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At this point, Seth probably shouldn’t have been so startled by send spells.
Even seek spells—now rendered rather obsolete by their younger sibling, send—still startled him, really, so he supposed it might be something he would never get over. However, both were favorite spells of all of his closest friends, so it would’ve been very nice if he didn’t jump every time they exploded in his face.
This one, though, arrived as he was trying to sleep. A big flash of light in his face and a following message to read, while laying in the dark, was maybe a justified thing to be surprised by.
He was incredibly grateful that it delivered him the physical message as well. He reached for the lamp by his bedside, fumbling a bit with the switch before it finally clicked on. He wiped his eyes, waiting for them to adjust to the light before he could properly read the message.
“Are you awake?” it asked, scrawled a bit messily, but still recognizably Thisbe’s handwriting. She’d signed it, as if Seth would’ve needed that to identify who it was from. (Seriously, they’d grown up together—why did she think he’d have forgotten what her handwriting looked like?)
He reached out to grab it, the picture melting into a notepad in his hands. “Can’t sleep. You?” he scribbled, debating for a moment before finally signing it with his name. As if anyone else would've gotten, responded to, and sent back the spell.
There was a long pause after he sent out the message, to the point where he wondered if Thisbe had fallen asleep in the time between sending the message and receiving his answer, or maybe just changed her mind. He debated whether or not to keep waiting, but his light was on and he didn’t much feel like trying to sleep again, so he got up and put on some shoes. He could at least wander down to the kitchen and get a snack.
He was on his way to his bedroom door when the send spell whizzed back into the room.
“Me neither.” Crossed out below it, Seth could faintly make out the words, “Can you come over?” Underneath, she’d written, “Wanna have a sleepover?”
It only took Seth a few minutes to rush to the now-no-longer-secret-and-much-more-accessible hallway, take the tube to Grimere, and find Thisbe’s bedroom door, just down the hallway from where Aaron had installed it.
He knocked twice, softly, afraid that, even though he’d been summoned, that he would be startling Thisbe, somehow.
She opened the door quickly, visibly relaxing once she realized it was him. She stepped aside, waving him inside, then shut the door behind them, enveloping them in darkness, lit faintly by the moon outside her open windows. There was no breeze tonight, and the fog over the endless chasm between worlds left the room humid, but not uncomfortably hot.
Her room was, to put it lightly, something of a disaster. She’d managed to keep it contained to the edges, at least, leaving space to walk through, but Seth gingerly stepped around piles of books and trinkets and half-emptied boxes.
Thisbe kicked some of her more errant clothes into what could possibly be called a pile. “Sorry it’s a mess.”
“Meh, my room’s not much better,” Seth admitted, following a few steps behind her. “Are you alright?”
Thisbe stopped at the edge of her bed, turned away from him so he could only see part of the profile of her face. She made a sound somewhere between a hum and a growl. “Just...needed someone here.” She pulled back the covers and sat down on the edge, feet still on the floor, shoulders hunched. “Thanks for coming.”
She sure didn’t seem alright. She got like this, sometimes, Seth tried to remind himself. More, lately, for sure.
He kicked off his shoes and sat down next to her. She’d started picking at her nails, and didn’t look up at him. Sitting beside her now, he could see just how messy her hair had gotten, the bags under her eyes.
“I don’t trust myself right now,” she finally admitted, forcing her hands down to her sides and clutching the sheets tight. Her scales caught in the faint light, shimmering slightly before settling back into the shadows of the night. “Sorry for waking you.”
“You didn’t wake me,” Seth insisted. He wanted to reach out, to put his hand on hers, to put an arm around her shoulder, but he didn’t. “Wasn’t having much luck sleeping anyways. Do you want to talk about it?”
Thisbe shook her head.
Okay, well, what then? He couldn't find it in himself to be mad at her or anything, but she'd asked for him and then wouldn't actually tell him why? Clearly something was wrong, but how was he meant to help if he didn't know what it was?
"Well, if we're both not going to bed…" He glanced around her room, at the piles of mess and clothes, then, seeing something rather familiar, stood up. He grabbed a blanket from one of the piles, then turned back to Thisbe, unfurling it between his outstretched hands. "Wanna make a blanket fort?"
Her eyes visibly lit up, even in the darkness, and she grinned. "Oh, heck yes." Reinvigorated, she jumped up from her bed and immediately started dismantling the sheets. "We haven't done this in ages."
"You should probably turn the light on."
"…Right, that would help, wouldn't it?"
They collected various blankets first, and Thisbe worked on moving her clothes into a pile out of the way while Seth folded them up so they could see what they were working with. Next was collecting pillows, and then Thisbe dragged the chair from her vanity over towards the foot of her bed so they'd have something to drape the blankets across.
Luckily, her floor was carpeted, but Seth still deposited the heaviest and comfiest of her blankets there, while the lighter ones were used for the top. A few throw pillows to hold those in place, another few for them to actually use, and soon enough, their blanket fort was done.
"We are still masters of this craft," Thisbe said definitively, holding up her hand for a high-five that Seth very excitedly gave.
Then it was just a matter of getting cozy. For once, they didn't argue about who was taking up the blanket or whose legs were in the way of who; maybe because Fifer wasn't there, but Seth liked to think that maybe they'd grown up a little bit. But once they settled in, Thisbe got quiet again.
Seth still didn't want to push the issue, but after being called here and this clearly not distracting her much from the issue, he felt like it wasn't smart to just let it go. So, he asked, "What's wrong?"
"Alex and I got in a fight the other day."
Well, that certainly explained a lot. It was nothing new, but that hardly meant it was easy to get through. Every time something like this happened, either she or Fifer or both of them would be affected for days. And, of course, it'd impact him, too. "How bad?"
"Really, really bad, Seth. Like, we were just talking and then he physically restrained me. With a fucking bubble wrap spell."
"Shit, seriously? Why?"
Thisbe wiped a hand over her face, pointedly looking away from Seth, her fingers covering her mouth. "I told him that, uh…that I'd been thinking about hurting myself."
"Thisbe…"
"Not seriously or anything!" She pushed herself up so she was sitting, and Seth could no longer see her face from where he was laying on the floor. "Like, thinking as in the thoughts are just in my head. Not that I'm actually considering doing it." After a few seconds her shoulders slumped, her scales shimmering as they lowered back against her skin. She ran her hands over them, curling in on herself. "At least…not really."
"Thiz, 'not really' is still kind of concerning. You know that, right?"
She shot a glare back over her shoulder at him. "Don't you start, too." But then her expression softened again, and she turned back away. "It's not… I don't want to. But the thoughts are still there, and even though I don't want to, I'm worried I'll, like, end up convincing myself to, somehow."
She took a shaky breath. “Ever since I got these stupid scales, I feel like I haven’t been able to trust my own thoughts. Like...are they me, or are they her? Or, now, I guess, are they some other dragon? If one could control me, then...could another?”
Seth pushed himself up to sit next to her. “I thought the ancestor broth canceled that out?”
“It should, but you never know, you know?”
“I guess.”
She stopped running her hands up and down her arms, holding them over her scales for a moment before putting her hands together, returning to picking at her nails. “But I guess I’ve never really trusted myself. The sparks, and all that. So it’s not really anything new.”
Seth wasn’t really sure what to say to that, so he just reached out a hand. She paused, then took it in hers, lacing her fingers between his and squeezing tight.
“Are you afraid of me?” she asked.
“Uh, yes?” Seth replied. “A healthy amount, I think.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What do you mean, what is that supposed to mean?! You’ve basically always been stronger than me in a physical fight, you’re smarter than me, and you’re better at magic than me. I think I’m allowed to be a little bit afraid of you.”
Thisbe laughed. “Alright, alright, fair.”
She squeezed his hand tight again, the smile fading. "And the ancestor broth doesn't make me feel much better about it, either. I've got all these memories that aren't mine, and the attacks have stopped, but what if they come back again? Especially if it all it takes is a roar… I'm so scared of randomly having another seizure." She started biting at her lip. Then, quietly: "That's another thing, too, that won't leave my head."
Seth debated for a moment, before pulling his hand from her grasp and pulling her into a hug from the side. Gratefully she accepted it, resting her head on his shoulder and curling up, knees drawn up to her chest. Seth wasn't really sure what to say; his condolences felt empty, as he worked through them in his mind, so he didn't voice them.
After a while, he finally said, "You're, like, really warm, by the way. Not nearly as warm as Dev—is it the dragon fire, or…"
Thisbe snorted. "Dev? Warm? When the Hell'd you get your hands on him to notice that?"
"I've given him plenty of hugs, I'll have you know."
"And how many is plenty?"
Okay, so maybe she had a point there. "Like…four…" he mumbled, and then they both started laughing.
Thisbe ended up being the first out of the two of them to drift off, which Seth felt pretty good about. He knew from experience that, come morning, the problem would return again and again. But for now, they were safe, and they were cozy, and they were happy, and eventually, Seth fell asleep, too.