Quick kiss. 

"G'night, Carmilla."

"Goodnight, caterpillar."

Dani giggles all the way to sleep.

She has odd dreams that night. Dark things, that slip through her grasp. Flashes of light and dark, of movement and stillness, there and gone too fast to process. 

She wakes up from what was surely a nightmare with the taste of blood in her mouth - though she can't remember what she dreamed - 

And she can't move. Something heavy presses her in place, traps her.

Nnn. Why can't she move, gotta move, gotta breathe-

There's a dark shape hovering beside her - flowing out from under her bed, its body liquid shadow - 

(And the shadows are crawling up her body.)

Still dreaming still dreaming still dreaming still dreaming-

Wake up wake up wake up-

The shadows crawl to her neck - towards her mouth and nose - and the black cat flows and shifts - near now, far now, near again - and becomes a woman in a white dress with white hair and a body that looks smudged half out of reality, standing beside her bed, and Dani can't actually see her face but she looks afraid -

The woman-cat flows over her, disrupting the shadows, and lowers her-its head to Dani's left breast, and pain blooms, two jagged cold needles shoved straight towards Dani's heart - 

And she wakes up. 

She sits bolt upright, hands flying to her heart.

The room's dark, only scant light passing through the curtains or glowing from electronics. The shadows are still - but there's a lot of them, and she can't see well. 

What... what time is it?

1:20am, according to the first clock she finds. 

Still early... And no sign of Carmilla in the room. She thought she saw... no, just a dream, it must have been.

Dani gets up to get a drink, then she'll try to go back to sleep.

She doesn't dream again that night. 

Then she can be a little focused the next day. Still kinda distracted, though, and her hand tends to stray upwards when she's not thinking.

Carmilla apparently returned to the room sometime between when Dani fell asleep and when she wakes up. 

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Um. Had a weird dream."

" - Do you want to talk about it?"

"I think we were just talking about serial killers too much before bed," she tries to laugh it off.

...Hm.

"If you're sure you're okay..."

"It'll take more than a dream to get me down."

"You have a powerful joy?"

Giggle.

"Something like that."

"It's part of your allure."