The next day, Taylor and Kait woke at the same time again and had breakfast together. Outside the window, frost sheeted the ground.

Kait sat at the table, eliciting a curious look from Taylor. She made her cereal as quickly as she could without making a mess. Once she finished, she looked at Taylor uncertainly.

He nodded, approving of her cereal-making skills. Kait fist-pumped the air in victory.

“So, you’re up early again. I wasn’t expecting that,” Taylor said.

“Yep. I know I haven’t been sleeping correctly, so I’m just going to start forcing myself to sleep by waking up at the right time. ‘Alarm’ clocks are useful!”

“I guess that would work,” Taylor took another bite. “So why were you sleeping so late in the first place? Didn’t you all wake up at sunrise back in the day?”

“Please don’t make me feel like an old person!” Kait turned her head.

“Sorry, I was so very callous, please forgive me!” he joked.

She waved it away. “It’s fine. It just feels ridiculous when you make me sound old.”

“Speaking of which, when is your birthday?”

“I don’t know my exact age, but my foster mother made it the fourth of December.”

“Huh. Mine’s on the thirteenth. So why did you stop waking up early?”

Kait quickly opened her mouth, but hesitated. She lowered her eyes in guilt. “I’d prefer it if you all didn’t pry so much…”

“Well, I’d like to know, so I thought it would be worth asking.”

She sighed. “The reason I was sleeping in so late…in the back of my mind, I kind of…feel…empty. Like I don’t truly exist. It’s difficult to explain. Like, sometimes I look at someone, and I just…start crying.” She looked down.

Taylor held his hands up defensively. “O-oh, I mean…you didn’t have to–”

“A-and I don’t know what to do. I even purposefully make my emotions do all the talking!” She placed her hand on her chest. “It makes me strong in a lot of ways! But once that-that emptiness boils to the surface, it just turns into tears!”

Taylor slowly reached to grasp Kait’s shoulder. “Kait…really, I’m s–”

“I can take it, though!” Her sudden yell made him recoil in surprise. “I hate myself for it. Sometimes I can’t even feel bad for what happened…”

Kait trailed off, growing crosseyed, then her head suddenly fell onto the table. At the same time, Taylor struggled to keep his eyes open as he lost strength in his muscles, and collapsed in his chair a second later.

Suddenly, Taylor felt cold wind rush past him as the house seemed to quickly shift and darken. After he broke out of a shocked trance, he began yelling in fear as he looked around himself.

While there wasn’t anything but empty space around him, Kait also fell beside him, strangely calm as she closed her eyes and chanted, “Consciousness give ka partle ta halt urs fall…”

Taylor, on the other hand, panicked, flailing his hands and causing himself to flip in free-fall, slowly rotating while he yelled, “THISTLE, THISTLE—Spirits, save me!”

Kait grabbed Taylor’s wrist and pulled him closer.

“Kait, what’s going on?!” Taylor continued to yell. Kait couldn’t recognize the words, but she got the gist of ‘discordant scared screams.’

As she finished chanting, they slowed down and eventually reached a standstill, where Kait matted her hair back down and straightened her skirt.

Taylor let out a deep, nervous breath. “I’m not sure what’s going on here…but jeez, please, please get me out of this creepy place,” he motioned to the endless void surrounding them. The only reason he wasn’t more scared was that Kait seemed calm.

She pointed at the wristband on her left hand. “Ja can’t parple.” She motioned towards her throat.

Taylor vaguely understood what she was saying; for some reason, the spell that let them communicate wasn’t working.

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Kait put a hand over her mouth in thought, then pulled him closer. She grabbed Taylor’s waist, which caused him to start squirming uncomfortably and throwing out words Kait didn’t know in a flustered and slightly squeaky tone. “What?! Why’d you do that?! K-Kait?”

She began balancing their kinetic energy. By the time she had properly balanced it, Taylor had finally stopped his whining.

She almost chuckled at how he’d grown flustered, but she couldn’t muster the humor, as the spell that had taken them into the void had consumed almost all her emotions.

“Okay…so how are we getting out of here?”

It wasn’t obvious, but the fall through the black void had wracked Kait’s brain with adrenaline. Acting calmly in a situation like that was difficult, and it only put more stress on her. The adrenaline itself was a massive detriment to her ability to cast magic because she could hardly feel what emotions she had left with her mind so clouded, or, more precisely, so calm.

“Hmm…” Kait knew she could easily get them out once her adrenaline had faded, but it would take a while. She preferred to be faster about it since she knew Taylor had better things to do.

She knew a few ways to muster emotion through adrenaline, though. A ‘feeling’ wasn’t necessarily an emotion, such as the feeling of touching a rough surface, but if a feeling like ‘pain’ was strong enough, it could become an emotion…and she could probably use that to wake herself up.

Taylor saw Kait slow-motion punch her own face while speaking to him in an instructional tone. “Kipa ki facee.”

Is she telling me to punch her? Taylor raised an eyebrow.

“Eaavy,” she apologized in advance. She didn’t see any way to do this without his cooperation, so she had to take somewhat more drastic measures to convey what she meant. Suddenly, she sent a punch hurling toward Taylor. A moment before impact, she stopped.

Taylor blinked rapidly, flinching from the sudden move. “D-do you need to punch me?”

Kait shook her head as she mock-punched her own face, then pointed between his fist and her face.

“Okay, that’s what I thought…” he slowly said, an expression of distaste growing on his face as he looked at his fist. “S-sorry!” he said as he threw a punch toward Kait as instructed.

Kait didn’t even flinch as his fist flew toward her, but a moment before it hit, Taylor pulled his arm back, swiping through empty air instead.

Kait stared at Taylor with annoyance as he slowly opened his eyes, then averted them in embarrassment.

“Kipa ki facee!” Kait said again.

“I-I don’t know if I can punch you…” Taylor muttered with defeat. He’d shut his eyes after throwing the punch, not wanting to feel the guilt of hitting Kait. He’d hit a friend before and knew how much it hurt.

Kait didn’t understand what he’d said, so she stood idle, waiting to be punched.

Without much of a choice, he raised his fist again, then threw it at Kait, closing his eyes. His fist hit something, then he heard Kait make a grunt of pain. When he opened his eyes, she was rubbing her cheek with a look of disappointment.

“I-I’m sorry, I…” He held his dominant arm, his own fist stinging from the glancing blow. “I don’t want to punch you…”

Kait sighed. She could hardly feel Taylor’s weak attack, to be honest, but she wasn’t going to make him try again. It probably wasn’t a pleasant experience for Taylor to punch a friend, and there wasn’t any good reason to force things, anyway.

She raised her hands, telling him to stop, then moved into a sitting position to meditate.

They floated around the void for ten awkward minutes, Taylor growing more nervous as time passed. After around ten minutes, Kait stretched to get her blood pumping and channel the feeling of wakefulness. Using that emotion, she stretched her body out as though she had just awoken and yelled…

Something had roused Hailey from her sleep; an emotion she couldn’t place her finger on. She had never woken up from an emotion before, but this one had hit her like a ton of bricks, even though she couldn’t tell what it was.

As she walked down the stairs, she saw the strangest of sights. Kait and Taylor were passed out on the kitchen table. She apprehensively approached Taylor and shook him as hard as she could.

“Taylor, are you asleep?”

When he didn’t wake up, her eyes widened in fear.

In panic, she threw his body to the ground, cushioning his head’s fall with her leg. She held two fingers to his throat and placed her ear on his heart in a frantic search for a pulse. His heartbeat was normal and he seemed fine. She sniffed. Just in case any gasses were threatening them, she opened the front door, letting in the cold air.

Hailey walked to Kait, laid her on the ground, and did the same for her.

“Wake the fuck up!”

Hailey’s head was, unfortunately, directly above Kait’s as she woke up yelling. Her positioning resulted in a potent head smash that sent her reeling to the ground, squirming and crying in pain. “GAHH! THAT HURT SO—What are you doing?!” Hailey writhed on the floor with her hands on her head.

Kait wasn’t doing much better, though she had a greater tolerance for pain. Despite her groans, she crawled to Taylor, using the table as a support, then picked up an empty bowl still left on the counter, filled it with a bit of water from the faucet, and trickled it over Taylor’s forehead. He woke up feeling like he’d had a bucket of cold water crash over his head. “By grass blades, that’s so cold!”

Hailey rolled to a wall and leaned on it, pained but relieved that her brother wasn’t in danger…oh, and Kait too. “Consider yourself lucky,” she groaned.

Kait threw herself onto her chair with a massive yawn, calming herself while waiting for the pain to fade away. She relaxed in the chair, and a moment later, Taylor followed, climbing back into his own.

Taylor massaged his face. “I have way too many questions.”

Hailey pitched in with a much more aggressive tone, “Me too! Don’t go scaring me like that…”

Kait waited for the pain to fade away before saying, “I’m fine with answering questions, but why were we just on the ground, and why does Taylor not have a shirt on?”

“It’s called first aid, but you wouldn’t know much about it since you’re such a naive old lady!”