behind the streams | dnf

twelve | lights

DREAM

Yesterday, when I went over to my parent's house, my sister gave me a present. 'A Christmas gift', she called it, even though it's barely December. 

It rests on my table now, still unopened and idle. The pastel green wrapping paper, slightly textured, and a forest green bow to top it off. 

It's almost too pretty to open. She's always been super artistic her whole life, a perfectionist to the highest degree. I just like looking at it, the colors so complimentary of each other, visually satisfying and perfect in a minimalist way. 

It's about 9 pm, I'm all ready to go to sleep. Curtains closed and lights off. The darkness usually becomes a weary lull, except I'm strangely awake. 

I've been scrolling for social media for the past 10 or 20 minutes, waiting for sleep to tug at my eyelids, for my brain to shut off. 

The brightness of my phone screen begins to hurt my eyes, and I turn on my bedside lamp, a dim, warm, source of light in the otherwise darkness. I see faint outlines of all the objects in my room, shadows cast on the walls and floors from the orange-yellow glow. 

I turn off my phone and look at the shadows caused by the unevenness in my blankets. Little mountains and rises caused by my body, a dip created by Patches near the edge of the bed, curled up and sleeping peacefully. My eyes dart around the room, slowly adjusting to the new environment and watching the silhouettes of my table and monitors forming. On the table I see the present from my sister, the rectangular prism and the messily aesthetic streamers on top. I think I planned on opening it earlier, but I forgot. 

I slip my legs out of bed and walk over to the table. Picking up the present, I head back, and by the glow of the bedside lamp, I open it as slowly and precisely I can. 

Carefully removing the bow on top, refusing to rip my sister's handiwork. Unwrapping the box neatly, flap by flap, forming a creased rectangle. The pastel green wrapping paper has little smiley faces all over it. 

A black box sits in front of me. I hold it below the lamp, reading the words on top. 

LED lights? 

A sticky note on the bottom of it as well.

yeah so I asked mom for one of these for my birthday, and for some reason two came so I'm giving you the other one :) 

A laugh warmly escapes my lips. I set the note aside and open the box, pulling out a confusing system of wires and strange objects that look like the old film rolls. 

It takes me a while to figure out, but it makes sense eventually. There's one end that connects to an outlet, extending to two rolls of lights.

Fortunately, there's an outlet right besides my headboard, and the wire has enough length for one roll to outline my rectangular headboard, and one to wrap around the frame of the mattress. 

10 minutes later, I turn on the lights, and it has a pretty cool effect. My bed has an underglow and a outward emitting of lights, making it look like my bed's floating.

I switch the lights to white and turn off the bedside lamp. It's a much more modern and expensive look than the homely yellow glow. It's pretty.

I burrow under the covers again, and pick up my phone. Open up iMessages, and text my sister a thank you. 

The top two conversations, below the one with her, catch my eye. George and Sapnap. 

Under the faint white glow in my room I reminisce in the conversation I had with Sapnap last night.  After the bump in the road with the brief argument we had over Discord, it was relieving to exchange funny quips back and forth, like the old days.