Comfort at Night
In the morning when he walks into her bedroom the light is on and she’s still curled up in her sheets. Or when he sleeps with her the lamp beside her bed stays on. He can remember the night where he switched it off on the way to the bathroom and by the morning it was on again.
He’s come to the conclusion that she’s scared of the dark, and wouldn’t blame her after some of the nights they’d spent in the cretaceous. There were nights she spent pushed up against the wall of the cave, staring towards the opening as they listened to intense growls and screeches of creatures. Nights they hid in bushes as they watched a raptor savour its dead prey.
But now they’re home and she sleeps with the light on, appreciating the simple switch that lies beside her bed.
Connor lies in bed that night, staring up towards the proof, and conjures up a plan.
*
Abby wakes up in the middle of the night, again, and the room is dark. She closes her eyes and turns onto her back, counting to ten in her head, and reminding herself that she’s home. Home. With Connor, sleeping by her side.
It was odd how she was scared of the dark. She’s not scared of anything, apart from losing Connor, and he seems to be the strongest out of the two, for a change. Abby smiles, Connor is strong, and he proved it in the Cretaceous. How he’d wake at the sound of her weak whimpers. How he’d hunt for fish with a stick of wood he carved himself.
Abby opens her eyes slowly, and they’re suddenly caught by something on the roof. At first she thought it might be the lights of cars passing by outside, flashing across the roof through the window. But as her eyes adjust to the darkness she can read the small message.
I Love You.
The words are written with glow-in-the-dark stars that are perfectly aligned against the ceiling. Connor sputters a snore beside her and she finds herself smiling. They’d talked in the Cretaceous of their favourite things in the world and she’d expanded the choices to the Universe as hers were the stars.
They’d looked up to the sky together, their fingers trailing a shape in the air. There were hearts, letters, words, animals that had barely any meaning then, they were just things to get their mind off their whereabouts, their situation.
She slept that night, with the lights off, her eyes staring towards the words before they fluttered to a close.
Connor really did know how to give her comfort at night.