Ray of hope || by Elin Moon

Chapter 9: Seize the day

Surprisingly, I slept through both day and night without a single nightmare.

I'd expect to wake up screaming, yet I was instead painfully dragged awake by Ron shaking my shoulders. I felt groggy, my head fuzzy and my body sore. My hair was all tangled and my clothes wrinkled horribly. It honestly felt like I hadn't slept at all.

"Leave me alone." I whined, absentmindedly turning away from the older tubby and snuggling up further into the blanket. Yet, Ron is relentless, continuing to shake me.

"Wake up! Wake up! You can't just sleep the day away!" Ron says, and I groan as I finally turn around to face him. Unlike myself, he's well put together, his hair brushed out of his face and the white shirt he was wearing lacking even a single wrinkle.

"What is it?" I groan, lifting my body into a sitting position, ignoring the aching of my head. I rub at my eyes, desperately trying to wake myself up. A sudden, horrific thought races through my mind and makes my stomach ache. "Has something happened?"

"No, no. Nothing like that." Ron says with a worried glance, giving me the chance to breathe peacefully again. "I just don't want you wasting the day away by sleeping." A scorn adorns my face, and I'm sorely tempted to go back to bed purely to spite him. Instead, I clamber out of bed with a heavy sigh, running a hand through my hair and getting caught on a bothersome knot.

"Did you want to do something specific? Are you sure nothing's happened?" I ask, looking out the window to take a look at the time. My bedroom faces the direction of the rising sun, and I can see that the sun has reached over the horizon a while ago, and the sky has turned completely blue; it must be around 8 or 9 in the morning.

"I swear nothing has happened, I'm just used to being up early." Ron says, watching me try to smooth down my clothing with an odd gaze. "You wore those clothes to bed?" Confused, I look down at the overalls and shirt that I was given yesterday.

"Am I not supposed to wear clothes to sleep?"

"No, you are supposed to wear clothes to bed, but different clothes, specifically made for sleeping." Ron says, walking over to the wooden closet and opening it to reveal a few pieces of clothing. I feel my face turn warm with embarrassment, fidgeting with the sleeve of the shirt. "Were you not aware you had these?"

"No, I didn't know it would hold clothes. At home, the closet was for supplies, like extra food and... you know." I mutter, and I can't help but feel stupid. Why hadn't I looked to see what's actually in the closet?

"That's alright." Ron says, beginning to shuffle through some of the clothing, holding up a light orange shirt to view. "You should probably change your shirt at the very least. Just to be tidy." he puts the shirt back and moves towards the door as I rise out of bed completely.

Ron leaves the room, leaving me to myself. Rubbing at my tired eyes, I groggily move over to the closet, shuffling through the shirts I had in there; most of them looked the same except for the colour they are. After a short debate, I pull out a soft pink shirt, a colour that looked familiar to the flowers I used to see back at home, growing over the grassy fields. Once I removed my old white shirt, ignoring the sweat patches that had collected over the night from a cold sweat, I quickly replaced it with the pink shirt, quickly putting my sling back on. I usually only sweat in my sleep when I have bad dreams, but I don't remember dreaming last night. Perhaps, it's for the better I don't remember. Considering my dreams as of recently, it'll probably just upset me further. I prefer the nothingness. I grab a brush that was left in one of the drawers of my desk, roughly running the brush through the knots in my hair, gritting my teeth when I pull particularly hard on a knot, ripping it out of my head. I'm certainly being too rough on my poor scalp, but I can't bring myself to care. The stinging pain feels kind of nice, actually.