Austin awoke from his sleep rather suddenly, finding himself on his side, and unsure of where he was. A quick look around told him he was on the floor at the bottom of the annex, and he had probably fallen from bed. The sudden surge of pain in his shoulder confirmed it.

Austin winced, and carefully stood, favoring his foreleg, his shoulder stinging like crazy. He hobbled over to the cabinet, opened it and peeked in, rifling around for something to wrap his shoulder in in case he had broken it. But as he did so, the stinging pain began to dull to a more tolerable ache, and he stopped, sitting.

He had been dreaming again. Or perhaps "nightmare" would have been the better descriptor. She had been standing before him, beckoning him, pleading for him to come closer to her. And he could not resist, his paws slipping against the floor, unable to pull himself back away from her terrible embrace.

Austin shook his head, digging his claws into the wood of the floor. He would be okay. She could not hurt him here. She would never find him here.

And yet he found himself wondering still if that was what he wanted.

Even in his nightmares, she haunted him. Every waking moment he spent trying his best not to think about her. But she still captivated him somewhat.

Austin stood, trembling, looking around. This was why he didn't like to wake up at night. He couldn't read when it was this dark, and he didn't dare set something alight just so he could see book pages. It was best to go back to sleep.

Austin held a small ball of fire in his mouth, just enough to give him a better view of where the path upwards was. He carefully began to climb back to his bed, moving slower than usual due to his glasses not being on his face.

He could still remember how she had devoured them right out of Lansing's paws to repair them... then controlled his body just to make her sandwiches...

Austin laid in his bed and woofed softly. It was painful to think of Lansing too, but she didn't come to mind as often. And she had really loved him, genuinely, with significantly less traumatization. Tears began to well in his eyes as he thought about her.

--

Austin had just begun to drift off when the rising sun, and the beginning of the day, and the sound of Angel heading out woke him again. He grunted softly, looking around, and lifted his head groggily as all of the sensations of sight and sound woke him. He huffed, reaching over, putting on his glasses, and standing up to crack open "1984" again and finish it perhaps.

And so he read.

And he read.

And it was about an hour later that Austin realized he had not advanced a single page.

The Flareon stared at the pages, trembling, his heart beginning to race as he realized that he could not bear to "read" another word. He jumped up, and barked, and leapt to the floor, and ran out of the tree, bolting in what seemed to him a perfectly random direction.