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You feel like you’re slipping between Derse and reality, and your only wish is that for one fucking moment you can just stop being you and sleep through this fever normally.
You’re on your couch and you hear the metallic whirring of Squarewave.
“HEY DOGG!” His voice is loud and clear even in your sickness. “LET’S DO THIS!”
“Noooo…” you groan, rolling over on your couch. You close your eyes.
You’re then on Derse, and you’re happy as fuck that the kingdom doesn’t know you’re awake, though you wish for once you were actually asleep. You toss your glasses aside because the shade of them mixed with the already obnoxious amount of purple makes your head spin. You lay in your Derse bed, and reach absent-mindedly for the copy of the Dersite Rag you took from a daydreaming vendor. You open to a page about the Prospitian dreamers and Jake in particular, but you can’t focus enough to comprehend the whole article.
Before your eyes close, you wish you had some water.
You wake up on your couch, and see on the table a perspiring glass of water. Ice cubes slowly melt, but keep it sufficiently cool, and you know it’s cool enough when you grab it and take a large gulp. You set the glass back down on the table, and wonder who got it for you. Squarewave? Could he have done it without short-circuiting himself? Lil’ Cal? AR? Those don’t make sense…
Speaking of AR, you hear dings of received messages and look at the pair of glasses you tossed aside earlier on. You know you’re getting messages from your friends, and you know AR is talking to all of them and making you look like a douchebag, like he always does.
But you’re too tired to care, and roll over again, eyes shutting tight.
On Derse, you think you see through your window a purple blur flying away. It makes no sense for something to be purple and flying and you ignore it.
But then you realize what it is, and bolt up with a start.
“Roxy!”
And oh God bolting up was a bad idea.
You clutch your head in one hand and try to focus, only to fall back down into the purple softness and faint into a new scene.
In your house, a cold rag is being placed on your head. You look up and can’t see who but there’s a figure.
“Take this, little man.” He grabs your hand and places a pill. “It’ll help you sleep for real, dogg.”
You suspect something’s awry, and any other time you would have spent more than a minute worth of staring at the pill before swallowing it dry. Your fever prevents logical thought and you do it only after a few seconds.
The figure gives a thumbs up, and says, “Now chill out.”
You can’t imagine who is here and the whys and hows, but for the first time ever in your life, you feel secure, as if you don’t have to worry about anything. For the first time ever, you feel…cared for.
You hug yourself and think of the only person you ever wished could care for you.
“Bro…” you say, in a tiny voice that reminds you of your lonely childhood.
You think he says something before you finally fade into that peaceful black oblivion you were longing for.
When you wake up later on, you have more focus. Your sweat-drenched clothes tell you your fever has broken, and you already feel more energized.
You sit upright, allowing your eyes to dart around the room—to the glass of water that once had ice cubes but no longer does, the shifting screensaver on your computer going from Donald Glover to Rainbow Dash, to the now silent Auto Responder, and then to a moving figure in the corner who you know is just dying for a rap battle.
Squarewave focuses on you first, but then looks beyond the couch elsewhere—to another person. “YO!” he exclaims.
Your heart races. Could it really have been him?
“Bro!” you say and swing your head around behind the couch before you have a chance to stop yourself.
The figure comes into focus…
You obviously don’t see Bro. Only Sawtooth, who perhaps took a break from his travels to help care for you.
He nods ever so slightly your way. “’Sup, man.”
You don’t know what your face looks like, but you try anyway to keep it blank. You look away and grab your glasses to give you a chance to collect yourself.
You don’t cry. Crying implies a broken heart. But your heart never breaks.
It just splinters.