The Frozen Melody

16.Age.

A girl’s giggle woke up Tyson the next morning. He opened his eyes slightly and peeked through his eyelashes to see Hibie’s face poking in from the partly opened door. He blinked himself awake and yawned, satisfied with a good night’s sleep. Hibie giggled again and slid into the room, padding over to the bed and mouthed an excited good morning.

Tyson pushed himself up, making Keith’s arm on his back slide off to the side. The boy turned and saw the man still sleeping; dark circles around the unicorn’s eyes made him look tired. Was it his fault? Tyson thought guiltily, he had always thought himself as a quiet sleeper...

Hibie jumped onto the bed, “Keith! Wake up!” She shouted loudly with a laugh that made the boy flinch. He had hoped to let the man sleep a bit longer seeing how tired he looked.

Keith’s eyes shot opened and he let out a moan when he saw why he was woken up. “What time is it Hibie. Why’d you have to wake up so early everyday?” He whined and covered his eyes with his arm.

The girl laughed and jumped right onto the poor man’s chest, “It’s almost 8:30 you sleepyhead!”

“What?!” Keith sat up so suddenly that he sent Hibie flopping off his body in a fit of giggles. Tyson subconsciously reached out to steady her just in case.

“Shoot, you’re going to be late for school Hibie! Why didn’t you wake me up sooner like you always do!?” The man asked and quickly slid off the bed to get his clothing on. Tyson held back on the strong urge of pulling the guy back for his sense of peace, instead, his grip on Hibie tightened as he tried to calm himself down despite all the hurrying around him. But as quick as he left, Keith was back on the bed and threw the laughing Hibie over one shoulder and picked up Tyson with his other freehand. “Come on you two, we better hurry!”

As if helplessly swept away by a strong tide, Tyson followed them as they stuffed down some food and quickly got dressed in thick winter clothing. He would much rather stay in home instead of tagging along, but he didn't want to leave the unicorn's side.

Keith helped him into the clothing that Willy brought over, a puffy dark blue coat with matching snow pants. It smelled like cheese to be honest, but Tyson wasn’t about to complain. Quickly, they left the house and started heading to school. Because the boy was still weak, Keith decided to carry him the entire way to save time.

"It's the last week of school, so there's going to be a lot of kids." Keith warned as they got closer to the school.

Tyson nodded and swallowed nervously. He had never been to a normal school before, so he wasn't quite sure what to expect.

Soon, he could hear the noisy and excited chatter of kids talking about what they wanted to do over the holidays.

Tyson quickly pulled up his hoodie and hid his face against Keith the entire time while they said a quick goodbye to Hibie and sent her in just as the school bell rung.

All those new visual and audio stimulation was pretty overwhelming to his currently fragile mind. So he was glad when they finally returned to the quiet home and did not look forward to when they had to pick up the girl in the afternoon.

~

That night, Keith woke up to another nightmare from the whimpering boy beside him. The whimpering was a good sign because it meant the boy haven't really lost his voice, but the emotions washing into him were so strong that he had trouble distinguishing his own feeling from the boy’s.

In the end he stayed up all night again to absorb as much of the negative feelings as he could. Keith didn’t know exactly what the dreams were about, but he could feel the boy’s emotional reactions to them. They need to find professional help for the boy.