Natalie woke in the middle of the night to a disturbance. At first, she thought it was one of the coyotes trying to wake her up, but the direction of the noise and movement didn't make sense. They were coming from in front of her body, where the coyotes would always come by to her back first. Not for any special reason, just that she was always embracing her lover in the night, and no had Sophie in between them. Opening her eyes, Natalie saw that Shannon was still fast asleep. She had always been a heavy sleeper, being near impossible to rouse if she slept in. It only caused a few issues at university, but it surely caused plenty more over the years since. She had been late to so many classes just because she was unable to wake up in time, and nothing would work in waking her, save for her own biological clock. But she was clearly not the source of noise and movement that had woken up Nat.

Looking down in between her and her lover, Nat finally noticed that it was Sophie. She was moving about in her sleep, not seeming to be comfortable in the slightest with a face of pain and anguish. At first, Nat thought that it was too tight between them for her, but then she heard the words that she was saying in her sleep. "No Daddy. Please, don't go. Don't leave me alone again. Daddy!" she repeated, over and over as she continued to toss and turn. She was having a nightmare, of possibly one of the last memories of either one or both of her fathers. It was clearly unpleasant, but that may be due to her memory of what may have happened afterwards.

While Nat was wholly unused to this situation, she did the only thing she could think that may help. Gradually, she pulled Shannon in closer to herself, thereby sandwiching Sophie in a hug between the two. As she did, Natalie felt Sophie's two little arms squeeze tighter on her. At the same time, her face relaxed, and the movement stopped. As this was happening, Nat kept the large hug going, not afraid to put pressure on Shannon's back as she knew that she would not wake up from that. Finally, when Sophie's mumbling stopped, and her breathing stabilized, did Natalie slowly release the pressure she had going on. It had been ten minutes of holding that, and she felt the need to go back to sleep. As she did, she heard Sophie mutter quietly, "Love you...", but she fell back asleep before she could hear the rest of the sentence.

Hours later, Nat came back out of her sleep to the sun shining into the tent entrance once more. This time, there was no missing munchkin as she was still fast asleep in the middle of them. Her face had no trace of the anguish that was present during the night, easing Natalie's worries. However, now she had a decision to make. Did she talk about it, and bring forth the memories that caused this for Sophie? Or did she just leave it be, waiting until Sophie brought it up first? She knew that if it was Shannon, she would just leave it be till she brought it up, but would that be the right thing to do for a nine-year-old kid? This was why Nat had always preferred animals over people. They were far less complicated, at least to her, and it was fairly easy to know what to do just from their body language. Sure, she would mess up from time to time, but not to the same extent when it came to caring for a person, and worrying about how they may respond to certain phrases. Like how some people just can't stand the word moist, for example.

While she lay there debating on how she should approach this, Sophie started stirring herself. Noticing this, Nat pulled her left arm back from and gently rubbed Soph's head. "Good morning, munchkin." she said as she gently ran her fingers through the kid's hair. Sophie just ended up burying her face into Nat, hugging her a bit harder. Given this amount of body language, Nat finally came to a decision on how to approach the nightmare. "Did you have a bad dream hun?" she asked, not stopping with the small sign of affection. When she got a small grunt of affirmation as well as feeling her head nod, Nat continued, "Want to talk about it?". This time the response was just the shaking of her head. Well, the attempt to shake her head, as it was still firmly pressed against Nat's chest. Noticing the reluctance, Nat decided to at least keep the door open, "Well, if you ever do want to talk about it, we are here for you. And we will not judge you at all, as nightmares suck for anyone." Sophie just hugged a little tighter at that, showing that she clearly heard the message, but was definitively not ready to step back into those memories.

They stayed hugging for a while longer, with Nat gently massaging Sophie's scalp the entire time. Eventually though, nature called and Sophie had to go running out of the tent to deal with it. When she did, Nat got Hera to pass her out some paper and a pencil. Shannon was not awake yet, but Nat felt that she needed to be in the know on the whole situation. Plus, she would know what to do a bit more to help. Hopefully. Either way, they were in this together and would need to be there for Sophie when she was ready to talk. There was no guarantee that she would come to Natalie, or talk when both were there. They needed to make sure to keep the other in the loop so that they were both capable of helping their little girl when she was ready. Once she finished writing down everything she needed to pass on to Shannon, she stored the paper in her pocket, before getting up to meet the day head on.

Huge thanks to my Elder Wolves Viktor, Saganatsu, Eeleater, John, Hades, Onean, Neal, Sebastian, Sir Hellington, Adam, and Kevin for supporting me and my writing! Remember that I keep Patreon ten chapters ahead at all times. Our next goal on Patreon will be getting up to 50 patrons, which I will then spend more time each month writing some side stories and shorts that show other perspectives throughout my stories!

 

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