Flauraan, Abigail is 20, Sophie is 22

I'm worried about Abigail. I mean, more than usual. I know I should probably bring it up with her, but I don’t know how. It’s something I’ve mostly noticed when she is sleeping.

She sleeps so much heavier than me, so I am fairly used to getting woken up to small disturbances in the night while she remains oblivious and dead to the world. I usually fall back asleep pretty quickly. It’s been happening more and more since the Weraynian war ended though, and though I can’t be too surprised that both of us are more restless after everything we’ve been through, the most bizarre thing is that often what wakes me up is really weird things happening - items falling off her desk, her door suddenly slamming shut, a strange heat to the air on cool nights. Usually I notice that Abigail is tossing and turning in her sleep at the same time, maybe having bad dreams if her expressions are anything to go by. I slowly have started to piece all the weird things together, and have come to the conclusion that Abi’s powers have been acting up in her sleep, suddenly exploding out of her. And it’s not only confined to the nighttime either. Sometimes when she is awake, and tired or anxious or stressed, the room she is in will tremble, or things will stir on the ground even though there’s no wind. I don’t know if she’s noticed. Maybe it’s something that she is purposefully ignoring.

She hasn’t talked much about her experience testing her powers for the Staarus forces alongside Alexa and Jayken, mostly having focussed on how the ordeal affected them instead of her. But it would take an incredibly unobservant person not to notice that her powers have increased astoundingly since then. I mean, she stunned me on Halapatov when we helped rescue Jayken and she used her powers to blast open doors effortlessly. And of course everything she did with the gel matrix, alone and with Alexa, in the final days of the war. I wonder if I am not the only one of the two of us who has emerged from the war not just with psychological changes but physical ones as well. If her powers reflect some damage she has sustained the same way I now have one less arm.

Some nights are especially bad, when I lurch out of a nightmare and the room is stirring and for one horrible moment I am back in the gel matrix chamber with Abigail falling from the Machine and I am being dragged away from her body screaming her name, until my eyes adjust and the memories recede and I realise it is just her. Just her. And if her powers are moving things around then she is alive, she is here with me. But still I always have to reach out,feel her breath against my hand, place my ear on her chest to feel her heartbeat, before I calm down enough to accept it.

I don't know if she would want me to bring it up with her, or if it would just make her more stressed. This is usually the sort of thing that she would bring to me and I would listen and try to think of something helpful to say but mostly be floundering, so I really don't know how to handle this. Maybe I should try to ask her about her training with Reeina; I don't think she does that anymore but it must have made a difference right? I guess Reeina's pretty busy anyway.

I don't know. I'm just worried and feeling useless. I'm just hoping that it will get better with time, the further away we get from the war. That's how healing works, right? I wish I could remove from her brain everything that is hurting her. So much of our life together has involved pain; now that we're past all of that I had thought things would be easier, but they're just hard in a different way.

I resolve to say nothing, but I keep a watchful eye on her, with the intent of asking Reeina or someone for advice if I think it's getting out of control. All I can do is hope desperately that everything will turn out okay.