The yadonushi was asleep, and ordinarily, the thief would be about. But the body needed rest; the thief had pushed it to its limits this last time, and, stubbornly, it would give no more. So the yadonushi slept, in a deep, restorative sleep. His mind was riddled with dreams, and the dreams were full of darkness, and the thief was tired of darkness, so he let his spirit drift out of the Ring, and "stand" beside the yadonushi.
He couldn't go far from the Ring in this form, so he didn't have much choice where he stood, but this was better than listening to the yadonushi's dreams. It was a little strange, to look down at the body that was and was not his. It looked so much like his had been, but softer. He had tried to fix that, but modern conditioners ensured that unless he made it do otherwise, the white hair fell in soft waves, and modern life had ensured that the white hands were as soft as a noblewoman's.
The thief ran a phantom hand possessively over the yadonushi's sleeping form, and the body shuddered, and shifted uneasily. It curled up, and made a small sound in its sleep. The thief frowned, and thought a little about the soul that inhabited the body. It belonged to him as much as the body did, but it constantly rebelled. The thief frowned a little. The soul ought to be at least as much like him as the pharaoh's other soul was to him, but it wasn't. At least not that the thief could tell, and that irritated him.
The yadonushi shifted again, sprawling out in its more typical sleeping position, and the little line between the body's eyes that meant nightmares for the yadonushi smoothed away, meaning that it was once again dreaming of more pleasant things. The thief stared at it for a moment more, then vanished back into their shared consciousness.
It occurred to the thief then that maybe they did have something in common after all; they both had nightmares. And now the thief would only be plagued by his own.