They drove for a while in the woods before they reached the spot that she wanted. It looked like a rather nice house, stopping the car right in front of the door, getting out of the car first before looking back at Jones. He had fallen asleep due to having slept little and due to his emotions taking over. Opening his door made him almost fall out, making her catch him and unbuckling his seatbelt.

  At first she thought that he was going to wake up, but when he didn’t, she carried him inside. While he was still rather young, he was getting heavy for her. “Damn, I should sleep more to get younger if this is going to become a regular thing.”

  She grunted while carrying him up the stairs. She had this house built with multiple bedroom in case of something like this happening. Little did she know that it would be another couple hundred years and many renovations before it actually was needed.

  After putting him on the bed and retrieving his bag, she herself went to her bed, getting in her night gown. Even though it was in the middle of the day, she didn’t need a normal night cycle to sleep, lying down and grabbing her phone. She put on an alarm for three hours and two more alarms right after that before plugging her phone in.

  Jones woke up after another hour of sleeping, waking up in yet another disoriented state. Now even after his eyes got used to the dark, he didn’t know where he was. For yet another second he hoped that everything had been a dream, but it didn’t take long before the truth came to bear.

  He let out a sigh before trying to turn on the light. There was a disconnected light switch on his nightstand. He pressed it, confused on why something like that would be there. To his surprise the light turned on, leaving him a bit stunned.

  “Cool, wireless light switch.” He got up and walked towards the door. While passing the back of the bed, he saw his backpack standing against it. Due to being somewhere he didn’t know, he grabbed the bag and put it on before walking out.

  The house looked rather modern with here and there some older looking walls. There were also multiple small decorative tables with all having some old looking artifact. While walking, he looked at them, seeing different things from different eras.

  There was some kind of Spanish helmet from the renaissance, a flintlock pistol from some kind of older pirate era, a cavalry sword from some kind of civil war.

  In between every artifact was an open door, all containing bedrooms like the one he came from. At the end of the hall was a closed door, going towards it and slowly opening the door. It was dark inside and through the light coming from the hall, he could see Madison being asleep on the bed.

  Her room was different from all the others though. There seemed to be some panels on the wall to stop sound, making her room much more quiet from both the inside as the outside.

  Thanks to the light, he could see her phone on the night stand charging. The idea of her lying came back to his mind, thinking of the possibility that perhaps she had killed his parents. He walked towards the phone and quietly took it, quickly leaving the room without making a sound.

  While taking her phone was a big enough telltale that he had been in her room, he still closed the door in the hopes that she wasn’t going to notice.

  For now, he didn’t look at it, instead trying to move to a different part of the house as his stomach growled. He was hungry and wanted something to eat, trying to find anything that looked like a kitchen.

  Unfortunately, this house was very big, making him lost as he then found the storage room before finding the kitchen. While not what he wanted, food was food. He opened up a bag of chips he found before grabbing her phone again and pushing the power button.

  It opened up to the lock screen, asking for a password. He had hoped that she wouldn’t have one, sighing and trying to think of a way to open it up. An idea popped up in his head, lifting the phone up and tilting it so he could see the phone screen in a better light, angling it almost horizontal.

  Now he could see the last spots that had been pressed last time she used it. It showed a streak in the middle and three taps on the right side. There was a big chance that the password existed out of the numbers three, six and nine.

  Sadly enough when starting to type in the numbers, he saw that it didn't stop at four and instead went on forever, meaning that he didn’t even know how long the password was. “Aw come on.”

  He threw the phone in his bag before getting up, taking a second bag of chips even though the first wasn’t finished yet and trying to find another room. It didn’t take long for him to find the living room, equipped with a television and gaming setup.

  Since this wasn’t his place, he didn’t know where the games were or what to even play, so he just went through some channels as he continued eating the chips.

  This way, hours started to pass until the phone started to ring. The sudden noise made him almost jump, eyes big while looking at his bag. It didn’t take him long to figure out what it was, opening up the bag and taking her phone to turn the alarm off. He threw it back in the bag, not expecting the other two alarms.

  Soon enough, they too went off, prompting him to get a bit frustrated and turning them off again. When after the third one it all stopped, he was content, continuing to watch movies and just eating chips. He hadn’t learned how to cook yet so as hours passed, he made his way to the storage room and got more food, every once in a while grabbing the phone and trying some random codes.

  In the end, the phone locked down for a full day, not allowing him to try again. By now it had gotten late again, sun setting and multiple packages of cookies on the ground. He felt nauseous from all the unhealthy food, groaning and lying down on the couch, eventually passing out and getting a good night's rest.

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  Though when he woke up, the television was still on and nothing in the room had changed with the phone still next to him. Did Madison not wake up yet? He got up, stretching and going back to the bedrooms.

  After opening her door, she was still on the bed. He walked over to her, trying to not be too loud just in case she was in fact still sleeping. He bow down over the bed, trying to find any proof of her still breathing.

  It didn’t take long for him to hear her taking a deep breath and continuing her nap, prompting him to just get up and leave the room.

  Knowing that she was alive was enough to keep him from breaking down as she was the only person in this house and while not really knowing her, it would still be traumatizing.

  The next day was rather passing by fast, forgetting about Madison completely as he washed himself, ate unhealthy food and watched some television. At one point, his phone started to ring as his grandparents called him.

  Hearing the phone ring was something that made him remember what Madison had told him about people trying to reach out in order to find him. He had no explanation for his parents being gone so he just didn’t pick up. There was some bad blood between him and them so he didn’t feel so bad about it.

  Not only did he remember what Madison had told him, he also started to remember more and more about his dream, seeing more and more details about the Jones he dreamt about. How he had two brothers and an already dead father. His actual father had been alive up until the dream so not everything was the same between them.

  Around the time of this realization was also the moment where he tried to find the exit of this building, finding a back door rather quickly. Outside the house was a pool and what looked like a tennis court. He didn’t know tennis nor did he care for it, instead looking at the sky and trying to command a cloud to come down towards him.

  This was easier than expected, getting a rather big cloud in front of him. In his dream, the boy had managed to sit on it and fly on it, so he tried the same.

  At first, he only got a cold hand as he just waved his hand through the cloud, trying to get it more dense until it was much smaller but also solid.

  Sitting on it wasn’t pleasant either, getting his ass wet and cold. Still, it didn’t stop him from using it to fly up into the sky, going higher and higher, collecting more and more clouds for no apparent reason but just fun.

  From this high up, he could see that they were deep inside the forest, almost like the one where the boy in his dream had ended up. He also saw that the woods spread out for as far as he could see.

  While he could try to get away from here, back to the city, there was also the problem of him being a runaway with missing parents. Nobody was going to believe the story of his disappeared parents without proof, which was something that didn’t exist for obvious reasons.

  He watched the sun go down before going down himself, back into the house. Though when going back to watch some television, the screen suddenly turned off and on as the lights flickered.

  If the lights were to fail, he had no idea on how to fix it and he hadn’t seen Madison for more than a day now, finally getting worried again about the stranger. Why hasn’t she shown up yet? Did he let her die? Should he have woken her up after the first day? “Oh no.”

  He got up from the couch, feeling his heartbeat spike up, feeling his body shaking as he felt sick, going towards the bedroom at full speed which at this point, wasn’t fast. After reaching and opening her bedroom door, he was relieved to see her still being there, which already was a step further than his parents.

  Trying to be quiet, he came closer yet again, hearing her breathe every once in a while. So while not having shown herself for over a day now, she still managed to survive and sleep.

  Being here next to her stopped his plans of waking her up, feeling nervous to do so. What if she didn’t want to be woken up? She said that whenever she slept she got younger so perhaps she wanted this.

  “Here I go…” He was still unsure while starting to poke her cheek, scared that this was a mistake. It didn’t work at first, resulting in shaking her shoulders pretty hard before she finally woke up.

  She looked up at him, being a bit surprised but also smiling. “Oh hey, did you need something?” With a yawn, she sat up right, reaching for her phone which was gone. “I got another dream… Where’s my phone?”

  “Oh yeah.” At this point he had completely forgotten that it was next to her before he took it. “I had taken it to try and open it but I couldn’t. It’s downstairs on the couch if you want it.”

  Without saying another word, she pushed past him, running down the stairs to retrieve it, leaving Jones rather stunned. He followed her but slowly, gently making his way down. Apparently she had found her phone because not much after did she scream.

  He didn’t really expect much to come from it, being therefore very surprised when she rounded the corner, holding out the phone. “How long have I been asleep!? Over two days!? This has to be a joke!”

  Jones shrunk a bit when she acted like that, not sure what he did wrong. “I don’t know, you just didn’t wake up and I didn’t want to bother you.” He took a couple of steps back until he was against the wall.

  Quickly, she saw the fear in his eyes and forced herself to cool down. “Yes, I’m sorry. I need to cool down. First of all, never touch my phone again, alright? Secondly, as mentioned before, when I sleep I get younger. Unfortunately this also means that if not woken up, I keep sleeping until I’m dead. I don’t need to eat during that time and due to my current age, it’ll take many years but it’s possible.”

  She then looked a bit better at Jones, smelling him rather easily. “Speaking off, have you been taking care of yourself?”

  Due to her waving her hand in front of her nose, Jones quickly figured out what she meant. “Hey, I don’t have another set of clothes. I washed myself every day.”

  “Yeah, guess you should’ve gotten some before we left. I should buy you some later.” She turned around and looked through the doorway into the living, seeing the packages of cookies and chips and such. “What have you eaten the past couple of days?”

  “Whatever I found in the storage room.” He pointed somewhere down the hall, feeling that she would get scared at him. “I don’t feel so good.”

  “I don’t find that weird for one bit. I’m surprised that you’re still standing.” For now, she closed the door so that he didn’t have to look at the mess and feel bad. “Look, go to bed, get some rest. I’ll wash your clothes and clean up right here and get you a proper meal because at this rate, you’ll need to go to a doctor which we can’t do.”

  Seeing her not being mad, made him relax a bit as he nodded. “Yes ma’am, I’ll sleep.”

  That ma’am was answered with a single short shake of her head, looking at the ground. “Just use Madison, I’m not… Just go to bed.”

  She followed him to his room, waiting for him to throw his clothes outside before grabbing them and taking them downstairs to get them cleaned. In the meantime, she grabbed a robe and brought it to his door, putting it down in front of the door on the ground.

  Then she went back to the living room, grabbing all the trash and cleaning up, sighing as she knew that this was probably going to change how she lives now. A young guy like that was most likely stubborn and depending on how he was raised, perhaps spoiled.

  While cooking, she had her phone plugged in so it wouldn’t die on her as she then put the finished food in the freezer. For now, she wasn’t sure how to continue with him as they didn’t really have a goal right now, waiting for Jones to discover his purpose with his new powers.

  When she was done with everything, she went back to her own bedroom, grabbing her diary to see that the dream she mentioned had written itself in it. Normally they’d have some time to get to her target, but after having slept for so long, the new children were most likely to wake up sooner than expected. She grabbed some food and drinks, throwing them in the car. As soon as Jones woke up, they’d have to get going.