The house is fraught with jagged shadows and dark corners, and Laurent steels himself with all the bravery in his frail six year old body as he sees the apparitions of monsters and Risen out of the corners of his eyes. The floor is cold when his feet touch the floor, and he slides out of his bed, tucking his blanket back over his pillow, before heading for the door. The creak of the floorboards and the rattling of his closet door do nothing to comfort him. Laurent swallows. His pulse is hard and fast in his chest, reverberating in his ears like the rat-a-tat of a galloping horse's hooves upon cobblestones.
Laurent's father had once told him that he need not fear anything, for his parents would always love and protect him. Laurent has no doubts of his mother's love, no matter how awkward and roundabout she may be in expressing it. However, she has always stayed awake into the early hours of the morning, too engrossed in her research to notice the hours slipping away until the first rays of sunlight crept through the windows of her laboratory. Thus it had been Laurent's father who would comfort him in his times of fear, through night terrors and supernatural scares. Laurent hasn't seen his father in nearly three months, and judging by the way his mother averts her gaze and presses her lips into a stern line every time Laurent inquires as to the time of his return, Laurent gets the feeling that his father will not be coming home in a very long time.
It's easy to locate his mother's laboratory, the only room in the house still lit at such late hours. In the pitch-black corridor, Laurent sees the flicker of candlelight, a small dancing wave of illumination leaking out from the crack of the laboratory door, and heads towards it, pulled like a ship to a lighthouse. The door opens with a soft scratching sound as the warped wood scrapes against the floor as Laurent peeks his head through the gap, half-fearing the consequences of interrupting his mother's research. His mother whips around in his direction immediately, shoulders tense and fingertips cracking with magic ready for release, before she registers who the intruder is, and relaxes. Clearing her throat and sitting up in her chair, she raises an eyebrow in an inquisitive manner. "Laurent, what incites your arousal from slumber at so nocturnal an hour?" She asks. Most of the time, even with his wide vocabulary, while Laurent usually understands the meaning of his mother's questions, he only recognizes about half of the words used. This time, her words are more simple, perhaps an indication of the late hour.
The boy shuffles his feet as he enters the laboratory, and he hesitates to answer, unsure of how his mother would react to his concerns. This is the first time that he has come to her for conciliation in such times, and he hopes that he will not receive an unexpected reaction. In a soft voice, he murmurs his answer once, too hushed for his mother to hear, and she reprimands him sharply, telling him to speak up. When he repeats his words, his voice is significantly shriller than he remembers it being.
"Mother, I believe there to be an apparition of the supernatural order within my room, and am finding its presence most unconducive to my rest," he informs her, attempting to sound as formal and non-terrified as possible. He braces himself for his mother's response, and rightfully so. Mother is a woman of science, Laurent thinks, as he should be. She makes no effort to hide her disbelief of his claim, and it is apparent upon her sharp features. Laurent is hit by a wave of crippling shame at his own childishness and the illogic of his fears.
Laurent's mother sighs once, pinching the bridge of her nose between her thumb and middle finger, before flipping the pages of the tome on her desk and returning to her work. "Laurent, I believe I have told you previously that specters and phantasms of such fantasy are merely the delusional machinations of one's own imagination, and should not be taken heed of. These apparitions which you speak of will not harm you. You'd do best to return to sleep, my son." The corner of mother's lip twitches in the way that it does whenever she does not know to react in a situation, and uses a facade of stoicism and academic detachedness to conceal her weakness. Laurent blames her not for what may appear to be a cold rebuke- he and his father had always understood that mother was not the most adept at comforting others, and they had never once held her nature against her.
Laurent returns to his bed without another word, and the door of the closet seems to rattle even more ominously, the squeaking floorboards making jest of his cowardice. Crawling beneath his blanket and pulling the sheets up to his chin, Laurent focuses on the inhale and exhale of his own respiratory system and on the knowledge that for every time sets, due to the rotation of the earth, it will always rise again. When he told his father about the ghosts, his father would always sit beside him and stay with him until he fell asleep, acting as a ward against all terrors and evils. If Laurent listens carefully, he can hear the clink of glass vials and the scratch of quill against parchment coming from his mother's laboratory.
Laurent falls asleep to these sounds, and the sincere wish that his father would return from the battlefield.
