Excerpt: Lullaby

“You are not bothered by this, truly?” He asked after a moment and I blinked, having almost fallen asleep.
“Well, I am, but I can’t really help it, now can I?” I asked, lifting my head and looking up at him. My eyelids felt like lead and with each blink, my eyes were closed longer than they were open. It was almost frightening, not having that much control over even my basic motor functions like blinking.
He was quiet for a moment. I let my head fall back onto my pillow and rolled onto my stomach, sighing softly. “You are an odd character, did you know that?”
“Yes, in fact I did.” I yawned again and rubbed my eyes, a wonderfully warm cloud settling down around me, holding me in its soft arms.
It felt like years since I had slept so soundly, just falling off the face of the planet and into a sweet oblivion. The fact that Kadan was in the room didn’t even really bother me as much as it would have otherwise. I mean, a guy who was the quasi-adoptive-older-brother of a friend watching over me in my sleep was a little too Sleeping Beauty for my tastes. Thought I wasn’t quite sure if he was a prince or not. He looked like one, but Disney gave girls ridiculously unrealistic expectations when it came to the opposite gender. A chiseled jaw and a straight nose along with well-cut hair and broad shoulders, that’s what little girls expected now. Or did. Disney movies aren’t what they used to be.
Little girls used to want prince charming to come and rescue them. Now they wanted to be pop stars and have boyfriends who could give them lots of presents. There was no love in wishing. I’m not sure why or when it got that way. While I had retained my own ideas and needs and aspirations in a little bubble secluded and alone, the rest of the world had grown up in its own way and I hadn’t even noticed it. So now I didn’t understand the mind behind this new, matured place I wasn’t a part of anymore.
It was unsettling, feeling forcibly displaced and rejected by everything around you because you couldn’t understand, but knowing that it was you put yourself there. And at the same time, I didn’t want to change. I was comfortable in everything I did and wanted to do and go, and if I didn’t understand the world, then the world wouldn’t understand me.
Well, worse came to worse, I could become the local cat lady. I always liked cats…