Seph was flapping the sleeves of her green and white, slightly baggy sweater as she hopped up and down on the train seat beside Laxus. There was a jump in the rails that startled her into no longer hopping, but she still flapped her hands and sleeves as if she was fighting off a swarm bees. She had the window seat, after all, and she had never been on a train before from what she could remember. The train kept taking plunges, inching forward at excruciating paces while it rocked back and forth, but the scenery that passed by kept her occupied—albeit, the same couldn't be said for Natsu and Gajeel. She felt bad for them, knowing that their motion sickness was bad, and she knew that Laxus was keeping his eyes closed, his arms crossed and his body still because he didn't want to look like a motion sick idiot. The window was open a bit, but not too much as to be a danger of Seph falling out—just enough that she could see out and her fur became a bit of a mess. The train didn't stop at too many stations and wasn't very crowded, but it was definitely speedy. There were a couple of attendants going up and down the aisles, taking any orders that people had and bringing them food and beverages, but honestly, she just admired the landscape as it passed by.

Eventually, an attendant came to them and without missing a beat, Erza ordered a slice of cake for herself and a cup of tea for she and Lucy to share.

"What's cake…?"

The question coming so softly and innocently out of Seph's mouth shocked everyone, especially Erza who actually gasped out loud and looked like someone had just wasted an entire strawberry shortcake. Speaking of strawberry shortcake…

"Forget just one slice; we'll take a whole strawberry shortcake, ma'am! Make it with extra strawberries as well!" Erza ordered, scaring the attendant ever so slightly as she nodded frantically and rushed off to get the red-headed Mage what she wished for. Erza than stared straight at Seph, who jumped a little bit because she had merely asked a question about something she really had no idea about. "Cake is perfect 24/7 for breakfast, lunch, dinner, midnight snack, morning snack, afternoon snack—"

"It's a desert." Laxus told the Exceed carefully, trying not to ensure the wrath of Titania or his motion sickness getting out of hand. Seph paused before nodding a little bit, feeling slightly ashamed for never having heard of, seen or tasted cake before, especially not "Strawberry Shortcake".

When the attendant came back with what Erza had ordered, Seph was more than a little surprised at the tasty-looking delight called Cake. It looked to be three layers high with thick frosting in between, seven whole strawberries lining the top in a circle and many slices scattered everywhere one it. There was a small border of white frosting on the bottom of the cake and the top, and one nice, big dollop of the centre garnished with a whole strawberry. Her mouth watered as the waitress cut into the cake and put slices aside, enough for everyone including her, and she saw that the inside was beautiful and crumby. It was a pale yellow color with delicious-looking white frosting in between the layer, with a small tint of red on top of them representing the thinly sliced yet tart and sweet strawberries.

She stared at her slice in awe, unsure if she was even allowed to touch it, and she looked up at Laxus as she put her head in her crossed arms on the table. He paused, cracking open an eye before realizing that she was asking permission to eat it, and he frowned a bit.

"Seph, you don't have to ask when it's been given to you. Go ahead and eat it." He told her, making her brighten up and start jumping in her seat with excitement. That made him smile, even if he felt a little sick without having his eyes closed, because he really hadn't ever seen her so excited before. She had never tried cake before and she happily dug in, not noticing the other gazes resting on her, especially Erza's childlike smile and patience.

The crumby texture met with her tongue and then the cool sweetness of the frosting melted in her mouth alongside the sweet, tart flavors of the strawberries that complimented it so well. Her cheeks went pink and her eyes lit up as she went to take another bite, finding that no one was stopping her. Laxus only dreaded how hyper she would be and how hard it would be to get her to go to sleep that night with all of the sugar running through her system, but otherwise, he was going to let her eat as much cake as she wanted—and as much as Erza would share, which seemed to not be a problem somehow.

She deserved it.

Upon finishing the job they had taken and getting a good night's sleep, although accompanied by a lot of reading and a sugar crash, Seph found herself internally screaming as she sat on the couch in the lobby of the inn, watching as Charles did up the velcro and tied up her shoelaces. With all of the crazy stuff that had happened in the past week, it only made sense for Evergreen to win a bet and have the rest of them escort her to one of the biggest stores in Fiore, although they didn't have to stay with her. Seph could feel the fear of crowds that surely awaited her filling her with dread.

"It'll be okay, Seph." Charles reassured her, pushing her foot away to let her know that he was done with her shoes. "This too shall pass."

"We'll hit a restaurant on the way back, I'm pretty sure, so you can eat away the fear." Katie joked lightly, although she was being honest. They were going to eat out, they all knew that, but honestly, that made Seph even more anxious.

Seph knew that this was going to happen.

This was the largest crowd she had ever seen. She felt her rib cage squeeze her lungs and her vision tunnelled around her… and then a pair of strong arm lifted her up high, placing her down where her feet hit against shoulders and her hands ran through soft blonde hair that gave her comfort.

"You'll be okay, just stick with me." Laxus reassured her, in which she gave him a weak smile and nodded ever so slightly.

As they wandered around, Seph kept her head down, avoiding the gazes of other people as she hold onto Laxus' hair and went wherever he did. She wanted to die from all the attention, but considering that she had nearly died before and survived, she decided to force herself onward through this cesspool of capitalism.

And then she saw it, on the top shelf in front of her and Laxus while they were looking around: a book on Constellations. Oh my God, she wanted it. She smiled wide and then reached out, grabbing it at the same time someone else did, and ended up looking at a girl with dark brown hair and amber red eyes who growled at her. She didn't really have the confidence to growl back, although this had caught Laxus' attention. The girl cleared her throat strongly.

"Excuse me, miss, but I saw this first." She insisted, giving the book a yank, but Seph held on tight. This book would be so cool to read considering the weight that reading the Ignis Ales put on her shoulders, and maybe she could read it to Lily. He seemed like the kind of guy who would be interested in these kinds of things and they hadn't really gotten any time to just sit down and "hang out" like friends seemed to do.

"H-How do you know that…?" Seph questioned softly, yanking the book back towards herself as the girl glared more.

"I'll have you know that I'm a member of DGCP." The girl sneered, yanking the book back towards herself. Seph didn't even know what that was! "I think I know better than you."

"Don't all bigots think that, though?" Laxus suddenly asked, popping into the slightly one-sided argument.

"I am NOT a bigot! I am acting in Humanity's best interest!" The girl scoffed at the tall blonde Mage, who let out a soft sigh. Laxus merely reached up, grabbed hold of the book, and yanked it towards himself. It slipped out of Seph's hands effortlessly, although the girl got a papercut from trying not to lose it.

"You are not acting in Humanity's best interest, but of your boss. They're probably leeching something from DGCP or whatever and funnelling it towards their own pockets."

With that, Laxus walked towards the cash register and left the girl boiling with rage in the middle of the store, in which Seph wrapped her arms around his head to hug him in a thank you. He let out a hum in response, paying for the book and then quickly exiting the store for her comfort. They were going to just go and sit at the rendezvous spot and wait for the others.

Seph actually thought that food sounded pretty good right about then.

Seph was beyond ecstatic that Lily was actually interested in her constellation book like she had thought, turning each page as they read through it together, the small Exceed tending to pause and point at one of the constellations to talk about it a bit, which Lily didn't seem to mind at all. She mostly just knew the mythology behind the figures, but Lily was interested anyways, even when she flipped through it just to talk about Orion. The group seemed to have a great time out, even if they got a couple of odd looks, and they just chatted amongst themselves as Seph and Lily chatted and joked idly about the myths and improbability of the constellations.

For the first time in weeks, everything was back to normal.

And Seph being fast asleep immediately when they got back home should've been a good thing. It was a good thing, until a nightmare surfaced and made her regret ever even thinking about closing her eyes.

It was the time during everything else where she would end up on a cold metal table in a cold, damp room that was so quiet besides the business outside the door. Her wrists were often the limbs pinned down, but the time she was dreaming of was the first time they started strapping her ankles down as well. She hated everything. She didn't know why she was so interesting to them. She honestly really wanted to die.

A different man, a human, entered the room as per usual with the usual suspect of all her nightmares, who sat beside her and held her head down so she wouldn't move it—and he held her eyelid open. The human man took the syringe from his rolling cart, full of a faint luminescent black glow like always, and it was too much to ignore. Seph started wiggling around trying to free her wrists or her head or her ankles, just anything to get her out of here before they could continue with this awful stuff. She wasn't strong enough and she let out a scream of pain and fear as the needle pierced her cornea. The human man pumped the last of the syringe's contents out bit by bit before removing the needle, dabbing the tears, blood and vitreous from the corners of her eye before leaving the room. The Exceed, the usual suspect, he let her cry although he told her to shut up and get it over with, and when she finally stopped but was too exhausted to move, he unstrapped her and carried her back to their usual spot.

It didn't matter if she was exhausted. He always got his way.

And Seph couldn't handle the change of scenery in the nightmare, so she woke up with a jolt and a bloodcurdling scream. Almost immediately Laxus was there, trying to calm her down and then reading to her like she always appreciated him doing so much. When he realized that it wasn't working out, he put the book away and curled up with her, softly humming a tune to help her drift into a hopefully much more peaceful dream than the one she had ended up with before.

He started thinking that, perhaps, he should consult someone on Seph and her nightmares. This couldn't keep going; she wouldn't ever get a proper sleep again if the nightmares just started right back up.

"You want to go on a trip?"

Laxus groaned, rubbing a hand over his face as he thought of how to explain this to the group without ending up right back where they were now, and he leaned forward on the table slightly for effect. He was still tired from waking up so suddenly in the middle of the night and had been unable to go back to sleep for a couple of hours, and even then, he had fallen asleep merely an hour before he had set his alarm to get up. He asked Mira to take care of Seph, or more like distract her, while he talked to a group of people he knew that he could trust about taking a simple trip.

"Yes, I do, but it's not for me—it's for Seph." He responded, glancing over the group at the table from Katie to Erza to Natsu, just the people he knew he could trust with tough subjects no matter how much of an idiot some of them were. They were also people he knew that Seph could trust and honestly, that was his definition of important right now. "Her nightmares have gotten worse again, so I think it would be better to go on a trip with no sense of pressure or danger instead of constantly heading out on jobs like we have been. She needs some down time, some time to just spend with people she cares about, and you all know how much jobs can weigh the soul."

"… That's actually sweet, Laxus." Lucy sighed with a smile, which clicked something in Laxus' head that made him spit out his next words.

"I also need a full night's sleep if I'm gonna do anything!" He spat out, which made the table's residents laugh because he had already exposed himself, but they would give him point's for effort.

"Alright, then we'll go on a trip. I have the perfect place, too!" Erza told them, in which they all started chatting and Laxus gave a sigh, getting up to tell Seph.

He knew that she wasn't one for surprises after all, even if this would've been a good one.