Something startles Ozzy from his sleep. A sound like the sharp inhalation of breath, but, mind still drowsy, he can’t be sure that’s what it was. All he knows is that he’s not sleeping anymore, and he can see, in his bleary, blurry vision, that there’s still a sliver of light creeping into his room from underneath the door.

Groaning, he slides out of bed, belly to the mattress and sheets coming halfway to the floor with him. He rubs his eyes and grabs his special plushie without so much as thinking about it. It comes everywhere with him, and he really doesn’t want to let it out of his sight after Nyx’s heroic rescue.

Too sleepy to properly pick up his feet, Ozzy shuffles across the floorboards to the door and opens it. The hallway is still mostly dark, but there’s a light on in the kitchen—that must have been what he’d seen, which means Nyx is up late again. 

“No good…” Ozzy murmurs to himself. She has work in the morning, doesn't she? So it’s important for her to get a good night’s sleep.

He makes his way down the hall. It’s slow going, from the miasma of sleep and a strange, growing sense of dread. If Nyx does have a shift somewhere tomorrow, why is she still up? She never stays up this late to begin with unless something’s wrong…

The light is brighter now. Ozzy blinks against it when he peeks his head around the corner to look into the kitchen. There’s Nyx, facing away from him with a piece of paper in her hands. The mysterious envelope from the post office, with its bright red ‘V’ on it, lies open and discarded nearby…

“I can’t believe it,” Nyx says softly, unaware of her uninvited eavesdropper. “I… I really got accepted…”

She sniffles. Ozzy recognises that as the sound that woke him up. 

“I’m going to Virtupets Space Station.”

No.

He can’t see Nyx’s face from this angle, but from the way her ears are perked, and from the breathlessness in her voice, Ozzy can tell that she’s… she’s happy.

No. No.

“I’m going to be a pilot!”

All at once, the ground beneath Ozzy falls away. The walls fade and melt into nothingness, into big black spaces where the sky should be—but there are no stars, no sun, no light…

No nothing.

No Nyx.

His entire body goes numb. His hands fall loosely at his sides, and distantly, there’s a small plop! on the ground. For a moment, he can’t even breathe. 

No, no, no!

Another sniffle, and Ozzy is back in his house, but everything looks—feels—different. The light in the kitchen isn’t as bright, and the paintings and photographs on the walls seem duller too. The floorboards, though—they’re hard under his hands and feet as he scrambles back to his room, running and stumbling and tripping and running even more, as if he were fleeing from the beast he used to think lived in his closet—the one that Nyx always protected him from—

He dives into his bed, pulling the covers up over himself and curling into a tight, trembling ball beneath them. He reaches for his ears and tugs at them, shivering and quaking with the sobs he doesn’t want Nyx to hear—and that he knows now she doesn’t want to hear, either.

It’s fine. She won’t be around to hear him much longer.