Kingdom Hearts: Kingdom Hearts: Light Chaser

​

The air was dense and hard to breath in. Aria’s body felt heavy, and ached as she hung suspended in the air by her arms. She didn’t have pep in her left to fight like usual, even though her mind was screaming at her to do something. She couldn’t make her limbs move though, even if she tried to focus all her strength into twitching just one finger.

Move, she begged herself. Come on, move!

The familiar shriek made the girl’s eyes suddenly open. There before her was the cloaked monster, smiling at her with its sharp, pointed teeth, drooling and growling lowly. It’s claws were already dug into her shoulders, pinning her in the air with no escape.

Aria, wake up.

It was that feminine voice again...

The monster dug it’s claws into her deeper, making the girl gasp out and grit her teeth.

Aria, it’s just a dream.

A blinding light suddenly overpowered the monster, making it release Aria from its claws and stumble back.

Wake up!

Aria suddenly sat up in bed, panting and shuddering from the sudden adrenaline rush. She glanced around her with wide, fearful eyes, seeing she was not in a familiar place. It was a room given to accommodate her in the castle, where she and everyone else was staying. Strangely though, it was dark and hard to see in. Aria swore there was some kind of nightlight on before she laid down and drifted off... or even a full moon was showing through the windows .

The girl brought up her sheets around her, breathing out as she felt uneasy. “It’s just in your head,” she assured herself. “You woke up, you’re not dreaming anymore. You don’t need to get anyone...”

It was then she realized she did the impossible... she woke herself from her own nightmare! Whoever or whatever that blinding light was in her dream, she figured that Aria somehow summoned that power from within to ward away the terrible creature. She was starting to get a handle on this!

With that, Aria smiled to herself and nodded her head. She was doing better with handling her nightmares, just like Master Choma said she would be able to do. Maybe it was how much of an effort she put into the fights lately that’s made her feel stronger. Satisfied and feeling good about herself, she scooted on her bed, turning to lay down-

She was suddenly face to face with the cloaked monster. Aria’s face paled and she let out a very quiet whimper. ‘No! What are you doing here...? You’re supposed to be gone!’

Never in her life had Aria seen this beast outside of her usual nightmares. She could hear her heart pounding in her ears and feel her throat go dry. There was even a heavy weight on her bed as it crouched there, staring at her from under its hood. It’s breath was icy cold, which sent more chills down the girl’s spine and made the hairs on her neck stand up on end.

It stared at her a moment, tilting its head slowly as a gurgle sounded out through its throat. It then licked its lips and grinned with its teeth glinting in an odd light. With that, it bore its fangs and lunged at her with claw like hands out to attack.

Blood-curdling screams suddenly echoed from Aria’s room through the castle’s halls. And the sounds of a struggle could be heard behind closed doors...

 

​

Takehiko's sleep had been dreamless. And when he'd woken up, he stared up at the ceiling trying to process where exactly he was before he slowly sat himself up. He remembered the previous day, and how he ended up in a new world, but how exactly he got into this room in particular was hazy to him. All he could remember was a lot of information, a bit of pain, and fear. But he couldn't remember why he was afraid. Surely there wasn't a detail about this place that freaked him out or anything.

The boy looked down and his left hand and he raised it up to stare at it a while. He flexed it a bit and felt much less pain and had no idea if it was the tea or not, but he also noted it was bandaged a bit differently now. Still the same color and everything but with everything seemingly redistributed more towards his entire hand and wrist and less the other part of his arm. Especially his fingers. So he was curious if someone had done some work on it when he was sleeping. It didn't really matter. But then the boy looked towards his other arm. Nothing was there, but he could have sworn something was wrong with it last night. Like something swelled.

Then it hit him, and the boy took in a deep breath to calm himself down before he got himself up from bed to try and go exploring a little bit. Though he didn't want to wander off too far, since he remembered needing to talk to Atmos about what happened the day before. So he could learn what happened with... Choma's castle being killed by the master of masters? No, he knew that couldn't have been right. Castles can't get killed.

He got himself out of the room and heard the voice of someone calling for Mika because of Nini wanting food. Take had no idea who would be calling for Mika to take Nini unless...

Take walked a bit closer towards the voice, clicking his tongue a bit before calling out, "Nini. Come here, I'll feed you."
The little cat mewed and ran on away from Tinarah's side over to Take, and she pounced up only for Take to catch her in time as he said, "Ow ow. Careful. The hand." she climbed up onto his shoulder and kind of clung there before he walked closer, once he could identify exactly where Tinarah's door was.

He stopped when he saw her peering out and stared surprised a minute because it was the first time he could really process the fact that she was.. older. Taller too, but that was kind of expected in the deal. After a few seconds he asked, "Would you like me to grab you something to eat too? You look like you need another minute... or several. But mostly food."

 

​

Aria was thrashing her arms around as if trying to get something off of her. She was didn’t even hear the door slam open she was caught so deeply in fight mode. When Torrin grabbed her arms, Aria shrieked out and tried to pull them back away from him, not knowing it was someone coming to help her. When she tried to hit and couldn’t, her eyes snapped open as she pressed herself in the mattress to try to escape. Everything was blurry at first, and then she caught the familiar facial features of Torrin.

The girl was frozen, hyperventilating and looking around wildly. She was stiff under the older teen’s hands, and chest was rising up and down rapidly.

“T-Torrin...?” Aria choked out. She started to relax as her mind was waking up and becoming more aware that she wasn’t sleeping anymore. Aria’s face contorted as her eyes filled with tears and her body shook. She had never been so scared in her life. “I’m sorry,” she breathed out as tears rolled down her cheeks freely. “I-I’m sorry to have scared you... I’m really sorry...”

Aria pushed herself to sit up, and winced when pain ached through her shoulders. Her body was shaking like a leaf, and she cursed herself for being this weak in front of someone she barely knew. She wiped her tears away away with the back of her hand, and felt stings radiate through her muscles. Raising an eyebrow, Aria looked down at her arm and gasped, her face paling further. There on her skin were thin ribbons of crimson as if she had been scratched. She held out the other arm to examin it, seeing it suffered the same fate. “No... This... this can’t be. It was just a dream...”

But she’s wasn’t so sure about that anymore, and panic was starting to overtake her again. She dropped her arm and reached up to her night shirt she’s had changed into. She peeled back by the neckline to have a look at one of her aching shoulder and gasped. There, where the nightmares had dugged its claws into her skin, there was a large, purple looking bruise there. “How...?”

 

Atmos lead one of her students away Torrin told him they weren't going to take any extreme measures. "If you say so..." Boreas said a little bit hesitantly. Then Aster joined them and tugged at the bracelet with Boreas watching closely, as force was applied to the bracelet the bracelet started to shrink and grow tighter around Aria's wrist. Torrin then tried something to get the bracelet away and it seemed to work but Torrin pulled away his hand in pain, it looked like he burned his hand, Aria helped him with his hand. "Torrin, if I helped you or you'd use my armour to protect your hands from the heat?" Boreas asked, it seemed to be working so perhaps with some additional protection it might work. As they all went inside Boreas gave Adalric a hand with getting Tinarah to a room, then found himself a room.

Boreas found himself in a bed resting as much as he could, even when they were in the castle of the masters supposedly safe according to Aster but old habbits died hard. Back home he always slept very lightly an attack could happen at any time and he was always ready for one, it had been drilled into him by his military service, it's what saved him a few times as well as out in the fields they would get raided by night and by the time Boreas had gotten up and ready they would already be upon him. Even if it were the safest place in the universe with no Light Chaser threatening them at all and he would still sleep lightly. He even had gained a reputation for sleeping with his eyes opened sitting in a chair, it had freaked out his mother a few weeks ago when she found him like that, but he didn't do it often.

Boreas awoke from his sleep, there were screams.... Boreas shot up and activated his armour again he left his room, summoning his blade. There were more screams and Boreas followed the sound, was this an attack? Aster had mentioned the Light Chaser didn't want to try his luck in here but at a night raid or early morning attack, to chip away at their numbers? The Light Chaser had already proved to be a cunning foe. But it didn't make any sense, there was by the sound of it only one person screaming. As Boreas got closer he heard the door being beaten down followed by shouting. Torrin's shouting, Boreas bolted down the hallway to go find his friend and back him up. He arrived at the broken down door to see Torrin telling Aria to breathe and Aria apologising to Torrin for waking him up. Realizing it wasn't a night raid Boreas unsummoned his Keybblade and deactivated his armour. "Is everything alright here? I heard screams... you okay?" Boreas asked. From what Aria was saying there was something strange going on regarding dreams. "What happened?"​

 

​

It didn't exactly take a genius to figure out how out of it and just... thrown off Tinarah was. Probably more so than everyone else was over the fact that she came back five years older. He didn't really wanna push it. But he did want food. Nini wanted food. And he knew at the end of this, Tinarah was gonna want food too. Take looked at Choma and asked, "Do you think she's gonna be alright, or are we going to end up having to keep her here while we move-"

Takehiko immediately cut off his own words when he heard Atmos' voice and looked over towards her door, or at least seemingly her door with a concerned look on his face. He wanted to walk over to check up, but he heard another voice with her, so the boy backed up pretty quickly and he looked at Choma. Reaching up for Nini, he gave her a quick scritch behind the ears as he said, "I'm just... going to get food. Figure out where the kitchen is and all that... fun stuff..." and he headed on away.

It wasn't too much exploring for Take to find the kitchen, but when he did, he ran into a woman with white hair (Well, not literally but at the very least encountered her) and he nodded to her saying, "Hello... um... am I allowed to grab food? Seems rude to take without asking. I was gonna grab some and bring some to Tinarah."
Nini meowed when food was mentioned and jumped off his shoulder to try and get into the fridge, "Uh, Nini too."

 

​

Chrono found his sleep to be quiet. There were no dreams to keep him sleeping peacefully nor any nightmares to speed up his awakening. He found himself waking and staying put long enough to take in another look at the interior of his room. It was a quick look around, his eyes making the trip around twice before Chrono got up from the bed and got himself dressed.

He backtracked his way back to Tinarah's room. As curious as he was about the story that would ideally provide answers to his questions, Chrono was more concerned with her well being right now. The questions that he had right now could wait for right now. Chrono spotted Master Choma leaning against the wall. "Master Choma, I didn't expect to see you here."

 

Qamar nodded at Master Aster, understanding the whole resting part. After all, they probably needed it after...whatever they went through. Especially considering their one friend was conked out in Adalric’s arms. Qamar then felt embarrassed at Aster’s words that came next. She got angry that a guy like that was even a keyblade master. Did he even train? Who knows. All she knew was that she wanted to be a master even sooner now. And the realm of darkness...that sounded dangerous to Qamar. Why should they even trust these people if they came from such a place. She almost questioned Aster, but decided against it.


Following Master Aster, Qamar watched the exchange that went on with the strange bracelet on Aria’s wrist. Qamar studied the bracelet and almost reached for it when she saw Torrin exert some type of darkness onto it. She saw how it reacted and she knew instantly to just...leave it be for now. “It’s completely made of darkness…” Qamar muttered to herself, tapping her chin. She eventually shrugged and walked off, returning to Adalric, the sleeping girl, and the knight.


“I’ll walk with you to the east wing.” she smiled to Adalric. “So I can know where her room is to help her when she wakes up.” Qamar knew helping Tinarah when she woke up was one of her top priorities. As she followed the group inside, she watched Adalric lay Tinarah down and she offered to stay to make sure Tinarah didn’t wake up. Once the cat finally fell asleep, Qamar left and headed off to the east wings.


She approached the door to Master Kide’s room and stepped inside. After what seemed like quite a while, Qamar stepped out looking sullen. Kide had gotten onto her and laid right into her. Qamar dared not to speak back, so she took the verbal abuse and apologized to Kide as often as she could. Once he finally stopped, she was able to leave and reflect on her actions. Sulking, she walked to her room and closed the door. She leaned against the door and slid down, feeling her eyes grow wet. She wipe the tears and let them come for now, eventually wiping them off completely and fixing her makeup.


Qamar left her room to assist with distributing the meals to whomever wanted them and she even left some for Tinarah in case she awoke. She left a tiny saucer of milk for the kitten, probably not enough, and left. By morning, she knew it’d be time for more food and the meeting later, so Qamar headed off to bed. Locking her door, she undressed and slipped into black short shorts, a dark purple sleeveless shirt, and tugged her hair loose. She slithered into her blankets and snuggled up, quickly falling asleep.


Morning finally came and Qamar woke up to just a tiny amount of sunlight spreading across her bed. She yawned and stood up, slipping into a pair of flip flops and leaving her room. First on the agenda was her morning ritual of stretching and building a little strength in her body. Even though the sun was rising, it was still far from time for everyone to wake up, so she was able to do her morning routine unnoticed. She preferred it that way, but sometimes a Master or Adalric would come to speak to her.


As the sun started to come up over the horizon more, Qamar sat down and closed her eyes. She had just finished her training for the morning and was now resting. In the distance, she heard a scream and opened one eye, glancing up towards the east wing. “That wasn’t Tinarah.” she muttered to herself, ignoring the screams as they died down moments later. As far as she knew, whatever it was, somebody else had taken care of it.


Back in her room after much meditating, Qamar dressed herself. While the screams concerned her, she really wanted to check on Tinarah now. That girl concerned Qamar the most right now, seeing as she was in such bad shape. Tightening her hair back, she opened her pale yellow eyes and smiled.


Qamar left her room and walked briskly towards the east wing. She stopped at Aria’s room, glancing in and raising an eyebrow. The door was broken and Aria looked to be hurt...but there were plenty of people in that room that she felt like she wasn’t needed. She continued on to Tinarah’s room in time to see Take and Choma there. The cat was now on Take’s shoulder and that amused Qamar. Not entering into the conversation, Qamar looked at Tinarah and blinked as the girl retreated into her room once again.


Having no sense of privacy, Qamar put her hand on the door and summoned her keyblade. “Girls only.” she said, opening the bedroom door and going inside. She locked the door back and heard the bath water running. “Tinarah, I know you want a bath, but do you even have anything to change into?” Qamar asked. “I can offer some clothes, but I can’t guarantee that they are not all black.” She chuckled to herself at her joke. Qamar stood outside the bathroom door.​

 

​

Aria’s eyes darted over to Boreas, the guy that suggested to take extreme measures if they couldn’t take off the bracelet normally. He seemed concerned though, and she caught a glimpse of his armor and keyblade before it vanished. She felt bad for causing such a fuss and bit her lower lip.

She then looked at Torrin with wide eyes when he seemed to order the older guy to go get Master Choma and summon the master of the castle. She felt dread within her and fought back the panic and the tears the best she could. It was then Torrin took her scratched up arms, and she winced as she stared back down at them. Whatever happened in her sleep terrified her to seemingly no end, and now to see it physically hurt her...she didn’t even hear Torrin tell her that no one was going to hurt her. He was trying to comfort her, but she knew it not to be true...

She finally remembered to breathe in through her nose, and let out an unsteady, slow breath of air. She watched as her scratches faded under the green glow of Torrin’s hands and she looked at him with curiosity. He didn’t need to summon his keyblade to use the spell.

He was thanking her for yesterday, which brought her anxiety ridden mind back to reality. “You’re welcome,” she half-whispered as he began to heal her shoulder. She took in another shivering breath of air, and let it out gradually. She then winced in pain, and looked to the other shoulder. “Oh yeah, it held me with b-both of its clawed hands,” she muttered as she turned the other shoulder to Torrin to show him the other bruise standing out.

She sniffed again and hiccuped softly as tears were still trying to make an appearance, which she rubbed her eye furiously with the heel of her palm. “I had these nightmares since I could remember... it’s always the same; some weird creature in a tattered cloak with sharp teeth and gnarly clawed hands... I never seen its eyes. It never talks. It just growls, shrieks, and gurgles. Sometimes it’ll be over someone, trying to take their...” She swallowed hard and began to fiddle with the charms on Mika’s bracelet as she talked. “... their heart... and then it’ll turn its attention on me. It’ll make me stuck or freeze in place and then it would pin me a little ways up in the air with some kind of darkness so I can’t run or struggle so much. It’ll show me it’s sharp teeth and get a scare out of me... Just only recently it started to dig its claws in me. This is the first time it caught me outside of the usual dream area. I thought I woke up. I thought I was safe. And th-then it was here, hovering over me on my bed... where I was supposed to be safe. It was supposed to be gone.”

Aria trailed off and shuddered at the thought. “I’m supposed to have grown out of it by now,”’ she mumbled as she looked up at Torrin. “I’m supposed to have a handle on it, but it keeps getting worse and worse... and now this happened.” She looked at her arms and inspected them again, seeing that Torrin didn’t miss a single scratch. “... They’re going to believe me right?” Aria whispered as her eyes landed on Torrin again. “Even if the marks are gone, th-they’re going to believe that something weird is going on, r-right?”

She shivered from feeling suddenly cold and closed her eyes as she inhaled and exhaled again before letting her eyes open again. “This is more terrifying than being trapped in a tight space,” she muttered to herself, letting her tears fall freely yet silently.

 

Torrin answered for the girl that briefly glanced his way. Torrin followed up with outright ordering him to find Choma and tell him to find the master of the castle. Boreas wasn't going to be any good here in trying to comfort Aria anyways and they were orders. While Torrin said it was just a nightmare, what Aria had said seemed to imply there was more going on than simply a nightmare. The orders he got gave the same impression, if it were simply a nightmare then neither the master or the master of the castle were necessary here. "Choma... choma...tall guy that arrived after we did right?" Boreas asked, he figured it was the tall guy as that would be the only person in the group who'd really need a bed the size of the one in the master's bedroom in the other castle.

As Aria began talking about what happened in the nightmare Boreas took it as his sign to leave, it wasn't really his place to listen to something personal like that and with that Boreas went to look for Master Choma, he started his search in the west wing as Boreas had first gone to help Adalric drop Tinarah off in the eastern wing before finding himself a place to sleep and didn't exactly know where the master had gone off too. Boreas walked fairly quickly but wasn't going to draw too much attention to himself by running not when a little bit of discretion was required. Not having any luck in the western wing, Boreas headed for the eastern wing, shortly after finding the man he had been looking for outside of Tinarah's room together with her brother. The young man approached the two of them and spoke up. "Good morning to the both of you." He said before turning to Choma "I apologise for the rather inconvenient timing, Master Choma but I need to speak with you alone for a moment. It's important." Boreas said, skipping introductions, they could wait and perhaps this man had picked up a few things about him already and didn't need the introductions anyways.​

 

​

Takehiko didn't even get a chance to respond to her before she was already gone. He looked down at Nini who was still munching on the ham happily. Well, he had permission to get food he supposed. He shifted around looking for food before he ended up somehow cooking himself and Tinarah waffles with a side of bacon. He didn't even know if Tinarah liked waffles, or bacon. The only reason he even cooked waffles was because he knew that was Chrono's favorite meal and he just kind of assumed they'd have the same favorite meal. He figured he should have gone with something safer like cereal. He at least knew not too cook too much for her though. Tinarah looked like she hadn't eaten much in weeks, and knew eating too much could just end up making her sick.

He finished up and instead of pouring syrup on her's he placed syrup in a little cup so she could pour it at her leisure. He ate his food whilst cooking hers, and when he was done he covered it up and fed some more food to Nini before heading on back up towards Tinarah's room.

 

... A gale force wind stormed out from the open door with a bellowing roar. Like dust and debris wrapping into a cyclone, pitch black and deep violet particles of Darkness and shadow rushed out riding the wind.

Standing downwind, the dark haired boy fought against the torrent; he had carried nearly twenty feet from the door by the initial outburst. In long, slow, laborious strides, he pushed his way towards the door. He had to close it; though he wasn't sure how, or if he even could, it had to be done. It was his fault anyways.

Overhead, the Homestead Lodge lurched and rumbled. Clutter clattered in violent crashes as it fell to the floors. At the epicenter of the disaster, the wayhouse was getting the full impact of the tremors rocking the tunnels beneath and around its foundations. It won't last, the boy worried. The Lodge would fall into itself if he couldn't cut off the Darkness soon enough. Yet, it remained an effort of futility: try as he might against the gale and shadow, he could cover no more than five feet before losing resistance and being blown back further than he had been; the best he could do was hold his position and hope that the storm would settle at some point.

BOOM!

A massive roar of thunder erupted from outdoors, shaking even the cavern leading to the door. Then, appearing in silhouettes just beyond the door frame, the small, yellow-eyed monsters began emerging. Allowing the wind to take them forth, they flowed like a river of tar into the cavern corridor. “No!” the boy cried. He threw his arms forward. The Key gifted to him… or was it cursed... unto him by his mentor manifest between his clasping fingers. Flares of energy flew from the opposite end of the Key, destroying several of the “yelloweyes”; it wasn’t enough to maintain a constant fire against the creatures.

His effort to keep the beasts under fire only helped to throw his resistance against the gale. The force emanating from the door only swelled to greater intensity. As though it were aware of the boy’s struggle to cease its rage, the Darkness directed its power exactingly upon him. With a final heave, it swept the boy’s feet out from beneath him. As a husk of tumbleweed whipped about by a cyclone, the boy was flung back through the cavern, into an enveloping cloud of shadow.


He felt the backside of his head slam against a hard surface. HIs vision blurred rapidly; within seconds, all was dark to him...

​

The sensation of treading through a tunnel towards blinding white light ushered Glyde into the waking world. He rose from the bed in the manner in an almost jumping fashion. Panting heavily, gasping for air, he felt the running of another cold sweat down his face. “Another one,” he grunted. He retained a yelp or scream, for the concern that he might wake someone, or otherwise draw attention to his room. Silently, save for his heavy breathing, he threw his covers off, and set his feet down to the floor.

He took a single, protracted stare at the window: night gone, and morning had come. The mist and fog covered the details of the landscape, but he could tell that it was light outside.

Working to utter at least a small measure of control over himself, he set about dressing for the day ahead. The process amounted to very little; he had only the clothes on his back, his cloak, and the boots he had tucked under the bed the previous night. Within less than two minutes, he was fully clothed, cloak included. Though with a hesitant first step, he set out down the corridor, carrying with him the stained, but otherwise empty plate and drinking glass from the prior evening’s dinner.

He wasn’t entirely certain in which direction to go to get anywhere in the castle…

A sudden scream from the same corridor, while not the compass he had hoped for, guided him towards others among the castle guests. Curious and beyond that concerned by the scream, he quick dropped the plate and glass to the floor, and ran back down the hall, where he saw Torrin rushing into a room not far off. Glyde arrived in time overhear the conversation… it had been Aria’s scream… A nightmare… Her too. After a minute of consideration, Glyde neared the room as well, but restrained himself to remaining just outside. He quivered from shaken nerves. Should he say anything? Or simply back away? Involuntarily, he let out a cough, and quickly reeled back, still in view. “Uh, sorry. I was just... I didn’t mean to-- should I just go away?”​

 

​

Aria listened to Torrin as she cried softly, sniffing and hiccuping to herself. She had fought this battle alone for so long she didn’t know how much longer she would last. Her aunt and uncle did what they could to help her from night time herbs, to dream catchers, to soothing music, to warm milk before bed and cookies... but nothing made the nightmares stopped. She never knew when she was going to be plagued by the dreams, and so she was always a little on edge when she was too tired to stay awake much longer and drift to sleep.

She looked down at her lap when Torrin said he was going to back her up. Aria could tell her being upset bothered him, but she couldn’t help herself. She was wiping her eyes with the corner of her sheets, about to apologize to Torrin again when she was suddenly hugged. She dropped the sheet back in her lap, and felt herself gradually relax in the embrace. She didn’t know Torrin well, but she could feel he was genuinely concerned about her. Hesitantly, she wrapped her arms around Torrin and hugged him back, burying her head in his shoulder. She could feel herself calming down in his arms as the sobbing was lessening along with the shivering. She was awake now, and she was safe. Nothing else that was bad was going to happen to her today.

“Thank you,” she finally whispered after a moment, squeezing Torrin as comfortably tight to her as possible. She wanted to reassure herself she was actually awake and this wasn’t some dream within a dream again.

It was then she heard a voice at her door, and pulled away from Torrin to see Glyde there. Aria felt all embarrassed and rubbed away the remaining tears with the back of her hand and snagged a few tissues off her nightstand to wipe her nose. “Y-You’re okay, Glyde,” Aria managed to get out with a nervous smile. Did she wake up the whole castle with her screams? “I-I’m sorry if I woke you up too.” She half-laughed and sniffed again, throwing her tissues away in a small waste basket by her bed. “I’m okay now. How are you?”

The last thing she wanted to do was carry a conversation, but this was the way it always was with her. She had a moment to express her real emotions, and then she had to tuck them away and soldier on. There wasn’t time to feel sorry for herself or dwell on the negative for long.

 

​

"Oh." Glyde took two steps forward, coming to a stop just outside of the door into Aria's room. "No, no. Nothing like that." The nervois quiver subsided; his discomfort eased, and loosened slightly. "I was already awake when I heard you. Didn't sleep too well myself, so I figured I'd get up and about. Usually, once I'm awake, I can't just go back to sleep.

"Seems you had a rougher night than I did, though." He looked over Aria carefully. He knew the feeling of needing to keep to one's self. "Just came to see what the trouble was, since I was down the hall. You look alright now though... I can carry on, if you'd prefer I left," he repeated. "Was gonna go see where breakfast was at, if anywhere. Bring you back something?"

 

​

Glyde was so nervous to talk to her. Aria couldn’t help but smile a little at that,. She didn’t mean to be intimidating if she was... She listened quietly, hearing how he had a rough night as well and had woken up before she did. He heard the screams anyways, and he came to check up on her.

She was surprised, however, when he offered to grab her some breakfast. She smiled warmly at him, letting her hands relax in her lap. “That’s really sweet of you, Glyde. If you wouldn’t mind grabbing me some too, that’d be great. I eat just about anything.” She softly giggled and hunched her shoulders before relaxing them. “You weren’t intruding or being a bother. Thank you for checking up on me... I appreciate it.”