Claire doesn't sleep well anymore. She has this strange habit of waking up in places she's fairly sure she didn't go to sleep in.
Like the field she's in now. It's dark, the heavy clouds deepening the shadowy trees on the horizon. Silver from the night sky reflects off leaves and whatever else is uncovered. The air is frigid, almost burning her lungs, and the ground is coated in a thin layer of white dust… Snow? She thinks, followed shortly by the much more important question. Where am I? Arcadia doesn't snow, and it's also summer.
Claire portals home, the inky black hole splitting the snowy air. She doesn't linger on the thought of how cold her staff is as she walks through, like ice, stinging her fingers as she grips the handle, she'd rather not touch it while It's like this.
It's not the first time she's woken up out of her bed, but it is the strangest. Usually the places she sleep-portals to are in Arcadia; her living room, the school, Jim's house, sometimes even the bridge or the canal. But never… wherever this was. She didn't know It was even possible to portal to somewhere she didn't know.
"Well, well, well, look who finally decided to show up." Great, Not-Enrique's here. Just the person Claire wants to talk to.
"You were supposed to watch me!" Claire snaps, finding his glowing eyes in the dark.
"And I did! I watched you better than mom watches me, and That's saying something, y'know she put a second camera in my room. Makes sneakin out real hard an-"
"Not-Enrique!" Claire cuts him off before he can change the subject. "What Happened!"
"Alright alright, no need to get mad. I was wachin' ya just like I was supposed to, but then Susie got real scared, cause it was pretty dark, so I went to tuck her int-" He fidgets.
"You left me!?" Screams Claire "alone?! You had one job! One tiny job! Watch me while I'm sleeping!"
"It was only for a moment." His voice is irritating, it's loud and combative and not at all what she needs right now.
"A moment is all I need to portal halfway across the world onto a mountain or- or a uh- a freezing lake!" The last part of Claire's sentence becomes anxious and scattered, her face a frenzied mask of pain and fear. Claire trips over her own feet as she stumbles back to sit on her bed.
"Whoa, yeah let's- let's have a seat sis…" Not-Enrique's worried voice does nothing to help Claire's racing mind.
"I don't need to have a seat." Claire says, standing back up off her bed. "What I need to do is find out what's wrong with me!"
"Nothin's wrong with you sis, you're just-"
"NOTHINGS WRONG?!" Claire shouts.
"ERYTHINGS WRONG!" Claire paces around her room, her snowy boots track wet prints across her floor. "I mean- I- I can barely stay awake during troll hunting stuff, much less at school. I've fallen asleep in my last three algebra classes! Moms on my back about it. But I can't actually sleep like a normal person cause if I fall asleep I might portal myself halfway across the world! And even if I don't, even if I wake up in my own bed, I feel worse than I did when I fell asleep! Nothing's wrong? My life is a disaster Not-Enrique, both of them. I'm slipping, and we both know it."
Claire tries to calm herself, willing her lungs to take deep breaths as she sits on the bed by Not-Enrique. "I Just- I feel like I'm unraveling, like someone's pulling me apart at my seams. I don't- I don't know what will happen if someone needs me, if Jim needs me and I just… can't."
A long silence passes between the two of them. Claire's breathing steadies, she holds her head In her hands. A passing car moves the shadows on her wall, it's absence leaves her room darker than it was before.
"What can I do to help?" Not-Enriques Voice is small, barely above a whisper, Claire looks over at him, but he's almost invisible in the dark.
Claire's voice is almost as quiet as his, but more uncertain, more afraid. "I don't-" her voice cracks "I don't know, just- just stay with me, while I'm sleeping… please?" the end of her sentence is so quiet, so soft that It could have been a breeze, no more than a whisper on the wind. But Not-Enrique knows better. He nods in response the tiniest "okay" slips from his mouth as Claire lies on her bed, drifting into a cold and dreamless sleep.