Nourished with only mutual tolerance, our friendship was slow to sprout. Though he had great initiative, Levi was someone of few words after all. He loved to sit in silence, and I loved to watch him do so. With little else to observe, I only had him. I analyzed and noted in my mind where he differed from me.

He moved like cold syrup. A god like him had the luxury of constantly being that relaxed. The way his face stayed flawless was a privilege he had. It was the face of someone who's never had to pinch together his eyebrows, lose his hair out of stress, or strain his eyes crying.

"Do you exist anywhere else but my dreams?" I asked him early on.

Levi had an answer ready. "I exist on my own. When you wake up, time still passes here."

I felt sorry for him. "Don't you get bored?"

"Are you assuming I'm stuck here?" A corner of his lips raised. He sank deeper into his hammock's cloth. "I do get bored. I believe the emotion I feel most frequently is boredom, in fact."

"I guess that's the price of being immortal," I commented.

In response, Levi visibly pondered something. I didn't necessarily expect him to say anything to that. I then just stared up at the leaves above, quizzing myself if there was a single bug living on this tree.

As a child, I rarely considered the lives of arthropods meaningful. I saw them as pests, nuisances. But then I learned that some people considered me a pest. That was when I realized that value is subjective.

We all live, breathe, consume, and die. Doesn't matter how important you allegedly are. The more I took the idea to heart, the more 'soft' I became. Instead of crushing spiders in the house, I began releasing them outside. I didn't care if people called me a pussy for it.

"What is mortality like?" Levi asked after such a long pause, I almost didn't tune him in on time. I turned to meet his eyes. He continued, "Is the anticipation of death frightening?"

I averted my gaze. Of course, I feared death. This fear will forever feed my paranoia and paranoia is draining. It drains me to the point where I now regret beating depression. In a twisted way, I wanted my suicidal tendencies back. Because I knew it was better to wish for death than to live in fear of it.

I said to Levi, nearly under my breath, "More than anything."

"Is it better be mortal, or immortal and bored?" he asked. I think he predicted my answer, but still wanted to hear it straight from me.

I maintained a shrug. Obviously, "Immortal, no matter the boredom."

Levi looked at me. That moment, I think, was the first time I ever offended him. Maybe my quickness to reply is what he was bothered by. "You say that, for your time here is limited. You don't have enough of it to be as bored as me," he said in a more blunt tone. Then his voice digressed, and he spoke to the sky, "I have an unbearable excess of time. But sometimes, I manage to run out somehow."

It was far into December. As if it had waited for me, snow fell upon the city right as I threw out my last empty box. My family and I had gone and bought new mattresses for each of us. I felt like I had just finished a big project when I finally pushed my own mattress into an appropriate corner of my room.

I didn't mention Levi to anyone. Part of it was because they wouldn't believe me and I saw no point in convincing them if they accused me a schizophrenic. The other part of me liked that no one had access to Levi but me.

I was being selfish, not possessive. My connection to him was something unique to me. It made me feel unique and, I'm afraid to say it, better than others.

I consulted him when I had questions relating to, 'Why do we dream?' or 'Is there an afterlife?', and he always returned the most succinct answers. Sometimes he voiced his opinions on certain topics, and even when we disagreed he never held it against me. He never became bothered that seemingly every sentence that came out of my mouth was a question.

I asked him another time, "What do you think of humans?"

He was lying on the floor, looking at the earth. "I wouldn't like living as you," he said, shaking his head, "humans are restrained in all kinds of ways. Their limited lifespan, limited strength, and limited senses." he paused, looking almost reluctant to say next, "I suppose...I dislike that they're hard to befriend." A narrator's voice, he had. He was fluent in what intonations to use, and surely able to fill an auditorium with not much effort.

I let my curiosity take over. "Am I hard to befriend?"

Always slow to respond. "...We directly exchanged names," he recalled, "maybe that makes us friends."

Friends with a god. The idea brought a smile to my face. I may have looked mischievous and Levi may have saw that, which was maybe why he then said to me in his deceivingly neutral attitude, "You seem thick with pride. Perhaps it should be gratitude."

He just humbled me. Maybe that was the game I didn't realize we were playing. A mental battle of superiority in which he would win, every, single, time.

"Gratitude?" I said, stifling the bitterness that crept within me.

"To your parents. If if weren't for their decision, we wouldn't have met," Levi elaborated. "I only appear to those who sleep in your room, you know."

A dark thought came to me. "Other people can sleep in my room," I pointed out.

There was a moment without further words as Levi moved himself from the floor to his hammock. He lay himself down gracefully, didn't make it wobble. "Yes? They would most certainly dream of me, I believe. But that is if I allow them to."

"Does that mean you allowed me in?" I asked.

Levi yawned. "Wake up," he croaked. And just like that, it was a chilly morning. I was lying on a bed and not a hammock.

I sat up, annoyed with myself because I realized that I asked too many questions.

Externally, there was little change to my life. I was still distant with family. Mikasa and I haven't spoken in almost 2 weeks, I think, because mom and dad didn't prompt us to communicate.

I cared to know if she was alive. Past that, her whereabouts and her tribulations weren't important to me.

The snow became more dense. I was able to make a snowman with it. It was a midget snowman because I didn't think I could roll a big base. It stood there, mouthless, eyeless, and noseless because I didn't have buttons or a carrot. Only thing that brought it somewhat to life was its two arms made with a couple sticks I found in the area.

I saw it outside the window every time I washed dishes. Each sighting, I would think of Levi, then shake the thought away because comparing him to a snowman didn't really make sense.

When I went to sleep one night, climbed out my window, crossed the bridge, and stepped through the leaves, I expected to find Levi somewhere on the wooden platform.

He was absent, which was strange. He was never absent before.

It brought up some questions, like, 'Who was going to dismiss me from sleep?' and 'Am I able to dismiss myself?"

Puzzled, I spread his hammock flat. He was not hidden in it.

The silence sounded like abandonment. The vocal wind and rustling of leaves were almost talking to me in an attempt to relieve Levi's lack of presence.

I walked to an edge, and looked down to see if the snowman I built was where I left it. And though having to squint, I spotted him at quite a distance.

He was as small as I had made him. But when I squinted harder, I saw that he had a face. Two dark buttons where his eyes were, five smaller buttons for his mouth, and a wild carrot for a nose.