I submit 6E, if it inspires you 😊
Some new friends + spontaneous manifestation for you!
Blanche’s eyes were wide as saucers by the time Robin answered the door.
“Are you okay?” she gaped before Robin had time for as much as a hello. “How many times do I have to hear about your street on the news!”
“I’m fine,” Robin answered sheepishly, accepting Blanche’s one-armed hug with equal awkwardness. “It, uh, it happens, you know.”
“It happens?” Blanche protested. “Babe, if they found a giant snake in the basement of my building I’d move.”
“It was just a wyrm,” Robin said weakly. “Not a snake. And it’s gone now.”
“Yeah they’re easy to dispel at least,” Blanche sighed, charging into Robin’s tiny apartment with her travel cups of coffee held high in the air like an offering. “I remember people remarking how easily they got rid of that cockatrice the other week.
“They really didn’t need to call the emergency services for that, she was very small.”
Blanche fixed her worried eyes on her friend’s face. “I mean it, Robin. I know you can deal, but, wouldn’t you get more sleep in a place that isn’t supernaturally infested? You look knackered, love.”
Robin rubbed at the back of her neck, avoiding Blanche’s concerned looks. “I uh, don’t think moving will improve matters much. Not for me at least.”
“...what do you mean.” Blanche got the heavy, foreboding feeling in her stomach of having said entirely the wrong thing. She hadn’t known Robin for very long, but she could tell she was having a pretty miserable morning.
“It was fine before,” Robin muttered, slowly sitting down on the couch. “I just had to set my alarm real early. But the new couple in apartment 103 both work night shifts and they keep coming and going at the strangest times.”
Blanche stood very still and bit her lip. Robin, she remembered, was very good at illusion magic. Very good at illusion magic, and pretty bad at sleeping.
Silently she freed the two cups from their cardboard tray and held one out to Robin. “With soy, how you like it.”
Robin took it, with a quick, tired smile. “You’re a gem.”
Blanche sat down beside her, silently trying to remember everything she had ever learned about sleep deprivation and nightmares and night terrors all at once.
“You won’t tell anyone right?” Robin muttered. “I really don’t want to have to move.”
“Course not, what would I even be telling? Nothing to say.”
For a long time they sat in silence, the air slowly filling with the scent of sugary coffee while the tired bags under Robin’s eyes faded just a little.
When Blanche finally spoke, it was in the voice of someone introducing a deliberate change of subject. “So, what’s your opinion on sleepovers?”