“Mate, you need to wake up.”
Arkay opened his eyes cautiously, not quite having escaped his dreams yet. Litvir was standing in the doorway, patiently waiting for Arkay to get up. Rather than immediately climb out of bed, Arkay checked to see what time it was.
“Piss, I overslept.”
“Yes, you did. Bad night?”
The little yellow Decayling thought to himself for a second, then sighed. “I don’t honestly know. I did go to bed late, to be honest…”
Litvir shrugged, then made his way into the room, handing Arkay a plate with a sandwich on it. He knew he was breaching Arkay’s private space, but Litvir didn’t really care. Retvik and Galyn were a little bit miffed about Arkay oversleeping and Litvir wanted to give Arkay a bit of cover.
“Do you want to talk? Are you ill?”
Arkay hesitated, taking the plate from Litvir. “I… I guess… why are you here?”
“To wake you up and check on you and tell you that you overslept.”
“Yeah but…” Arkay grunted. “You could have just stood at the door and had a go at me from there.”
“Yes but I did not want to. I wanted to come in here and annoy you and ask why you are staying up late and then oversleeping. Is something wrong with you?”
Arkay hesitated, not sure what to make of Litvir’s sudden bout of kindness. Even the sandwich he had made was actually rather kind and unexpected.
“Uh, is something wrong with you?”
“I am absolutely fine. You however have been oversleeping more and more lately. So I assume something is wrong.”
“Well…” Arkay frowned. “It’s not so much that something is wrong, it’s just that I’ve been… kinda… busy.”
“Doing what?”
“Talking to people. Other people. Online and stuff.”
Litvir smiled a little, highly curious at where Arkay was going with all of this. “You have made some friends?”
“Kinda? They are all… digital friends, I guess. I haven’t met any of them in person. Nice people though…”
“I feel like you want to say more than what you just said.”
Arkay tutted, slapping away Litvir’s hand. “No mind reading.”
“I am not reading your mind. You clearly have things on your mind that you are not saying. So why not say these things?”
“Because… you might talk?”
“Fair, I guess…” Litvir got up to leave, only for him to feel a hand holding him back.
“I was chatting with someone. We… were chatting for a long time. About a lot of things. It was really nice and I lost track of time. Like, really badly… I’ve… I only… slept for like a couple of hours, I think.”
“Are they nice at least?” Litvir asked.
“Yeah… Too nice…”
Litvir let out a little giggle. “You found someone you like. Good.”
“It’s… a bit more than just liking them…” Arkay admitted. “They’re just… so far away… And I don’t know if I want to ditch everything here and go and see them in person…”
Litvir put an arm around Arkay, calming him down. “You have, like, an eternity to make that choice. But for now, I will just tell Galyn that you had nightmares, alright?”
Arkay’s eyes widened, as he realised he had work to do. “Uh… thanks, Litvir…”