[Sig – 13 years]

"Sig?" Aunt Rachel asks as she enters the rec room.

"Yes?" I look up from my project.

"I have so many questions," she says.

"Have you tried filing an inquiry request?"

She rolls her eyes.

"What are you doing with those cotton balls?"

I'm sitting on the floor between the couch and the coffee table down here with a bunch of cotton balls I'm gluing together along with some craft sticks in both narrow and thicker varieties.

"Don't worry," I say. "These aren't the ice pop sticks from upstairs. Oh! I wanted to ask, but I've still got two watermelons left! Once my friends are done with their homework, can we make watermelon ice pops?"

"Sure," she says. "But what are you doing?"

"Making a cloud monster!" I tell her. "I was bored while waiting for the others to get out, so I went and got some and stuff to make this!"

Aunt Rachel frowns.

"And did you let me know you were leaving?"

"No, why?" I ask, and she looks unhappy. "What?"

"You're supposed to let me know when you're going places, remember?" She asks.

I forgot about that rule here. It's been a month but I'm still getting used to it. After what happened with my parents earlier, I guess I just wasn't thinking about that. With it not being a real habit for me yet, it didn't just happen out of habit.

"Oh, right…" I look down at the cloud monster. "Sorry…"

"It's alright," she sighs. "Are you feeling better?"

"A bit," I say. "Making the cloud monster was cheering me up. Well, kind of. I did only get back, like, two minutes ago."

There's a store which sells this stuff only a few minutes' bike ride away. They were confused about why I wasn't in school, but I told them I had an appointment and it's late enough in the day that returning to school would mean being there for less than half an hour before classes let out so I didn't return.

Though my graduation apparently also came with an update to my ID in the government's system. If a youth has a government-issued ID – and I do have a state ID – then it can be scanned by law enforcement officers to see if they're actually required to be in school or not. Mine will say I won't, so I won't get into trouble for truancy.

"That's good to hear," she says. "Were you planning on going to meet up with your friends before they come here? Or just wait for them to come over?"

"Yeah!" I say. "I've got time to finish the cloud monster, I think!"

"Were you factoring in how long it takes to get home from there?"

"Yeah."

"And not how long it takes to get there?"

"Oh, crap!" I say. "I didn't consider that! I need to get ready!"

"Don't bike too hard," she chuckles. "See you when you get back."

Aunt Rachel heads upstairs while I grab my sneakers and slip them on, then make sure to grab my things before biking over to where my friends will be meeting up. Connor, Sam, and Isaac haven't arrived yet, but Xander's waiting for us there while looking extremely sleepy. He's standing with one foot on the ground and the other on his hoverboard, geared up in jeans, a green long-sleeved shirt, sneakers, knee pads, elbow pads, his gloves and backpack, and helmet. And, of course, his glasses.

Unlike the other boys from the Autumn Realm region, Xander seems to be wearing his necklace at all times, and it's even over top of his shirt. He probably doesn't like the feel of it underneath the shirt if he's wearing it outside.

"Hi, Xander!" I greet him as I reach him.

"Hi, Sig," he steps off of his hoverboard and gives me a hug as I hop off of my bike.

"You aren't taking a nap?" I hug him back. "Thought you'd be doing that right now to rest, since you normally come over at four. You did send me a picture as if you were."

That's the time he came over when he joined us after school last week, and the others told me that he stuck to that the last two days as well. It could be just so he has more time to hang out before he leaves for Youth Group, if he goes again tonight.

Not that I'm complaining about hanging out with him more or anything. It makes me super happy, even!

"Is it not okay for me to come earlier?" He looks disappointed.

"You can!" I say. "I was just surprised!"

"Oh," he looks happy again. "Okay. I see Connor and Sam."

"Hey, guys!" I greet them with fist bumps when they reach us.

"How'd the testing go?" Sam asks. "You didn't say in the group chat."

"Bet you told Xander," Connor grins.

"I was on a video call with him when Aunt Rachel let me know the results," I say. "I'll say once we're all back at my place, though. We've gotta wait for Isaac, too."

"Katie and I made a big cake and some ice cream," Xander says. "She wasn't comfortable with the temporal acceleration spell but admitted it 'shaves off' a lot of real time spent. Apparently, that's a metaphor for reducing how much actual time isn't spent on it."

"Oh!" Sam exclaims. "Did you see the thing they made for the stream yesterday? Did you watch the stream?"

Xander's apparently going to be doing a baking project with Katie every Tuesday for his stream as a lesson. Yesterday's was a dragon egg volcano cake, but with a strawberry filling rather than chocolate.

His family's chef really knows how to come up with baking lessons which include things he likes. That's probably the main reason he's okay with doing his baking streams as lessons now.

Though he still whipped out a giant pie to eat after they finished and Ms. Katie looked a little surprised. It wasn't just a one-off thing for last week.

What Mr. Richardson said about Xander having a set schedule really makes that make sense. He can't eat the desserts right away but his streams always ended with him eating the thing he made. To deal with that, Xander prepares the big item ahead of time to eat so that he can keep to his schedule.

I don't really understand the whole schedule thing, but it's fine. Xander's just a little extra quirky but he's still cool!

"I saw the VOD," I say. "And he sent a picture in the group chat, you dork. Of course I saw it! It looked suuuuper good!"

"There are leftovers," Xander tells me. "I have them, too."

"Cool!" I say. "Let's go!"

Xander rides his hoverboard while the rest of us ride our bikes to my place and when we enter through the back deck, Aunt Rachel's got a tray of snacks and drinks for us on the counter.

"Hey, boys," Aunt Rachel says. "How was school?"

"I only had my fitness lesson today so I could practice for the stream," Xander says. "It was just fitness, so a lot of exercising and stretching."

"Speaking of stretching!" I say. "I think I've finished editing the video for our flips from that day. While doing it, Xander, I noticed that whenever you started getting bored, you started stretching."

Editing it took way longer than I expected, but I also only just started learning how to edit videos with that one.

"I didn't know what else to do…" he mumbles.

"It's fine!" I say. "Are you okay if I have a little counter tracking all of the stretches? Asking you about that's one of the last things before I upload it. I thought it was kind of funny – in a good way, not a bad one – and I'm sure some of my viewers will count the stretches. It'd only pop up whenever you do a stretch."

I've noticed that a lot of uploaders put in counters for some things that aren't actually a part of the video, just a coincidental thing that happens. One I watched had the kid put in a counter that popped up every time he scratched his back.

"Um… okay," Xander doesn't look comfortable.

"I won't if you don't want me to."

"I'm not sure how I feel about it," Xander says. "But if you think your viewers would do it on their own anyway… it's easier for them if you do it, as long as you make sure it's accurate, right?"

"Right!" I say. "Okay! Also, you're soooo flexible! You basically folded yourself in half at one point."

"I couldn't do that at the start of summer," he says. "I've gotten a lot more flexible from all the training."

Flexibility training? Or does he just mean from stretching before the rest of his training?

"How'd class go for the rest of you?" Xander asks the others. "It was only me who answered Ms. Rachel's question."

"Austin snapped at Brooks today," Isaac tells us. "They got paired together for an assignment and Brooks kept being huffy. Austin got fed up and told him to either stop whining or he'll make sure our teacher knows it was only him doing the work and not Brooks."

"Who's Brooks?" Xander asks.

"Kid from my class," Isaac tells him. "Moved here around the start of the month and is a bit moody."

"He also doesn't like you," Connor tells Xander. "And that's upset basically his entire class because he was a jerk about it."

"I upset him?" Xander looks ready to cry.

"No," I say. "He's just a big dummy and a jerk. You didn't do anything wrong, it's all him."

"Isn't that Derrick's friend's nephew's name?" Aunt Rachel asks.

"Yeah," I tell her. "It's Jack's nephew, but he insulted Xander on the first day of school when Isaac tried introducing himself as my friend and, well… his class didn't take it too well."

"But what did I do to make him not like me?" Xander's really about to cry.

"Nothing," I tell him. "Like I said, he's just a jerk."

"Yeah," Isaac says. "The issue is him, not you. You're not the only one he's made rude comments about, trust me."

"I don't need to trust you," Xander mumbles. "I can tell you're being honest. But why would he not like me if I didn't do something wrong?"

"Because some people are like that," Aunt Rachel tells him. "Anything good happen at school today?"

"I only had my fitness session today," Xander says. "Since I was somewhat needed for preparing things for the announcement stream, but that went okay, I guess."

"Announcement stream?" Sam asks. "What got announced? And why'd it make you need to take up the morning?"

"Only part of it," Xander says. "Grandpa Adrian was ready for the announcement of Xanson Entertainment, a brother company to Xanson Technologies. It's meant to take over social media, streaming, video sharing, and a few other forms of content creation, such as letting artists have an easier time finding customers and letting people have an easier time finding artists. But all of that combined with Xanson Technology magitech, Grandpa Adrian's moderation preferences, a merch store for content creators, and a robust magitech magi-artificial intelligence to help moderate. It's not a dictatorship, it's just something to make things more fair, better discoverability to those interested in one's type of content, and to have a safer social media and content creation platform for minors."

"I watched the stream," Aunt Rachel tells him. "You did very good with the presentation."

"I did say 'blah blah blah' a few times," Xander blushes deeply as he looks down at his feet.

I can't help but laugh at that.

"So those were just you skipping part of the script!" I say. "I was wondering about that! It was still an awesome presentation!"

"It was," Aunt Rachel tells him. "Be proud of yourself, Xander. Not many twelve-year-olds could manage what you did. Even with the skips, you did a great presentation."

"Grandpa Adrian made me practice it over and over," Xander slumps forward a little. "Soo much practicing."

"If you want to take a nap while we do our homework," Sam tells him. "We wouldn't mind."

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"I still have packets to do since I missed school."

"Yeah, but you're exempt," I say. "So they're optional."

"Not to Dad," Xander tells me, then looks at Aunt Rachel. "By the way, I have a question for you for after Sig announces his test results to the others."

"Yeah!" Connor looks at me. "How'd you do? Freshman? Sophomore? Did you make it to Junior?"

"Nope," I grin. "I earned all of the core credits for high school, and that counts as passing when testing to skip grades."

"Seriously?" He asks. "No way! Wait, what about electives?"

"There's a pass on that," Aunt Rachel explains. "If your scores are high enough. If not, then you do still need to go to high school to at least get some additional credits. Sig aced all of the tests up through the end of high school, so his scores were high enough to not need that."

"I've got the diploma downstairs!" I say. "I'll show you after the homework!"

"Okay," Xander says. "Now it's time for the question. Ms. Rachel, I'm going on a field trip on Friday and wanted to know if Sig could come with me, since he ain't in school anymore and might not have something going on."

"A field trip?" Aunt Rachel asks. "Through the local homeschool association? I'm not sure they'd be okay with others tagging along unless it's a parent of the kid going."

"There's a local homeschool association?" Xander looks confused by that.

"It's not through them?" I ask. "And wait, there's a local homeschool association?"

"It's a government group," Aunt Rachel says. "Each region has one, and they organize things like field trips and do checks to make sure the kids are actually being taught and it's not a way for parents to try and pull their kids out of school and not get them educated. Some parents try that and end up with kids who don't know how to read at ten."

"That's just abuse," Xander says. "But no, it's not through that. I didn't even know one existed. Grandpa Adrian's taking me to his magic farms for a tour. But it's going to be educational so it can count as a field trip."

"His magic farms?" Connor gets closer to Xander, who starts breathing a little more heavily until I lightly tug on his shirt so that he steps back a little. "You mean the big, magical farming facilities where a lot of produce is grown?"

"The what nows?" I ask.

"They're these huuuuuuuge centers," Connor stretches out his arms for emphasis. "Adrian King uses them to grow some crops all year or out of their natural environment, like citrus. Most of it is things that'd have to be imported just because there's not a good place here to grow them."

I guess it makes sense that if they would require importing in order to have them here since they don't grow well in our available regions, there would be special farming facilities for them. Where most of our food gets grown has never really been an interest of mine so I guess I never thought about it before.

"Citrus is better closer to the southern end of the continent," Xander nods. "It needs more warmth and sun. But since we ain't down there due to monsters, Grandpa Adrian has a special farming facility for it. He's got some for other crops, too. Some which can be grown where people are, some not. He apparently has one that's devoted entirely to wheat. That's just weird."

Why would that be weird? Wheat's extremely important!

"So is it okay if Sig can come if he wants to?" Xander asks Aunt Rachel. "Grandpa Adrian already said it's okay to invite him."

"If he'd like," Aunt Rachel says. "Then yes."

"Yes!" I give her a hug. "Thank you!"

I get to go on a field trip with Xander! And it's to somewhere most people probably never get to see the insides of, too!

"Oh, wait," I look at Xander. "Is this gonna be one of those 'I can't talk about what I see in them' sort of things?"

"Grandpa Adrian didn't mention anything like that," Xander says. "So probably not. Lemme ask him," Xander pulls out his phone and shoots off a text (which takes him a bit to type out). After about ten seconds, his phone bloops and he nods and looks at me. "He says it's not."

"He always responds so fast to you," Connor comments. "Is he like that for everyone in your family?"

"No," Xander says. "He's just keeping a close eye on me and has an avatar which exists solely for the purpose of being available if I need him. I think he's worried I might go evil and try to destroy the world or something."

That's a ridiculous thought, he's just keeping a close eye on Xander because… Xander's something really special. I don't know just how special it is, but if I'm right about him being a psychic, then that combined with Xander's immense mana pool means he's definitely someone with something more going on than he knows about.

Enough that the literal most powerful being in the world would keep an eye on him.

"You are not that kind of person," I say.

Though if Xander wanted to, his great-grandfather probably does need to be able to act quickly. Connor's right, though: it's weird that Adrian King is so active in Xander's life. Something must be going on, but I don't think I'll get answers if I look into it.

Not with their family.

"I try not to be," Xander nods.

"Alright," Aunt Rachel says. "Why don't you boys go do your homework now? And don't forget the snacks."

"Snack time!" I say.

I grab the tray of snacks and we head back to the deck, where the three of them work on their homework with my assistance. I don't do it for them, of course, I just help them when they're struggling by giving them hints or explaining things to them.

Once Xander finishes his packets and the other three finish their homework, Xander pulls out a tub of vanilla ice cream with strawberry bits in it. Then he pulls out a giant cake… shaped like a turtle. The detailing on it is really well done.

"A… turtle?" Sam gives him a bewildered look.

"A TURTLE!" I exclaim at the same time, then give Xander a bewildered look; he's covering his ears. Whoops. "Sorry. Wait. A turtle?"

"What is with that response?" Connor laughs.

"How did you know I like turtles?" I ask Xander. "I've got, like, nothing with them on it."

"You like turtles?" Isaac asks.

"Yeah," I nod. "They're tough and sturdy even if they're slow! And they just seem super chill, too!"

"How come we've never known this?" Connor asks. "I'm your best friend!"

"One of 'em," I say. "You're all tied for first in the friend front! And, um… my parents didn't like me liking turtles when I was little, so I never got anything with them on it and just kept it to myself," I look at Xander. "How did you know I liked them? There's no way the turtle cake was random."

"You didn't tell me?" Xander's face screws up in confusion. "I thought you did?"

"Uh… nope," I say. "I've been careful not to mention it 'cause my parents always made me feel stupid for liking them. I tried to not like them, but it never worked. Sometimes, I even dream about turtles."

"Dream?" Isaac tries not to snicker.

"Yeah!" I nod. "Like, just chillin' at the beach with 'em. Or riding on a giant one like a war mount!"

"Wouldn't that be really slow?" Connor asks.

"Not if your opponents are also riding turtles!"

"Dork," he snorts.

"Aren't you the Dork King?"

"That title goes to you!" He tackles me and we start wrestling.

"Should I hold off on cutting the cake, then?" Xander asks, and we pause so I can look at him.

I look at Connor, then back to Xander.

"Give me just a sec to pin this dork down, then we can do the cake!"

Once Connor and I finish wrestling, Xander cuts the cake. It's a plain vanilla cake rather than chocolate, I guess because he didn't want to make a chocolate cake for me. That's okay! He didn't even have to do this for me so I'm not going to complain about it!

As we eat the cake to celebrate me passing high school when trying to test into it, Xander pulls a gift bag out of his storage and hands it to me. The bag is blue, and the tissue paper inside of it is blue and green.

"This is a graduation gift," Xander offers it to me. "I wasn't sure what to get you so I got you something practical."

"Aw, thanks!" I say. "You didn't have to do that!"

"I know," he says. "But I didn't feel right not. Getting gifts upon graduating is normal."

When I pull out the tissue paper, I find some of the practice orbs from Xanson Technologies, except they don't have the company's logo on them which means Xander probably built them himself. Either he had some just sitting around at his workshop or he boosted his personal time to make these for me.

There's one for practicing elemental shaping, non-elemental shaping, and mana control. It's the same set as what the schools all received. I can already tell Xander's thoughts on the reason for it – he wanted to make sure that with me not being in school anymore, I won't fall behind on my magic practice compared to our peers. At least, not for lack of resources for it.

That's really sweet and I appreciate it, but…

"Aren't these really expensive?" I ask.

"Not that expensive," Xander says. "We tried to keep the price of them low enough that normal people could potentially buy them, maybe as gifts. And you graduated high school, that's a big deal. It deserves a big gift. And with these, you don't have to worry about falling behind others our age coming from a normal background. I know you like practicing magic."

Those are all fair points.

"Alright," I go to hug him, but catch myself before I do. "Um… can I hug you?"

"Yeah," Xander nods, and we hug. "Okay, let's eat the cake now."

Xander cuts into the cake and serves up some ice cream for us, and the five of us play cards while we enjoy the dessert. It's a really good cake, Xander's an amazing baker and Ms. Katie must be an amazing teacher.

Well, I did sort of already know that from watching his baking streams, but still. I just wish there was something I could do so this wasn't all one-sided. Is there even anything I can do to match with Xander on the gifts front? He really does give a lot of them.

Once we finish eating our dessert, we discuss what to do next. While Xander won't want to do any roughhousing, there are other options which don't involve cards.

"I'm gonna head back home now," Xander covers his mouth to hide a yawn. "I'm not gonna go to Youth Group tonight 'cause I'm really tired. I need a nap. Y'all try to have a good rest of your day, okay?"

"Alright!" I say. "Have a good one, too!"

Xander gives me another hug, then he leaves and I look at the others.

"If he's not here, you know what that means, right?" I ask.

"DOGPILE!" Connor shouts.

[Xander – 12 years]

Staying standing is really difficult for me right now. Returning home to nap before dinner was definitely the right choice. Skipping it earlier was also the right move and I hope the problem is gone now. I spent enough time at Sig's that it should be.

"Hi, Dad," I say when I find him, and I wrap my arms around him. "I'm home."

Dad had a shorter day at work today so he's home a lot earlier than he normally would be on Thursdays, and he's already changed out of a suit and into his around-the-house clothes.

"Welcome home, Xander," he wraps an arm around me and pats my backpack (since it's in the way of my back, I think). "Have happy dreams, alright?"

"I'll try," I yawn.

"If you wake up and want to watch something with me," he says. "Just let me know, okay? Frank wanted to talk with me about something, so you can find me there in the next five or ten minutes, then I'll be in the living room."

"Okay," I say. "I probably won't wake up until my alarm goes off, though."

"Alright," he says. "See you when you wake."

I head up to my room and change into my wolfkin form and pajamas, then I carefully walk over to my bed and peek under it.

It's still there. It's still there. It's still there.

I hurry downstairs and towards Frank's office, where Dad probably is. Dad and Frank. Frank can shoot it. Frank can shoot it. Frank can shoot it.

"-the accident when Xander was four," I register Frank's words and stop moving towards his office.

The soundproofing enchantment on his office isn't perfect and would normally stop me from hearing things, but not with how good my hearing is. I can hear them talking from about ten feet away from the door in my human form and a little more than that in my wolfkin one.

And they're talking about me.

"What about it?" Dad asks.

"Some stuff hasn't added up in awhile," Frank says. "So I've been discreetly looking into things using some of my connections. I was right – something doesn't add up about the accident. Xander himself doesn't remember it and he likely only knows what he was told. Whether he knew back then it was false or not, I don't know."

What doesn't add up? I was hit by a car while playing in the road with some other kids at the home and nearly died, but subconsciously used magic to keep myself alive and mostly functioning. That's really simple.

"What doesn't add up?" Dad asks.

"Let's talk about mana first," Frank says.

What does mana have to do with this?

"What does that have to do with this?"

Dad and I have had the same question twice. Please let there be a third, even though that means more confusing stuff.

"I'm sure you've been told it before," Frank says. "But in the Magic Special Forces, we're all made fully aware of several facts. These facts are important to what doesn't add up about the accident. The first of them is that the base percent of a person's mana they recover each hour never changes. Xander's is half a percent, meaning it was back then. When you adopted him, he recovered around 5 mana per second – roughly half of what the typical person can hold."

Dad knows this for sure.

"I know this," Dad says.

Oh! That's three things, even if they're not all questions! That's good!

"Remember what influences how tough a person's body is?" Frank asks.

How much mana they have as their body grows and develops, and how much they have when tissue generates. At a slower rate of increase in mana capacity, the difference in their body is relatively small and not really noticeable from year to year.

"How much mana they can hold," Dad answers incorrectly.

"No," Frank says. "It's how much mana they generally have. That's why Xander was so weak when he came to live here. Even though he had such an immense pool, he was always very low on actual mana. This prevented him from being as strong as his body should've been."

"Yet it still grew a decent bit," Dad says. "Due to casting those spells. His pool, I mean. And it's been noted that he did seem strong despite that lack of mana."

Did Dad remember this after getting corrected? If not, that was really dumb of him.

"Right," Frank says. "Did you know? The influence of a person's mana on their body's toughness and strength can actually wane if they go an extended period where they have much lower mana than they normally do? A significantly lower amount?"

"What does that have to do with this?" Dad asks. "Xander's capacity only increased even if his amount remained the same."

"That's not true," Frank says. "I think Xander's mana capacity was relatively stable this entire time – that he had over three mil mana even as a four-year-old."

That sounds ridiculous.

"That's absurd," Dad says. "How would you come to that conclusion?"

"Because of Xander casting those spells to sustain him," Frank answers. "Even with a smaller body, it should've still consumed around 4-5 mana per second. With that much cost and his percentage rate being the same, that means he would've needed to have that much to sustain the spells."

What? But that makes even less sense. If I were that strong as a four-year-old, then surely someone would've noticed!

"There are several things wrong with that," Dad says. "The first of them being that he definitely would've been noticed using magic back then if so. The kid's smart, he would've figured out spells. The second of them being that if he really had that much mana back then, then he wouldn't have been nearly killed by a car hitting him."

"He wouldn't have even been hurt," Frank says. "I can get hit by a car going eighty and walk away without any broken bones and I'm only around 500 mana. That car was going a little slower than that. Even a four-year-old would've survived with that much mana in them. They would've walked away unharmed, even if wailing."

"Xander wasn't hit by a car," Dad says.

I wasn't hit by a car? I was lied to?

"Whatever happened when Xander was four," Frank says. "It's not a car accident, and it's been covered up, possibly with mind magic. Everyone I've spoken to directly genuinely believes it was a car accident, and all of the paperwork says that. However, a car could not have lethally wounded Xander."

It was covered up? Does Grandpa Adrian kno-

"Xander?" A voice startles me.

"Mom!" I wrap my arms around her. "There's a monster under my bed and Dad's in a meeting with Frank and I'm not comfortable!"

"A monster?" She asks.

"Yeah!" I say. "I don't wanna sleep in my bed! There's a monster!"

"Can you show me?" She asks.

"Can Frank shoot it?"

"Can you show me first?" She asks. "Maybe it's gone now."

"It was there when I went to go take a nap earlier," I tell her. "It's why I didn't!"

"Come on," she pats me on the back. "Let's go look at the monster.

I lead my mom up to my bedroom and lie on my stomach on the floor and point.

"See?" I ask. "It's right there!"

Mom gets down on her stomach and looks.

"I don't see anything," she pulls out her phone and uses it as a flashlight. "There's nothing under here, Xander. You keep it really clean."

"It's right there!" I point. "See?"

She aims her light at the spot I'm pointing at.

"No," she says. "I don't see anything, Xander."

If she can't see it, then it's hiding itself! Yeah, I can see that magic now! I modify the sense-sharing spell so that it only shares the magical perspicacity and a few other things, then cast it on my mom. She gasps and I realize I forgot to ask if it was okay first.

"There's," she jerks back a little. "Okay. Let's go talk with Frank and your dad."

"It's why I didn't take a nap earlier," I tell her. "I was hoping it'd be gone by the time I got back but it's not."

I cancel the spell and we get up and head downstairs, and I make sure to not let go of Mom. Once we reach Frank's office, Mom just opens the door and enters with me entering with her.

"Guys," Mom says as I switch to hugging Dad. "I got to feel what it's like to have his senses for mana and magic, as well as his magical perspicacity. There's a monster under his bed."

"Those are real?" Dad asks, and I nod. "You can take your nap on my bed if you'd like. Or in one of the spare rooms, or in the theater room. If you'd rather nap on the couch in the living room, you can as well. Meanwhile, I'm sure Frank and I can find a way to get rid of it, alright?"

"Alright," I say.

"If any nightmares come while you're napping," Dad tells me. "Remember to summon dream dragons to eat them."

"I'll try."

Dad doesn't say anything for a few moments.

"Want me to take you to wherever you're going to nap?"

"Please?"

"Alright," he says. "Let's go. Where do you want to take your nap?"

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