In the end, they couldn’t resolve their quarrel before it was time to sleep. With Myuke staring out the window and Bram hiding under the blanket, they’d recreated the exact scene from yesterday, save for the happy cheers. Those had been replaced by a deafening silence.
Anima felt defeated. The only thing keeping his spirits up was Marie’s adorable humming as Luina combed her hair. If she were to join the fray, it would completely break him.
“There we go.”
“Yaaay! I’m pitty?”
“Yes, you’re very pretty.”
Marie stroked her hair with a big smile on her face. On any other night, she would have gone to bed with ruffled hair because she had been playing with her sisters, but it was going to stay perfectly made if her sisters didn’t want to play.
“Should we go to sleep?” Luina proposed, understanding the unfortunate situation between Myuke and Bram.
Anima was happy with the idea; they weren’t going to make any progress until the next day. He could only hope that their rage would be soothed by morning and they would be ready to make up.
“Seep ’gether, Myukey!”
“Yeah, of course! Go on into bed; I’ll be right there.”
Myuke likely didn’t want to sleep next to Bram, so she waited until Marie had gotten in, then snuggled up next to her. Marie, on the other hand, loved the idea of sleeping between her two beloved sisters. She was all smiles as Myuke got into the bed, followed by Luina and Anima.
Anima’s back usually stayed outside the reach of the blanket, but because of Bram and Myuke’s fight, he had to be extra careful not to fall off the bed entirely. The two of them seemed to be keeping as much distance from each other as they possibly could, which was why he had so little room. He didn’t want to make things worse, though, so he decided to bear with it for the night.
“Is your back cold, Anima?”
“I’m fine. You warm me up.”
“I’m happy to hear that.”
“I can snuggle up closer if you want me to,” Myuke said. Anima had a bad feeling about what was to come, but she continued talking before he could step in. “It must be pretty uncomfortable over there since a certain someone is hogging all the space.”
“I hope you’re not talking about me, m’kay?”
“Well, would you look at that. Do you finally have some self-awareness?”
They started fighting again. Not as intensely as they’d fought that morning, since the little Marie was wedged in between them, but a fight was a fight. Seeing them at each other’s throats wiped any sense of sleepiness from Anima.
“I’m going to be okay, girls.”
“Don’t just compromise like that. Bram needs to snuggle up tighter, end of story.”
“I can feel Marie right on my back, so I can’t get any tighter than this, m’kay? Isn’t it you who needs to be more considerate?”
“We can’t get any tighter either!”
“Oh, then I know what’s wrong. We can’t all fit on the bed because you got too fat, m’kay?”
“I’m not fat! Unlike you, I help out around the house every single day, so I couldn’t have put on weight! Anyway, don’t change the subject. Stop hogging so much of the bed. Understood?”
“I’m not hogging anything! You’re the reason Daddy’s back’s cold every night, so why don’t you just go sleep somewhere else, m’kay?!”
“That’s a great idea! Daddy, can you do something for me?”
“...Sure?”
Anima didn’t have a good feeling about what Myuke was going to ask for, but he couldn’t just ignore her.
“I don’t mind giving up on the fire rabbit stone for now, so can you buy me a bed instead?”
“You don’t need to give up on the fire rabbit stone, but why do you want a bed?”
“I don’t want to sleep with Bram anymore!”
“Myukey seep ’lone? But, but, I love seeping with Myukey!” Marie lamented. She’d been sleeping together with Myuke for as long as she could remember, so for them to suddenly be separated would be really hard on her.
“That’s fine. You and I can sleep together.”
“But, but, I love seeping with Brum too!”
“It’s fine; you’ll get used to it. And it’s not like there’ll be a wall between us. It’s gonna be the same room, just different beds. What do you think?”
“It’s late. Let’s have this conversation tomorrow,” Anima suggested. He figured that neither Myuke nor Bram wanted to continue fighting with Marie literally caught in the middle, and they indeed obliged. “Good night, everyone.”
The lack of results despite his best efforts kept Anima awake for a little bit, but he slowly drifted to sleep, hoping that everything would be back to normal when he woke up.