“I swear, he was right here… Well, anyway…” Dyllan glanced toward the very pissed off Andie, trying his best to politely pretend he hadn’t noticed her sword behind her back. “You seem… upset.”

“Oh. Just a little.” The friendly smile on Andie’s face remained totally unwavering as her eyes scanned the surroundings with a predatory glare. “See, today I found out my grandpa was a dreamwalker. I also found out that Cedric has known about this for several days now.” Her left eye twitched when she said Cedric’s name. “So, I thought I’d ask him why he didn’t think to tell me anything about this.”

“Well, it isn’t like Cedric to just… not help a friend, so I’m sure he had a good reason.” Dyllan gestured for Andie to calm down as he tried to gain some distance. He’d never seen her this mad before. “Maybe he was hoping for you to hear about this from the person in question, rather than going behind their back?”

“What!? I -” Andie’s smile snapped into a scowl as she shot Dyllan a nasty glare, as though he’d committed some form of crime by even suggesting Cedric was anything other than a monster. “I…! That’s… He…” She struggled for words while angrily swinging around her sword and waving her arms. With a final burst of fury, she hurled her sword off into the distance. “I mean, I guess Grandpa did mention that it was Cedric who convinced him to come clean…” She started to calm down, but her anger quickly flared back up. “But he…! But I - but… it just…”

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At this point, Andie was clearly grasping at straws, struggling for a reason to stay angry as the last of her rage left her. Picking up on this, Cedric took the opportunity to cautiously fade back into visibility behind her.

“…it just… it really hurt you know? All this lying and secrets.”

Cedric froze. After a moment of silence he started to reach out toward Andie, but quickly pulled back.

“I hate all these mind games. This is my grandpa and one of my two best friends we’re talking about!” Andie slumped back the roof’s railing and threw up her hands in frustration. “I want to be able to trust them! I don’t want to have to second guess whether or not the people closest to me are lying. I want to be able to trust them, and I want them to trust me.”

Silently, Cedric made a… broken expression, then faded back into invisibility.