“Well.” Finnegan stretched his old and weary muscles, then leaned back to try and relax a little. “I certainly hope that’s what I meant, because I think we’ve got enough problems on our plate without an interstellar war.”
“Heh.” Andie’s grin settled down into a smile. She still felt a little betrayed, but was starting to recover. “…by the way, about Maddie…”
“Oh?” A slight frown crossed Finnegan’s face. “I thought you didn’t want to talk about that right now.”
“Yeah, well…” Andie took a deep breath. “Some things are more important than what I want.”
Finn hesitated before responding. He wasn’t sure how he felt about this. On one hand, he’d always been proud of how Andie always did the right thing, no matter what it cost her. On the other hand, he wanted his granddaughter to be happy, not sacrifice herself so others could be happy. “Well, no need to rush it. If this is hard for you to talk about, we can take it nice and slow.”
Stolen story; please report.
“Thanks…” For a moment, the room was silent - waiting for Andie to gather her thoughts. “Maddie is a nightwalker that we met last night, she -”
“A nightwalker!?” Finn’s eyes grew wide. “I thought those were a myth…”
“Well, clearly they’re -” Andie froze. “Wait, you knew about nightwalkers!? You told us there was no such thing as evil dreamwalkers!”
“I thought there wasn’t!” Finnegan winced in pain and paused to massage his back. He’d gotten a little too worked up and needed to recollect himself. “…Look, I’ve been doing this since before your father was born. Over all my years, I’ve met hundreds of other dreamwalkers. Not a single one of them has ever seen a nightwalker in person, or even known someone else who had. All the stories I’d heard were fifth hand accounts, at best. I didn’t feel like scaring you with stories of some boogie man you’d probably never see, even if it was real.”
“Oh. Well.” Andie curled up a little. “…can you save her?”
“Well, if they’re anything like the rumors say… then it should be easy as pie!” A warm and prideful smile spread across Finnegan’s face. “It… just might take a little while. Nightwalkers are a shade or two smarter than your average Nightmare, so this… Maddie was it? She might try to hide from me.”