Oliver jumped on his bed and waved for me to come over so I did. I pressed a hand down, feeling it get sucked into the mattress. "No, that's not how you feel a bed, you daft twit", Oliver laughed. He grabbed me by the waist and yanked me down. My head hit the pillow and I felt the urge to sleep. The mattress was made of memory foam and I could literally feel it swallowing my body. "Isn't this nice?" Oliver asked. "Beds have come such a long way since I was born. Dear Christ, I remember when I was a kid and all it was was skins and some hey."
I closed my eyes and listened to Oliver talk. His voice was sing songy, his accent causing him to pronounce different vowels in a strange melodic way. He sounded happy with his house, like he was a little kid that had just moved into a really cool castle. I had to keep reminding myself that Oliver was 600 something and not an overgrown six year old. "Oliver...what was it like when you were a kid?" I asked. I picked a question that I knew would have a lengthy answer, just so I could hear his voice talk to me until I passed out.
"Erm, dirty. I had lots of siblings since, you know, in the day most of them were going to die. A lot of the older ones died in a small second outbreak of the Plague the year I was born, which for the record is exactly 1400. My family was poor. We were farm hands. I had a brother who wanted to join the royal army but...that never happened. He got pneumonia, a fairly nasty case of it too. Oh, I had a sister with epilepsy who was locked away in a loony bin for being possessed. And-Thorne, are you awake? You're starting to sleep."
