4 - 4 -

Once again, I fell asleep and started to feel my senses shift. When I opened my eyes again, I was back in my personal prison. I stood up and looked around like I had done numerous nights before. However, I couldn't help but feel that something was off about the whole thing. I started walking.

A few minutes later, my uneasiness had intensified to an unbearable level and I frequently found myself looking behind myself. Finally, though, I saw it. A door was in sight.

I ran towards it as fast as my legs could carry me. I skidded to a halt outside of it, gazing at the knob that awaited me. I braced myself for whatever might be in there and slowly started to open it.

And then I almost shut it then and there. I saw something... moving. I gulped, took a deep breath, and looked again.

"Feste?!" An alarmingly loud voice greeted me. Was that... I looked inside the small room again. It seemed like the creature inside was remarkably similar to Boingo. I opened the door until I could squeeze inside.

"Boin... go?" It felt weird talking while in the hallway. Sure, I talked to myself sometimes, but never at someone. My head spun with confusion.

Boingo puffed his chest, hoping to intimidate me. I still haven't told him to this day, but it did work somewhat. "Feste, why am I down here? What'd you do?"

"Nothing! I don't even know what happened!" I desperately fought in my defence.

"Well, you better start explaining!"

"I have no words! This never happened before!"

Boingo had now bared his teeth. "Well, I guess I'll have to force some answers out of you the-!"

We both turned our heads towards the hallway ahead of us. A thumping sound had reached both of our ears, and immediately I dove into the relatively safe comfort of the room, not even bothering to look at what might have happened. "What was that?" Boingo had said, partly questioning me.

"I don't have a shred of information! This is all new to me!"

Boingo, while I was frozen in place due to fear of the unknown, leapt ahead and popped the door open. Then, I saw his slender tail disappear around the corner. "Come on," he said, his voice significantly quieter. "Are we gonna show that thing who's the bosses around here?"

It took me a few seconds before I finally earned the courage to reply. "Y-Yeah." I swung the door open wider and followed the direction I hoped Boingo had gone in.

What awaited us was bizarre, to say the least. What lay in front of us was a flight of stairs that I would have sworn I had never seen before, one that descended father than my eyes could see. Boingo turned to look at me once more. "Feste, are you seriously going to stand there? I've been in here for a few minutes, and you're the one standing there like a rock!" Then, he started bolting down the stairs like he had been late for class.

"Boingo! Don't you dare leave me here!" I awaited a response from the creature himself but was only met with silence. I grit my teeth and started to make my descent, which was significantly slower than my new companion's.

As my initial burst of fear-induced speed had vanished, I started to notice some peculiar things that were occurring around me. Firstly, it seemed like the stairway was getting darker. Not in the conventional way, when I looked at my skin it was lit to the same degree as it always was. Rather, the wallpaper itself was starting to look like it had been painted with darkening shades of the same colour. Because of this, I had nearly tripped a few times.

Second, my field of view had started to decrease, as well. At the bottom of the stairs, I could barely see ten meters in front of me.

Nevertheless, I made it down to the bottom after what seemed nearly ten minutes. I looked around haphazardly for Boingo, worried that he had ventured far without me by his side.

I found him wandering down the hall not too many seconds later.

I hurried up to him, but he heard my footsteps and looked towards me. "Boingo!"

"Feste," Boingo snickered. "Took you long enough."

"Hey, this is highly unusual! This has never happened before, and I don't even remember the first time I woke up in here!"

Boingo simply rolled his eyes and began to continue his journey, with me following close behind. I periodically peered behind myself, since it seemed like Boingo had it all under control.

This carried on for what seemed like almost an hour, with us making an unknown amount of progress. Every time I would try to start some small talk with Boingo, he would always dismiss it or give simple one-word answers. By the end of it, I was fairly exhausted, something I thought wasn't possible in my dream-like state.

After everything, we started to wake up. I welcomed the change, but Boingo instead spun and hissed at me. "What's going on?!"

I was frozen in shock but managed to keep myself together well enough to respond. "We're waking up, Boingo."

"Yeah, but...!" Boingo's deep frown started to melt into a crooked smile. I assumed that he had started to feel the warmth of his bedroom once again. "So soft..."

A few more seconds passed before I too started to feel the softness of my bed. I closed my eyes and embraced the luxury of the new day. Sighing, I turned to look at my alarm clock. I had an extra half an hour to get ready for school, so I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and swung my legs out over my bed, stretching and mentally running through what had gone on inside of my dream. Was that Boingo real? No, he couldn't have been. I blinked and decided that it would be best to ask. As I made it through my daily routine and practiced some of my magic, I wondered just how I was going to do that.