XI: Comforts

The child was interested in only the most basic of things that they found in the house she had inhabited with the woman she called the ‘Bad Lady’. Alyxa eventually decided that it had been her stepmother and that her father had died the year before; it was difficult to be sure, since Amy did not seem to have much of a sense of time.

She was very similar to Morpheus in this sense, except that Amy was human and had a vague understanding of age, the way that all seven-year-olds did. Not that Alyxa knew a lot about children, she’d been an only child, and the only dealings she’d had with children had been the occasional visit of a distant cousin.

It wasn’t all that surprising therefore, that Alyxa found herself driving back to her house with a car largely full of the child’s clothes and the twenty-odd teddy bears that had been strewn across the otherwise barren bedroom. They turned back into the driveway and the teddy bears disappeared instantly. Neither Alyxa or Amy blinked, Alyxa because she was too tired and Amy because she took for granted that Morpheus was ‘magic’ and that such things were normal. It was for the same reasons that neither of them were surprised when the house suddenly found itself in possession of a new room, off the end of the hallway, complete with furniture and now outfitted with teddy bears.

“I’m going to bed,” Alyxa declared after she had seen Amy settle down on the new bed.

“I will watch you sleep, witchlet,” Morpheus told her, and he probably meant it reassuringly, but there was just something about today, about the entire day, that seeped all strength from her, and so, she simply nodded and let herself fall into dreamless sleep.