Nightingale - Dreamnotfound

||At a Fence||

We hadn't even arrived at the slums yet when Sapnap had broken our long-winded silence with the one question I didn't want him to ask: "What did he do?"

I glanced up at his faint outline for a brief moment before returning my gaze back down to the sand where my flashlight was pointing. "What do you mean?"

"Oh come on, Clay. I'm not stupid. I know there's a reason you let him go."

I rolled my eyes. It was moments like these I hated having a best friend. It was nice having someone to talk to about things I could never tell anyone else about. Someone who'd understand you and be the one to tell you everything you needed to hear, but I hated how well he knew me. He knew when I was lying, when I was hiding something, and exactly how to get it out of me. He knew me better than I knew myself, and I hated him so much because of that.

"You weren't there, Sapnap. You didn't see him."

"What happened?"

I fidgeted with my flashlight, causing the stream of light to shake and dance around the otherwise pitch black night. "He read me poetry."

"What?" I heard a hint of a laugh in his voice.

"Well, it was only a couple of lines. You know, Sapnap, there's an extinct kind of people. All the people we see nowadays are totally feral. So many of us have lost the screws to our minds, and we've witnessed so many things. Fights, murder, even cannibalism."

"It's the radiation," Sapnap remarked with a soft chuckle.

"I'm serious, Sapnap. People who read poetry don't survive. People who will trust you the minute they lay eyes on you are so quick to disappear. You don't get people like them anymore. They're kind of like Fundy and Niki's cat. They found that cat running around the slums. One of the only cats to survive, and you know what they did? They took that cat home and didn't just leave her to die."

He chuckled, "Yeah til she ran away. She died anyway."

I exhaled slowly. "Nevermind."

"Come on, Dream. I don't understand what you're getting at! Help me understand. Are you saying this guy's a cat or something?"

I rolled my eyes and shook my head, "You are the biggest idiot I've ever seen, and Fundy lives down the hall from us. I mean that he didn't even flinch when he saw me. He-He smiled at me, Nick. He talked to me about poetry. He told me my eyes match the sun."

Sapnap's stifled laughter came out loud and clear as he said, "Last time I checked, the sun wasn't green."

I ignored his laughter as I made out what had to be the slums. It was a vague outline. It was a giant boxy blob more than anything else. I could barely make out vague smoke rising from the boxy top.

"What I'm getting is that you let this guy live because he thought the sun was green," He continued on, dragging this conversation on longer than it should be.

"No, I let him live because when you find something special, like a flower or a bird, you don't just kill it."

He scoffed, "You're forgetting that this guy holds important classified documents that we need to get back. You sound like Bad talking about Skeppy."

"What?" My heart stopped for a minute.

In a high-pitched, nasally voice I assumed was supposed to be an impression of Bad , Sapnap said, "Oh Skeppy's the best boyfriend I've ever had! I would marry him if there was a higher government to make it official! We make muffins together once, we're soulmates now!"

I scowled, "I sound nothing like that!"

"You don't call just anyone a fucking flower, Clay."

"It was an example! I didn't mean it in any weird way. I meant George is like a flower because you never see people like him around."