The air itself crouched upon Dracus's chest and the ghost of the boy he couldn't save hung above him like a puppet on strings and he was awake and he couldn't move and he couldn't move and he -
He tore himself out of sleep paralysis with a scream.
It took several panicked seconds for him to find and yank open the shutter that usually covered his lamp while he slept. The room filled with a warm amber glow. He looked around, trying to slow his heaving breaths. On the bed was an old quilt he had inherited, patched in several places with scraps of progressively brighter fabric. Postcards and drawings from all across the land were dotted across an entire wall of his room, clothespins dangling off string.
On another wall he'd pinned up a scrap of sailcloth from his very first glider, which had had to be retired after he'd accidentally impaled it on a tree. Usually that cloth would have reminded him of good memories, except that now it just brought up the image of the boy tangled up in his own glider dangling from the no no no no no -
He fairly flung himself out of bed, ripped the sailcloth off the wall, and then stood there staring at it. Some part of him, perversely, suggested setting it on fire. Instead he folded it up carefully and put it into a drawer.
There was no possible way he could go back to sleep after... that, so he began to dress himself. He'd just go start work early. The Guild staff all already knew him to be a workaholic anyway.
There was a servant boy there who knew how he took his tea on mornings like this, and that was the one concession to weakness he allowed himself to show.
