Bad dreams...BAD dreams...Bad...

The thought kept making its rounds through my head.

I had been the one to call them that, sure, but she hadn't denied it...she hadn't tried to correct me when I asked if she'd had bad dreams after hearing her mumble about the People In Charge...in fact, she'd said she had a few of them.

I sympathize with her, of course I do, I really do. I mean...I do sympathize with anyone who ended up there, I guess, but especially her. Bad enough to get there by your own, intentional doing, like me...but I can't imagine getting there when you weren't meant to be.

I don't know where people who die normally, as she'd put it, end up when they die, but wherever it was, was where she definitely should've been.

Maybe it was just my own self deprecating problems or whatever, but I just can't bring myself to put that behind me, or even consider it a particularly bad experience.

Sure, things are considerably better here...even if I hadn't realized I missed the way they were here before, but it was tolerable. Maybe not to begin with, but how many things are, really?

Maybe I'm just biased cause it's where I met Mikal, and the thought of being there was slightly more tolerable than when things in normal life got rough or complicated.

And it's not that I particularly would rather be back there than here...I guess it's just that being brought back wasn't exactly the grand relief it probably should be.

I'm sure if my life was some big movie, I'd be so thankful that I'd been brought back and realize some cliche level lesson about appreciating life or whatever, but it's...it's different, and unfortunately more complicated than some heartfelt movie cliche.

It's an adjustment.

I flip through the guide on the little flat screen for a few more minutes before giving up and switching it off for the night, to go join Mikal upstairs.

Luna, who'd taken Mikal's spot by laying her own head in my lap, got up when I nudged her off and proceeded to follow me to the kitchen to grab a glass of water and then up the stairs.

Mikal's sound asleep with her light on and a book, which I can't make out the title of because her fingers are positioned just over it still, laying open and face down on her chest when I crack the door open before sneaking in, so as not to wake her.

I quietly make my way over to her nightstand, switch her light off, and mark her spot in her book before placing it in front of her lamp and then continuing over to my side of the bed.

I have to pull the blanket, slightly, out from under Luna to cover up Mikal before settling myself in, to which she reluctantly abides.

"Good night" I whisper, barley audibly, to Mikal before drifting off to sleep, myself.