What Is Love?

The Dancing Queen

Author's Note: The little girl at the top, as a cover image there, is Cassandra: Mark and Witney's daughter. :) Isn't she adorable? :) I saw this picture and was like: that's her. She has Witney's eyes, shape and color, Mark's dark hair, and Witney's lips, though a bit redder. Her pose in this picture reminds me of how Mark stands sometimes. :) Anyway, this kinda just...I let it flow a bit in the beginning, well all of it really, but that's just a disclaimer; the beginning may seem random-ish but it just kinda happened, also simultaneously developing Cassandra's character quirks...so...enjoy! :)) As always, vote and/or comment if you liked it, I enjoy hearing from you who read! :)
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The bedsheets had fallen by force of the wind against her body, heating her petite frame by what felt like twenty degrees. They were flannel, and it was summer, so this was duly expected; what wasn't however, were the child's cries, their decibel so high, so strong in sinusoidal sound.

"Babe...can you get her?"

"Can't you Wit?"

His voice was thick with a slimy sleep, coating his tongue and preventing proper annunciation.

She exhaled, moving the tangles of blonde away from her eyes, bleary and swollen, shades of violet plaguing the surrounding skin. "Whatever."

Witney walked across the hall, painted toes coming alive in the dark, becoming lost amongst the carpeted flooring.

There was a subtle flicker and the room was bathed in a penumbral light, the pink of the walls blending with the golden halo above her head, its shine captured, and subsequently dulled, by a Tinker Bell fixture.

"Oh Cassie," Witney cooed, biting her lip as the wails hadn't yet taken pause, not even for one, wonderful, second. Please, sleep baby. Why can't you go to sleep!?"

Mark had mentioned countless of times that they should take her to the doctor, to someone who knows children and how they maneuver the big, wide, world. Though Witney had a different view, having insisted that there was absolutely nothing wrong with their baby girl.

This was three months ago, when the flag was first raised and barely catching a breeze. Now, another three months have passed and its redness flew high in the sky, sprinkling some clouds with color, the alert it sent off becoming harder to ignore: something's wrong!

Cassandra is five years old; she is a very happy, bubbly child, always has a lot to say. Presently, as her mother watched her, resisting the primal urge to hold her close, a heavy string of spittle coated those lips, and a ruddiness attributed to the unbridled tears coated those cheeks.

Humming softly, Witney sat on the rocking chair to the bed's right, beginning a back-and-forth motion. The child carried on her crying, halting only for a parched breath here or there.

"Oh Cassie, my little dancing queen, what's got you so upset?"

From the very first night Mark and Witney spent as parents, to now, not once has Cassandra slept through the night, always awoken by something, a figment of imaginative fantasia.

A few weeks ago, Witney had given in and walked into the pediatrician's office, clutching Mark's hand with a child, altogether oblivious, smiling and skipping, by her side. The doctor - a tall, homely woman with fine dark hair, and a soft smile to match her attitude - told the couple that their child had pavor nocturnes, though it was not too severe and should fade with time.

Witney hadn't known what to make of this information, not at the time, and even now it was still a struggle to comprehend. Their daughter had an illness, one that they - as her parents - couldn't make better with a cup of soup and cuddles. It was a disorder.