Restless Cobalt

The Third Day Part One

It had worked fairly nicely. Bristle even remembered a dream she had: a strange woman all in white, with long blond hair, walking down an unfamiliar forest path. She never saw her face or heard her voice. Not the most exciting or interesting dream, but dreaming meant she was sleeping.

She still felt unnaturally tired, but... not as bad, if that meant anything. Maybe it was because she was cheered by the fact everybody would be understanding of the problem. Everyone was in the know. That thought had helped Bristle get out of bed.

The next morning went pretty routinely; the only thing of note was that they had their breakfast at the dining table which was a much more infrequent occurrence. Bristle, along with Wis talked to Ma about how she and Bristle had slept last night. Ma said they were "comparing notes," which both Bristle and Wis enjoyed. It was like when they worked together on school stuff.

Of course, before he had his milk, Tis asked what tryptophan tasted like, and was told that it had a bitter taste. He immediately drank some milk, and commented that it tasted "pretty much the same."

Bristle felt much more on top of things. She wasn't even resenting the fact that they had a lesson coming up.

Ma decided to give her a break; said they'd be studying poetry that lesson. Clearly this must have been inspired by their earlier discussion. Since she was reminded of it, Bristle covertly asked Ma if she could be the one to tell Wis about what they'd said and planned. Ma agreed to it. She would get to talk about it to them in much more depth in a later discussion, which would likely be at dinner. The same applied to the Aunt Rochelle thing.

Poetry lessons also came with some advantages; it meant she could do a bit of daydreaming and it could be relevant to the lesson. In her current state, that was relief.

Tis didn't seem to be as enthused by the subject of poetry, in fact he scowled about it. Ma didn't see it; her back was turned. That didn't stop her from saying, "Probably shouldn't go around making faces, Thistle. Somebody might have a camera handy." Tis' subsequent stunned face made Bristle actually want to go fetch the camera.

Fortunately for Tis, Ma assured him that there would be more science and history based lessons coming up, especially when Nana and Pop came over. Those were more involved (which was why Ma typically saved them for when Nana and Pop were available), and today they wanted to take things more slowly. Tis nodded his understanding.

The science lesson part sounded interesting – especially if it went outdoors – but Bristle's attentions were mostly directed at Nana and Pop coming over. Ma said she planned for the family to take a trip... would they be involved, too? Was she going to discuss those plans with them? Would those discussions be held in private? She entirely understood why Wis felt compelled to eavesdrop – in fact, she'd tried it herself and found that she was bad at staying unnoticed. She would never ask Wis to eavesdrop on the adults; Wis was trying to break that habit.

That reminded her of another thing she needed to tell them about, namely Ma's travel plans. That had been a really involved conversation, hadn't it – there was the stuff about Aunt Rochelle that she'd already disclosed, and the forthcoming poetry thing too. The travel plans must have slipped her mind. Was she usually that forgetful?

Surely none of this was a secret. If their parents ever told one of them anything wilfully and directly, that meant all three of them were allowed to know and they were quite welcome to share it amongst themselves. Then they could ask about it at dinner and have a more in depth conversation.

She was a little annoyed at herself for forgetting it. This was one of those times where it was hard to keep track of everything. All the more reason to tell her siblings. Strange that Ma hadn't already done so; like over dinner when they originally brought up the insomnia. Then she reminded herself that Ma was very distracted, too – she had a lot going on as well; that was the reason she had been up that night just like her.