Of course, Pearl was back quickly, because all she’d got was some waters and the beloved pain-relieving drug.
“Thank you,” Cleo said stiffly.
Pearl sat right next to her again. “Any better?”
She sighed, annoyance filling her voice, hoping that it’d push Pearl away enough. “It’s just blood, Pearl. I’m not sick.” Cleo tightened the blanket around her and faced away from Pearl, leaving any pained expressions unshown.
“Yeah, but… still sucks.”
Cleo huffed amusedly. “True.” She took what Pearl got for her gratefully, even if still in a poor mood. “So tell me, was everyone worried for me or just wanting to berate me for my lack of work?”
“Are you suggesting we don’t care about you?” Pearl asked, laughter in her voice.
“Have you seen the heads of this operation?” Cleo answered, semi-seriously.
“I guess we are moving quicker than the actual empires are. Though they aren’t working as a collective.”
“And some of them aren’t as efficiency minded.”
Pearl nodded in agreement. “But no, to answer your question. We are not coming in here to guilt you. But visiting you was a good excuse for a break and the only way to, ya know, stop Impulse before he overworks himself.”
“Ah. I see. So you’re going to torture me under the ruse of taking a break.”
“Exactly.” Pearl grinned.
Not much later, Impulse came in with hands full of sandwiches and soups.
“Soup’s my thing,” Pearl said as he set everything down.
“I’m not claiming to do it better,” Impulse said. “And if you don’t want yours, then I’ll have it. It’s not even mushroom. Geez.”
In their setting up for dinner, Pearl got up to turn on the light finally. It was far too exposing for Cleo’s liking — the fact that her room was out of shape and she herself looked disheveled at best. Neither commented on it though.
While at first, Cleo hated the idea of them walking in on her, as they stayed longer, she realized she didn’t mind it too much. On the one hand, it was a distraction from general discomfort, on another, it was good food that actually served a purpose besides empty junk.
And it helped in some ways to settle a small guilt that whispered to Cleo to do more, to be a bigger person and suck everything up. It was easier to put herself in a mindset of rest when others were doing it too. That resting went from eating to watching a long movie to falling asleep on Impulse’s shoulder as Pearl still acted as a blanket.
For all of it, she was grateful, even if she didn’t want to admit to her weakness before.