Life's cocoa and pillow forts

Chapter 6 - Sleepwalking

Sevanna had never really discussed any medical history too much with Nolan. The fact that they had trouble falling asleep was pretty obvious since some days they were up before sunrise while other days they slept past noon. Sevanna didn't mind their roommate's troubles, only felt bad for them since sleeping was made so much more difficult by the disorder. Which was why she wasn't very surprised when Nolan emerged from their room just an hour after heading to bed. "Couldn't sleep?" Sevanna queried. Nolan didn't reply. Sev didn't push and continued watching the show on the TV. Things got weird when Nolan sat down next to her on the couch, mumbling something. Compared to their earlier silence in response to the hello, it was odd.

"You alright there?"

"Ded ya know dat in hot climats corpses can skeletonis in four monfs?" they mumbled, doing all sorts of gestured.

"Excuse me?" Sevanna said, frankly confused. She put the show on pause and turned to her roommate. "What?"

"An' since uni-horns arr magik creturs, how long wud their bodis take to rot?"

"I think a bit longer?" Sevanna replied, still confused. "Are you alright?"

"Yer right. Longer. Magik preservs de corps- Uni-horns wud prolly take a year? Meby longerr..."

"Where did this come from all of a sudden?" Sev queried.

"So if uni-horns take so long, how long do dwagons tek?" Nolan continued, getting more and more slurred as they spoke.

"I think you should head back to bed, come on," Sev said with a small sigh, standing up from the couch and pulling in Nolan's arm. "Up you get!" The sleepy writer followed after the artist without much protest and sunk into their bed pretty easily. Sevanna pulled the blanket over them and left the room with a quiet whisper: "Sleep well!"

"Yep, gudnite Sevvie," came a mumbled reply. Sevanna closed the door and headed to bed herself.

★

Nolan woke up in the morning with their blanket pulled over their shoulders, which was odd since usually they only pulled the blanket over their legs and even then sometimes ended up kicking it off altogether. Nolan didn't think much of it and got up with the goal to get the usual morning cup of tea.

They were greeted by Sevanna in the living area. "Hey, Nolan! Slept well?"

"Like I was hit by a truck," Nolan replied with heavy sarcasm dripping off the reply. Sev frowned for a second before moving on. "Do you remember anything of last night?"

"Last night? No, did I forget something again?"

"No, nothing, don't worry about it," Sevanna diverted the topic. "So, had any dreams tonight?"

"Can't recall," Nolan replied honestly, not bothering to think about it much. "You?"

"I dreamt of... Unicorns."

"That's cute. What colour were they?"

"...Purple," Sev replied hesitantly, recalling the mental image of a quite dead unicorn that Nolan's evening discussion had given her.

"Purple is cute," Nolan responded without much care, already walking to the kitchen and preparing the kettle. "Noodles for breakfast?"

"Noodles for breakfast," Sevanna agreed. Nolan filled the kettle with enough water for two noodle cups and one tea, turned it on and squatted down to grab noodles from the cabinet underneath the microwave. Sevanna returned to her earlier activity, which seemed to be sketching something on her tablet, as Nolan waited for the water to boil. When it finally had, the kettle beeped twice before shutting off automatically. Nolan poured out the water, grabbed two forks from the drawer, and quickly deposited one of the noodle cups by Sev's side on the living room table.

"Thanks," Sevanna said, the smell of cup noodles already reaching her nose. "Smells good."

"Anytime," Nolan replied and returned to the kitchen to grab their own cups- one of noodles and one of tea. They retreated to their own room to get started on work and warm up on writing to hopefully get at least a thousand words written today. Nolan wasn't in the mood for writing right now, but they had a quota to fill.

Nolan sat down in their chair, put the food and drink down on the desk and started their computer. The few minutes it took to boot up to the lock screen Nolan spent stabbing the noodle block in the cup into smaller pieces with a fork. When the computer finally finished, Nolan typed in their password and clicked open the browser window. A small popup in the corner of the screen diverted their attention.

"What's that?" Nolan mumbled to themselves, quickly reading the notification and clicking it open as well.

"New footage"

"Footage?" When the app finally loaded, Nolan was greeted with a familiar menu screen. "Ohh, this is synced with my phone microphone! Hold on- To record if I talk in my sleep-"

Nolan's mind raced to put pieces together. "My app has new feed from nighttime, Sevanna was weird all morning- Oh no, don't say I- Oh-" Nolan pulled up the recording from last night. The app said that two clips had been recorded, one near midnight and the other about five minutes after the first one. Nolan ran the first clip.

Shifting of bedsheets. Footsteps. A click of the door opening. Footsteps fading. Nolan didn't remember waking up last evening. They took a second to mentally scream before moving onto the next clip.

Talking. Footsteps. More than one person walking. Sheets ruffling again. "Sleep well!"

"Yep, gudnite Sevvie."

Nolan wanted to sink into the ground. "I called Sevanna Sevvie? Oh, let gods be merciful- Wait, what did I tell her that she brought up unicorns this morning?" Nolan debated themselves. "Should I just go ask her? I bet it'll be weird though. I didn't know I still sleepwalked, I thought it stopped months ago- Did I forget to take my medication? Might be the case-"

Nolan ended up not asking Sevanna. They were too embarrassed to even bring it up and didn't look Sevanna in the eye for three days.