Borderline

chapter nine.

Omg my little brother just started playing with a yellow and red gummy bear like that episode where Hunk and Keith where inside the Weblum and he's running around screaming and I honestly couldn't be more proud.

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"What's the matter with you these days?" Allura asked me, appearing at the threshold of my room. I couldn't see her, since my face was pressed against my pillow and my arms were laying heavily at my sides on the bed, but I could still hear her solicitude. The bed sank when she sat down on the edge beside me, her hand appearing on my back, rubbing soothing circles. "Have you fought with Nyma? Is that what's it's about? Or are you feeling under the weather again?"

The lie played at the tip of my tongue, and all there was to do was to just open my mouth and utter it. My words were muffled by the pillow pressed against my face when I spoke. "Nyma...away...month."

"I don't think I understand", Allura said.

I turned around with a defeated sigh, the air feeling frigid against my warm face that had been pressed against the bolster for about a varga now. Allura shuffled on the bed to give me space to move, and her hand quickly found its way to my arm instead, kneading my forearm. She was concerned with me, of course she was. And how would I reward her for her tender loving care? With a lie.

"Nyma had to go away for a while. Something about... um, an unfinished mission in another planet. She won't be back for some time." She won't be back forever. He won't be back ever.

"I'm sorry for that, Lance." She sounded candid, and it made the lump in my throat I had felt all quintant grow significantly bigger, until I was sure that when I spoke again, it would come off more as a whimper than actual words. "Is there something I can do to help?"

I tried to speak, but the tribulation had already taken over all my functions, and my throat stung, my eyes started to water. I swiftly turned back over to my stomach, my face finding its place pressed against the pillow again as I hugged the soft object tightly, trying to tell Allura something that would make her leave me alone, but I couldn't. My mouth was shut down for the quintant.
But Allura must have sensed my hankering, and said something that didn't reach my ears, before I could feel my bed heave because of decreased weigh.

I sobbed for the rest of the quintant, and after a while, I didn't even know what I was crying over anymore.

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It went two movements of me rotting away in my room. When I did go out, however, I continued to rot away in different rooms in the castle instead, always keeping a glower on my face. I couldn't even see the point in keeping up an act anymore, mainly because I couldn't see a point in anything anymore, but also because I often were lucky, and the paladins was almost always caught up in talking to each other to notice me anyway. Luckily, my morose mood didn't ruin the other's, and I was locked up in my room often enough to not be able to sojourn a lot around them anyways.

The big tree I laid in front of soughed in the light breeze, and my hands laid on top of my stomach, my cape laying like a blanket under me, the mountain juniberries - scattered like pink dots on a green canvas - filling my nose with a new kind of smell that wasn't the smell of my frowsty room. My eyes were closed, but the strong light around me making me see orange behind my eyelids made it impossible for me to take a nap out here. It took everything in me to not just stand up and stomp back to my bed, but there was only that much of brooding I could muster before the contrition was too much for me. I didn't want Allura to worry any more than she already did.

Sigh. There wasn't exactly much rest out here, and certainly no comfort either, and being out here didn't assuage anything for me. My thoughts had a massive space to run around in, in addition to it all, which slowly drove me insane. I exhaled, opening my eyes again.