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It had only been a half-day’s worth of activities, but Melissa was still glad to return to the apartment. Some of the day's events had turned out to be quite harrowing, and Melissa needed some time to recover. The other feeling she’d had was worry, just thinking about how Bartleby had handled the place by himself. Perhaps such a feeling was unfounded, but he did turn out to be mobile after all, even vocal at Fen’s and her return! It was practically cause for celebration, as Melissa scooped Bartelby up into her arms and carried him around the apartment. She did notice his occasional longing glance at the kitchen, though, and chided him accordingly. “You’ll get your food at dinnertime,” she said. “The person at the store and the instructions on the bag say the same thing. It’s all measured out.” It didn’t stop Bartleby’s wanting, but saying it out loud did help reinforce the schedule to herself. Like all pet caretakers, she wanted to give him a little something, you know, as a treat. Maybe someday, but she wanted to be disciplined for the time being. That night, Melissa placed her new Duel Mon- her new Yu-Gi-Oh! deck, box and all, including the chaff, in her bedside table drawer and lay awake looking up at the ceiling. Her mind whirred at just how similar the world of Prana was to her own, and yet still uncannily different in so many ways. She wondered when the inevitable screw-up was going to happen, that she would make a mistake and it would be meaningful somehow. Socially, perhaps she could fall back on her status as a Guardian, or even use that as a defense, because of course she still didn’t get it, why would she? But there was potential for her to suffer a real, physical cost because of something like this. She didn’t see it, but as she learned from her training with Rei, just because she couldn’t see it yet did not mean it wasn’t there. It took a while, but she eventually drifted off to a dreamless sleep.“Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place?” -Job 38:12 (NIV)Despite her watch flashing a news report about skeleton attacks, Melissa wasn’t exactly hurrying to get out of bed. There were no blaring alerts. Mauvache had said nothing yet. But tried not to laze about. Instead, Melissa’s movements were more of a deliberate slowness, savoring the morning as best she could. She’d heard that pets and owners slowly adapted to each other, owners becoming more like their pets and vice versa. Perhaps there was an element of truth to that. When she got downstairs, though, the lack of anybody else suggested she was the first one up, which implied differently. She checked on Bartleby, who was also sound asleep, and went over to the kitchen to make breakfast. Just something she could throw together, she thought. Maybe some toast, with butter and jam? That and some tea sounded nice. As her slices of bread magically turned into toast, accursed thoughts crept in. There was something ominous about skeletons. Maybe that was just the fact they were skeletons -- they were perfectly natural parts of the body until they were outside of you and still moving around. Melissa couldn’t help but wonder if there was a reason the news was investigating that, from the headlines, still was just speculation at this point. But she was able to keep such idle ruminations at bay a little longer for now, at least unless everyone else came down and started talking about it too. She hoped there would be something else to distract them so they wouldn’t, but could only guess as to what that could even be.