OVERLOOKED ㅤkotlc

015. He Was Lonely

ROSALEEN ELLIS.
STARGLINT . MIAMI
NOV 14 . 02:42 AM

I can't sleep.

Normally I'm asleep by midnight, but normally, there isn't a possibility of finding Ixora the next day.

Or she can be dead, a voice says. You can go with Dex on the mission, only to find out your sister is and has been dead, and then it'll be a pointless suicide mission. Wonderful.

No. Not pointless. It'll be helping Dex, probably. So that he doesn't die.

Or we can just both die.

For the past two weeks, Dex has clearly been worried about the mission, and I've acted like the mission's going to go amazingly, and that everything will be fine.

And maybe, maybe, everything will go fine.

But maybe, everything won't.

I sigh and sit up. Mom and Akel are both asleep.

The Black Swan ended up telling Mom that I'm going on a field trip for new Foxfire prodigies, and that it'll probably take a few months.

While I like how it doesn't make her worry, she'll feel at fault if I don't come back.

And... it also makes this really lonely.

I reach for the Imparter on my desk, and before I can stop myself, I lift it to my lips and whisper, "Hail Dex Dizznee."

The Imparter rings,

once,

twice,

and then he picks up.

At 2 AM.

"Rosaleen?" He definitely sounds confused, and quiet, but not like he just woke up. And he sounds alert, so he's probably not too sleepy, either.

It's so dark that I can't see anything but his silhouette, and a bit of starlight highlighting the blanket and catching his eyes.

"You can't sleep?" I ask, softly, so I don't wake anyone up.

There's a silence. "Nope," he says, awkwardly adjusting the Imparter's camera. "I keep thinking of... well, it's pretty obvious."

I smile a little, and flop back on my bed, the Imparter in my hand. "The mint chocolate ice cream in your freezer, by any chance?" I say, hoping to a) make an unfunny joke, and b) distract us from the mission.

He doesn't know what ice cream is, probably, so he'll get curious and ask me

"What's that?"

and I'll explain,

"It's a human dessert. Kind of like... snow? But, like, edible, and it tastes good. Oh! Mallowmelt and pudding puffs kinda has this ice cream-y flavor to it. Except ice cream melts, and when it melts, it tastes like sloshy garbage,"

which makes us have a normal, non-mission-y conversation, without panic and all that good stuff.

"And is mint chocolate, like, chocolate mint ripplefluffs?"

I nod, then realize he probably can't see me. "Pretty much."

Another silence, and then he says, "You've eaten a lot of human stuff."

That's true. Mom's interested in their species and the Human Assistance Program. (She told us that, a long time ago, she tried out for the program, but since she was Talentless, they rejected her.)