Catching Butterflies
I.
The water felt warm on his skin. Maybe… warm wasn't the right word. The water felt hot on his skin. Like back the-… The through stopped, the throbbing headache came. As soon as it came it stopped. The people around him were talking with each other and with him. His answers short as usual. The water burned the coldness out of his body, like they burned the loneliness out of his soul for the time being. His eyes closed. Relaxation.
Not for long. Pictures flooded his mind. His eyes snapped open. What had this been? "Oi, Gareki, I'm talking to you." "So?" He didn't went back to the line of though.
II.
They were back at the ship. The attack of the post-animals was in the past. Yogi back to normal. And somehow there was nothing to occupy his mind with. At least nothing he could change or books.
It started off as a slight feeling. At first he didn't even really realize it. But the itching gradually grew stronger. The first time he realized it he unconsciously had started to draw a scene he had dreamed about inside of his notebooks. He looked decently around. Nobody seems to have noticed. He silently closed the book and left the room. Never mind the confused Yogi and Tsukumo shoot him.
In the night he found himself sitting in the very same room again. Drawing on the very same picture again.
III.
His dreams steadily grew more vivid. More realistic. Less dreamlike. Less relaxing.
He often woke up in the middle of the night, unable to fall asleep again, wandering through the hallways of the ship. He didn't return to the room he and Nai shared until early the next morning. Instead he spend his nights sitting in the common room reading or, more often than not, drawing scenes out of his nightmares. He didn't exactly know why he did that or when he learned it. But, if he could say so for himself, the pictures weren't even bad.
He just knew that he would keep it secret.
IV.
It had almost been a week. He had taken to carrying his notebook with him all the times. At least until now.
He stared at the table in front of him. He closed the book he had just read and took it with him. To where? He really didn't know. He just started wandering though the hallways like he did every so often night. He stopped at the room Tsukumo was busy teaching Nai. He stopped and wondered. It couldn't hurt taking a quick look could it?
The hesitance should prove to be a mistake. Yogi showed up in the hallway seeing him with his hand raised to open the door. His ever present smile grew happier if possible. "Let's surprise them!" Before Gareki was even able to say something, Yogi had opened the door and dragged him in.
There he stared in the hurt face of Nai and the confused one of Tsukumo. His notebook opened on the desk. "Why didn't you tell me that you could draw like this?" With that he snapped out of the shock that immobilised his body and snatched his notebook from the desk.
They didn't find him again this evening. But that didn't cease the worry.