This night, like many before it, sleep evaded the Deathsinger like a shadow in the dark. And nothing could persuade it to come out into the light.
Not the conversation with a dear friend.
Not the warmth that’d seeped into her bones from the bath.
Not the fingers that idly played in the grey shadows that hovered upon the floor. Body angled to the side, her eyes opened and closed lazily upon the vision of the wooden planks, arm reaching down to them in the stretch of someone desperately trying to find that perfect position to rest. Past the lip of the bed frame she knew rest the deepest of dark somewhere beneath.
How long had she begged for sleep to take her?
It was a moment of late night contemplation, eyes unfocused into the darkness that caught the movement of the shadows bleeding. Slowly her fingers scooped outwards, watching the way it scattered at first before clinging together. A digit of a claw, and then another, another after tickled just faintly upon azure skin and pearl scales. They played with her own.
They were not strangers, this monster beneath the bed and herself.
It was a toying nature that climbed the five claws gently towards her wrist. A flirtatious dance that kept the woman unaware until there was a sudden tug to the limb that sent a spike of fear up the body. That quick, fearful motion of someone beginning to nod off and waking to the feeling of falling. It quickened the heart.
There came an amused chuckle that eased from the dark.
My sweetest Muse.
Past her wrist now those claws glided, leaving a cool trail behind. It provided no comfort. But as its path found her cheek, her eyes closed, feeling the cold touch upon both eyelids soon after. Of a fox guiding her to a place she had no path to otherwise.
And then she fell.
And she slept.
