↕ - a memory that may or may not have happened
“Ly-ly?”
“Dea?”
“Wakey wakey, Ly!”
“No, Dea, no wakey wakey now. It´s in the middle of the night. How did you even get here?”
Lyra supressed a groan as she pushed the warm blankets away and sat up in her bed, looking down at her baby sister. She could have sworn she´d locked her door, yet there it was wide open and bringing in light from the corridor. How Dea had managed to crawl out of her high bed and through two locked doors were beyond her imagination.
With a sigh, the older girl got up. “Come on, Dea, let´s go get you back to bed.”
The toddler started chatting excitedly in incoherent sentences- at least until Lyra placed a finger to her own lips. That made Dea repeat the gesture, nodding with a solemn expression as she shut up. The older girl took her hand.
“Quiet, quiet, yeah? Let´s not wake up mum and dad.”
“No wakey wakey,” the kid agreed, clinging on to her hand.
She kept her hand in Dea´s as they walked into the corridor, both making sure to be extra quiet as they walked past the door leading to the master bedroom. Luckily there were no hushed conversation coming from behind the door tonight. Lyra had been worried that was the reason her baby sister had woken up- even though she didn´t look as worried as she usually did whenever it happen, she could never be sure. Together they tiptoed past, the carped on the floor softening the sound of their footsteps. Lyra made sure to give her sister an encouraging –if not sleepy- smile to keep her silent and happy.
“There we are,” she said as they walked into the last room on the left before the stairs; Dea´s bedroom.
The inside was filled to the brim of teddy bears and dolls, some after Lyra and some new. Yellow flowers were painted on the wall, although their usual happy colour now was grey in the darkness. Dea must have opened the curtains, because she could see the streets of London outside the window- unusually quiet. It might have been in the middle of the night, but there was always traffic in London no matter the hour.
Maybe she was still dreaming. There were no traffic in dreams.
To be entirely honest she still felt like she was dreaming, so maybe she still was.
“Here now,” Lyra said softly as she picked the younger girl up and placed her in her bed. She still slept in a bed where one could roll up a grind to keep her from rolling (or climbing) out, for this very reason. Dea could never respect nap-time as a kid, but would constantly crawl out and take midnight walks around the house. Still did, it seemed.
Lyra tried to put the duvet on top of Dea, which was a task harder said than done as she kept squirming, wanting to stand up.
“Look Ly-ly, look!” She exclaimed, getting up and pointing at the window. Lyra glanced in the direction and stopped for a second.
Outside was a bright blue light flying across the sky, leaving no trail of smoke behind. No, wait, it was red! No, green! It kept changing colours as they watched, Dea making gleeful noises and softly clapping her hands at the pretty colours. Once again she got the feeling of dreaming rather than being awake, but before she had time to do something along the lines of pinching her arm, Dea did something that took her by surprise. She threw her tiny hands around her neck, giving her a hug.
If she wasn´t so damn tired she would have laughed out loud. Instead she went for a tired smile as she hugged her baby sister back. At least one person in this family was still happy to see her.
Lyra couldn´t remember going back to bed, but when she woke up next morning the memory felt hazy like a dream. Dea was in her usual happy mood during breakfast, but didn´t say anything about walking around the night before, so neither did Lyra. If it was real or just a dream she could never be sure, but nevertheless it was a good memory.
