She had finally gotten home…after all of the excitement…and the first thing that she could think of doing was laying in bed. Again. For the second night in a row, Carlee was reduced to laying in bed, staring up at her ceiling, not wanting to sleep for fear of…well…having dreams that led to not sleeping. Because that was what seemed to be happening.

The teenager’s lip trembled slightly and she rolled over onto her side, looking at her still rather impressively large pile of stuffed animals that lived in the corner of her room. Maybe tonight she should just go back to that. Things were so much more simple when she was younger. When stuffed animals could solve anything and she could just…cry a little and everything would be better. The bitter reality of things now was that crying a little and hugging stuffed animals wasn’t going to make things better. She was very scared of things outside of the house…of people showing up and trying to hurt her…what if they succeeded and Arias ended up having to do things without her bugging him all the time? What would her parents ever do if something really bad happened to her?

After a long while just staring at the pile, Carlee stood up and walked over to it, sighing heavily and picking up the animals one by one, tossing them into her bed after giving each of them a look over. Honestly, it really didn’t matter if it was going to help or not, tonight she was going to sleep with all of them.

It took nearly half an hour for Carlee to build her animal nest in the bed, but when she did, the teen carefully climbed up the bed from the foot of it, nestling herself amidst a mountain of plush goodness. Yeah. Sure this wasn’t going to fix anything…but it felt real nice to be so loved and protected!

A small smile flitted across her face and she let out a loud sigh. She had to move on. She had to move past this. Things were going to happen, good things and bad things…that was just part of growing up, and everyone knew it. That was what they were told from the beginning, right? Simba lost his dad, that was a bad thing, but it helped him to grow up…bad things led to changes which led to good things, and those good things led to better things and…eventually…all of the things were just…things. Neither good nor bad.

As she stroked the ear of one of her stuffed rabbits, it seemed like everything was starting to really feel better, and not just because of the fact she had bunches of animals around her. Well, maybe slightly due to that fact.

Now that she had time to think about it, it making sense like that was very much…the thing she was really looking for. Now she didn’t have to worry about it all going wrong…because that was it. That was just life.

And she would make it. There was no doubt about that.

But for now, sleep.