Let's Play Pretend

Emeralds

Jenna's bed suffered from a horrible lack of Aiden. This was a sad condition that she hoped would be cured soon. He had been gone for just about a week now, and the lack of him was still as painful when trying to sleep as it had been on the first night. Actually, it was much worse, as the smell of him that had been on her duvet was now completely gone. She had slept with it rolled up in her arms, smelling the fabric. It had been a substitute Aiden, she could close her eyes and believe she was holding the real thing... But not anymore.

During the days, she didn't miss him so bad. There was too much to do around haven, and Minna seemed to always have time for her. No, it was at night... In bed, with the lights off, when she should be sleeping. That's when it hit, and she felt a black, growing hole in her chest at the thought of how long it had been since she had seen him. They had just gotten their feelings out in the open, wasn't that the time when they should be sickeningly sweet and cuddly? When they should entwine fingers and whisper sweet little nothings in each other's ears?

Instead, she was laying here, looking at pictures and chasing scents long since gone. She had read his letter so many times, she knew it by heart... But going over it in her head had lost some of it's charm as it was always the same letter, always the same words. She pined for new ones. Or the same ones, but from his own lips. His own voice. She wasn't sure if she remembered his voice correctly, and it scared her.

She had put off going exploring in the house, her curiosity and need to learn more about this man being kept at bay by fear. She was afraid that if she did, she would end up missing him even more. That she would have questions he wasn't there to answer, perhaps? That the big, black hole in her chest would grow even more, and swallow her whole. But now, as the morning was getting close and no sleep could be found... She realized she had to go look for new ways to feel close to him. She had gotten addicted to him, and she needed a fix.

Her bedroom and bathroom were on the first floor, the big door of her room leading straight into the hall. A hall that looked, in some way, like a tunnel through snow. There were four doors there, in addition to her own. She knew the great one at the very end led outside, being the only other one she had gone through. The rest, though? Them, she knew nothing at all about.

She felt a little naughty when she opened the first one. Even though she knew she was welcome to move around as she pleased, there was still a feeling of not being supposed to. Maybe it was just the late hour, soon turning into early? Or maybe it was simply because everything she had ever learned about manners told her you just didn'tsnoop around?

What she found when she entered the room appeared to be... A storage room. A very large storage room. There were wooden boxes covering the walls, stacked all the way to the ceiling. The floor was just gray stone, and it all looked so very normal. Like any other storage room.

Looking around, she felt slightly thrilled at the possibilities of this room. While she very much doubted she would find anything smelling of him or sounding like him, she was in fact surrounded by what had to be at least parts of his past. Parts important enough not to throw away, but still parts he didn't have a place for in his everyday life anymore. There might be a key to who he had been somewhere in here, there might even be several!

With some struggle, and the excessive use of language she didn't even know she possessed until she got her fingers caught between two of the boxes, she got one down onto the floor. It was very heavy, and there was no way she would ever get it back up again, but she would worry about that later. He had said she was free to treat everything as if it was her own, hadn't he?

She ran her fingers over the lid for a moment before opening it, pondering what she might find within. Old letters? Pictures from his youth? Those horrendous presents from an old aunt that you only got out when she visited? She didn't know that Aiden actually had family, but she assumed as much. Dragon life still came with relatives, didn't it? He hadn't just manifested fully formed one day, had he? And where there were families, there was always an embarrassing relative.