Black. It is so black. Why can I not see where it is that I am going?

There is nothing inside this void. It is just...black.

I run. There is no one behind me and nothing in front of me, yet still I run, run fast, faster than I ever have before, run until my lungs are heaving and my throat is dry, my legs burning with the ache to stop. I run until I can no longer breathe, until I can no longer think.

What am I running from?

I feel as if my heart is beating too hard, crashing into my chest, caged by my ribs. The words I wish to say are stuck inside my head, unable to make their way from my throat to my lips and though I open my mouth to speak, nothing comes out. A blank void surrounds me, twisting, churning, turning; a blackness so thick and so consuming that I cannot escape, can never escape from it. It is suffocating.

There is no one behind me, yet I still want to run.

There is nothing there, yet I still feel terror clinging to my heart, slipping through my veins like icy fingers on my bones.

Nothing but blackness.

It was not yet morning when Ren awoke, quite suddenly, and quite abruptly, gasping into his pillow. In fact, it was nowhere near morning, at least not the time that Ren would relate to as being "morning;" around ten o'clock. When he glanced now, at the clock on his bedside table, the time 3:06 flickered in bright neon numbers, a stark contrast to the dark of the room.

For a little bit, Ren was disoriented, not entirely sure whose room he was in. It was not unusual to wake up in someone else's; he spent a lot of night's in one of his three best friend's rooms, so finding himself sleeping on the floor of someone else's room was, in fact, quite normal. But the nightmare had twisted his thoughts, convoluted his mind, and he was having difficulties getting out of it. Sharp, staccato breaths escaped his throat, loud and brash in the otherwise silent room, and Ren put a hand over his mouth to keep from waking the others. They were not quite sobs, but not quite hyperventilating either; a horrid mixture of the two, making Ren feel almost overwhelmingly pathetic.

Shuddering, face drenched in sweat, Ren reached a hand up, pushing damp hair away from his face as he closed his eyes briefly, swallowing back the urge to throw up. Nausea swept over him, his stomach churning, and for a few moments all he did was lay there and breathe. Breathe in the familiar scents of LW, Gabrian, and Alessa in the room with him. For once, the four of them had not remembered to shift into their animal forms before falling asleep during their movie night. The skelevision set was still on, fallen into "sleep" mode, and around him were the shadowy silhouettes of the trio, all of them sound asleep on their pillows, curled beneath their blankets. There was the sharp, elegant cinnamon and spice scent of the demon, near his feet; the sharp tang of apples and the gentle dusting scent of cooking dough from the nagual to his left. And then finally, there was the sweet vanilla and lilac scent from the werewolf, somewhere to his right. So familiar, so...relaxing. They made Ren feel warm inside, made him remember that he was not alone.

Ren pushed himself up slowly, one hand pressed against his middle. After a few moments, most of the nausea had dissipated, but he still felt terrible, the haunting remnants of the nightmarish dream he had been trapped within still fresh in his mind.

Moving to sit on his knees, he crawled over to Alessa first, his fingers trembling slightly as he reached to tuck the blanket around her a bit more. Ren touched her cheek briefly, bending down to press a light kiss to her temple before crawling around her towards LW. The shewolf was lying a few inches away from the nagual, and Ren smiled in the dark as he carefully lifted her head, sliding her pillow a little bit further underneath her head so that it was not resting on the floor. He brushed a bit of her hair from her face. Finally he moved to Gabrian, the nix's breathing deep and even as Ren tugged at the blanket tangled around his legs. He pulled it up to cover the demon, resting the tips of his fingers on the nix's face for a second, and then crawled back to his own area, settling down into the pile of pillows.

For a little while Ren just lay there, watching the three of them sleep peacefully. His fingers, which had started to stop shaking, loosened their hold on the blanket he had pulled over himself as he started to relax. And then, with a quiet yawn, Ren closed his eyes, drifting off into a deep and dreamless sleep.

[[ I have permission from Kyrieko, Dark Fire Angel, and Ary Keeyara to use their characters <3 ]]