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“On your left!”
Sapnap’s voice breaks through the blissfully hypnotic veil encasing Dream’s mind. He barely processes it in time to dig the heel of his foot into the dirt and launch himself away from the fireball that was hurling towards him.
The flames burst onto a tree, catching fire easily, but George comes in prepared. With one twirl of his finger, several papers with ice glyphs scrawled on them levitate over the fire before activating, spewing snow over the tree and smothering the blazes with a hiss.
Dream sighs in relief, giving in to the urge to rest his eyelids for a few seconds before he hears two pairs of footsteps rushing over to him.
“Dream! Are you okay? I didn’t hurt you, did I?” Sapnap’s worry is written into the way his eyes flick every which way along Dream’s body. His eyes pin down the side of his green cloak, and the witch’s eyebrows furrow further with guilt.
Dream lifts his arm to see the cloth singed, and Sapnap moves forward to brush a hand along the frayed edges. Dream internally curses. How was he supposed to explain this to XD?
He brushes away the momentary panic; maybe he can tell him he strayed too close to a hive of fire bees?
“I’m fine, it only got the cloak. And my pride.” Dream places his hands placatingly in front of him as he attempts to reassure them. He steps back just out of Sapnap’s reach, and his frown deepens.
“What happened?” George demands. His concern shows when he crosses his arms and gives a little glare in Sapnap’s direction.
Dream sighed. He loves his friends, but sometimes they could be so overbearing.
“It was my fault. I was trying to… see how late I could dodge the fireball.” The excuse fell flat on the ground, and he could tell with the way his friends narrow their eyes, but it also communicates a clear ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ which they thankfully grant him as they back out of his personal space.
Dream didn’t have the energy to argue with his friends at the moment, or any time in the rest of the day, really. They hadn’t trained for too long, yet he could still feel an annoyingly persistent ache in his limbs that have lurked there since a few days ago.
Along with his eyes constantly fluttering close as his body tries to force sleep on him, Dream knew those signs that told him he should be getting more sleep. Of course he did, because how could he be an efficient prince if his brain was always shut down half of the time and he was swaying on his feet every instance he stood?
He knew sleep was important, and avoiding it was only worsening his insomnia, but there was always just so much to do.
From tutoring to training, to hanging with his friends and serving XD, there wasn’t a lot of time left for himself, which left him scrambling to study, practice and plan late into the night a lot.
Besides, impressing his older brother and making his friends happy were worth far more than any rest sleep could give him.
George goes to sit cross-legged against the trunk of a tree while Sapnap flips through his spell book as he chews on his bottom lip. His eyes still seem just as conflicted since he fretted over Dream.
Dream hopes he didn’t scare Sapnap away from using the fireball spell again. Sapnap had gone through an entire phase of barring any pyro magic after he knocked Dream off a tree with a fireball, resulting in a sprained ankle. Even when he allowed himself his favorite kind of casting again, he was still hesitant to even touch the spell, especially near Dream.
Guilt would twist his heart every time he saw Sapnap struggle with other spells. It was always so easy for him to summon a flame, it was like his bile sac was fueled by embers. Dream would hate to hold him back because he couldn’t handle a little bit of missed sleep.
Dream’s fists clench at the thought. Why is he messing up so much? He should be able to deal with it; he’s being trained by the strongest witch in all of the boiling isles!
‘Dream? Have you been missing sleep in turn to read again? I thought we discussed this. You must be in the best condition for your training.’
He could practically hear XD’s disappointed voice once he confronts him. The older has probably gone through the night just fine, it’s just him who fails to overcome the consequences.
‘Dream. Don’t lie to me. I know you’re enticed by the allure of wild magic, and you stay awake trying to teach yourself its wretched ways. It’s okay, every child is at one point in their life. Just tell me and we’ll work through this together.’
What kind of prince would he be if he couldn’t live up to his brother’s name? He knows he needs to dig his heels in and stop delving deeper into the world of wild magic, it would make things so much easier for him, but that would require cutting off his only friends, and he could never do that.
‘Dream… Maybe you aren’t quite as cut out for this as I thought you were. If you can’t tell me the truth, then how am I to entrust to you the title of the Green Prince?’
The thought nearly makes him sick, and he has to swallow down the lump in his throat before he chokes on it. How childish is that? Getting the urge to cry over a hypothetical situation that doesn’t even exist.
“Dream!”
George’s sharp tone slices through his train of thought.
Dream opens his eyes, and he hasn’t even realized he closed them in the first place. The world comes back into focus around him instead of the muffled version that comes with being half-asleep.
George looks on worriedly, with Sapnap seemingly on the brink of making his way over to Dream.
“I’m good,” Dream shakes out his head to clear the plague of thoughts from his head, ruffling his hood in the process, “I just zoned out a bit. Thinking about today’s session.” He walks over to where they rested in the grass, taking up the last of the fading sunlight like a beached selkidomous.
His friends seem satisfied with the answer, but instead of leaving it at that, Sapnap uses it to delve deeper.
“You know, you did seem pretty distracted when we were training. I mean, you tried to catch my punch while it was on fire! What’s up with that?”
“I’m sorry. I’m just-” ironically, a yawn breaks through Dream’s speech, “tired.” Admitting it seemed like the better option now, and he didn’t know if it was because drowsiness messed with his perception, or because he had just come back to his senses.
“Is that why you couldn’t focus? You should’ve just said so! I would’ve stopped if I knew you’d rather take a nap, dude.” Sapnap wears a pair of sad eyes, and it reminds Dream of a palisman begging for treats from their owner.
Dream sighed, plopping himself down next to George. “I wish it were that easy.”
George gives him an inquisitive look. “And why isn’t it?”
“Yeah, bro! We can watch over and wake you up at sundown so you’ll get home in time for your ‘curfew’ or whatever.” Sapnap explains like it’s the most obvious concept in all of the isles.
“It’s like- a whole thing. I have insomnia, it runs in the family.” At their puzzled expressions, Dream continues, “It basically means it's harder for me to sleep. And when I do, it’s more often than not that it’s not for very long.”
Sapnap hums thoughtfully. “Have you tried sleeping nettles? They work like a charm, I would know.”
“Don’t even listen to him. That’s Bad’s stupid palisman messing with us all the time.” George scoffs. He looks to be on the fence about something, weighing his options before gesturing Dream to come closer.
“Here. Lay your head in my lap. Bad used to do this a lot when Sapnap was younger.”
George peels away Dream’s hood, and he stiffens in his hold, ready to scramble away if he strays towards his mask.
“Relax. I just need to get to your scalp.”
Once George’s fingers take root in Dream’s hair, he allows himself to melt as they start to rub patterns into his skin.
“Hey, how come you never did this for me?”
“‘Cause you had Bad. Besides, he does it way better than me.”
The voices of his friends fade away as Dream wallows in the deft movements of the massage. He subconsciously lets his eyes fall close, and relief washes over him, unscrewing the tightness of his muscles.
Shapes trace in the darkness of his sight, following George’s lead, and Dream gets lost in the rhythmic motions as his mind latches on and pushes everything else away and to the back of his mind where they’re nothing more than an afterthought.
He doesn’t even realize that he’s dozing off, the rumble of George’s voice against his head as he uses his lap as a pillow like a lullaby.
Sapnap startles awake, and he can faintly process the sound of rustling undergrowth through the drowsiness.
A breathy groan slips from his lips as he pushes himself onto his side with as much force as a growing ten-year-old can muster. The noise stops, and it makes him pause.
As his brain brushes off the rest of his sleep and gears start turning, Sapnap comes to a realization that something was lurking in the forest.
Instantly, his heart plummets like a stone into his stomach, and something fearful stirs in the midst of his gut.
Was it a coven scout? Bad had always warned him to be cautious about casting multiple types of magic because of the punishments they conducted once they caught ‘wild’ witches. Or maybe it was a beast demon?
No- no, it must be Dream. Night was present, with the moon casting everything around him in a navy glow. Dream must’ve woken and realized it was past his curfew, and was getting up to leave. Perhaps he was trying to be quiet so as to not wake him and George.
Or Dream hadn’t fallen asleep at all. He did mention having insomnia and all that, maybe he was just fiddling around with something while watching over Sapnap and George as they slept.
The feeble attempt at self-reassurance didn’t prepare him at all for what met him when he stood and turned around.
Gleaming red eyes bore down at him from the darkness of the forest.
Sapnap shrieked .
The eyes jerked back at the piercing shrill, and Sapnap scrambled to trace a circle in the air.
Flames bursted from the spell, engulfing the area he was facing. He didn’t get to witness what became of the thing as bright light filled his vision.
Moments later, the spell let up, and darkness surrounded him once more along with the smell of smoke.
Sapnap pants, drained from the sudden onslaught of magic he used up in such a short amount of time.
He looks around, first to check if the red eyes still prowled in the surrounding underbrush, then to locate his friends.
His heart skips a beat, wondering if he scorched where they were sleeping, but quickly relaxes once he catches the sight of George’s snoring face off to the right in the light of an ember he summons in his hand.
But then it quickens again when he notices Dream’s masked face is absent from the spot in George's lap.
Sapnap whips around, a call of Dream’s name on the tip of his tongue when-
“Sapnap! It’s okay- you’re okay.”
Dream is standing less than a foot away behind Sapnap, and he almost yelps again.
“Oh my Ender- Dream-? You scared me!” He sighs, placing a hand over his rapidly beating heart. The few minutes from when he awoke until now had been like an emotional griffon ride for him.
“Sorry. You just totally freaked, though. Are you alright?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I think I am now. But you should’ve seen that- that thing! It was, like, completely dark, and I could still see its creepy red eyes! It was almost like they were glowing!” Sapnap’s face flushed as he realized Dream most likely watched him panic. He cleared his throat, glancing away and focusing on George to hide his blush.
He didn’t notice the pause Dream took as he looked back at George.
“We should get out of here, though. I think I might’ve gotten it with my flames, but it could’ve survived. Or there might be more around.” Sapnap turned to jog over to George and shake him awake.
The part of the forest he blasted was utterly charred. Blackened to a concerning degree, and Sapnap felt his lips tug upward into a grin.
He did that.
As he roused George, he couldn’t help but feel pride in his magic. If anything were to come after him or his friends, he’d be ready.
Sapnap was so preoccupied, that he didn’t even notice Dream hiding his seared and smoking shoulder.