Eron plodded up the stairs of the apartment complex wearily. His hair, drenched with sweat, hung down in front of his eyes. He panted as he made his way up the flights of stairs in the outdoor staircase.

Normally he wouldn’t be doing this. He’d much rather be in the air conditioned elevator. However, Cinnamon and Macy, apparently as his ‘punishment’ for being too slow, had taken both of the elevators up to the 25^th floor and pressed every floor’s button before getting off, so waiting for them would’ve taken all day. Thus, here he was, trudging up the staircase in the sun and humidity. He planned on taking a nap as soon as he got to his room.

He hung his head over the side of one of the railings, closing his eyes for a few moments, but being jerked abruptly back into reality when a tennis ball sailed right past his head, grazing his right ear. He jerked back and nearly fell down a flight of stairs. He poked his head back out again and looked up to see Macy and Cinnamon’s heads outlined against the clouds.

"OY!!! WHAT’RE YOU TRYING TO DO, KILL ME?!" he yelled up at them, shaking a fist. It looked quite comical, actually.

"Sure!" Cinnamon called back down, "I’ll get your room! I’m sure Sarah wouldn’t mind!"

Sarah is the name of Eron’s aunt, though most of the people that didn’t know Eron beforehand often called her his sister. The reason for this being that she was only 4 years older than Eron, being 20. She was in college, though mainly took night courses so she could be home during the day. After all, SOMEONE had to wake Eron up, and Cinnamon sometimes fell victim to late sleeping as well. She usually had a less violent manner of doing so.

She was generally a softspoken person, not one to raise her voice for much, if anything at all. She had the air of maturity around her in the midst of Eron and Cinnamon’s antics. Despite this, however, she was endlessly amused whenever Cinnamon started up picking on Eron for the day.

But Sarah wasn’t the one tossing tennis balls at Eron at the time. Nor was she the supplier of said tennis balls. She enjoyed watching Cinnamon picking on Eron, but in all of the years that Eron had lived with her, being from when he was 7 to when her father passed away two years before to the present, she had never once participated in the activities.

Eron sighed and swung his head back underneath the next flight of stairs as four more tennis balls sailed past where his head had just been. He resumed his trek up the stairs as he heard the balls’ echoing ‘Plop!’ from when they hit the ground below.

"Eroooon…" Cinnamon pouted as he fell forward from the top of the last flight of stairs, "Now we lost our tennis balls! Go down and get them!"

"No." he stated wearily, stumbling into his and Sarah’s apartment, being #2577, "Go get ‘em yourself… I’m gonna go take a nap."

"At 4:30?" Macy tilted her head.

"Sure, after a day like today I feel like I’ve been up since 5 AM!" Eron pointed to Cinnamon as he said this.

"Maybe you WERE up since 5 AM… doing… something… or someone…" Cinnamon winked, and then fell over laughing as a long string of Eronish was emitted.

Eronish is/was/still is a little habit Eron had, that mainly was the following: Whenever someone said something fairly… kinky… involving him and usually any female within the city limits, he would start screaming completely random sounds. Translated into writing, it looks something like this: "DOPAIJWEIB EPOISDGFEWIOYGHDFSFA!!!" It was always a goal for Cinnamon to attain this rather amusing dialect at least once a day.

"Think what ya want, I need my sleep! Or at least something caffinated…" he wandered into the kitchen, with Macy and Cinnamon not-so-stealthily following. "Sarah, do we have any soda?"

"Yes, I picked up a few different kinds when I went shopping yesterday…" She stepped out from the pantry, having just picked a few things needed for dinner.

Since Eron was related to her, he never found Sarah attractive, though many of his friends from school (Including, but not limited to, Cinnamon… okay, mainly Cinnamon, and others agreed with her) often pointed out that she was. Genetics or something caused him not to notice, and he still didn’t. Sarah was rather short for her age, around 5’6". She was a tiger, like Eron, only a white tiger instead of a grey tiger. She had long blonde hair and lavender eyes. She never wore a particular outfit, like Eron usually did, or how Cinnamon usually didn’t wear much at all.

"Right then…" Eron brushed past her and dove head-first into the pantry, digging out a few sodas. He tossed one to Cinnamon, who was hit with it since she was preoccupied with informing Sarah of her latest evil plots, and Macy caught hers without any trouble. Eron headed into his room and sank down onto his bed, sipping his soda absentmindedly, not really thinking about anything until he was bounced a bit as two more bodies accompanied him on the bed. He sighed, "Can I ever have time to myself?"

"Not unless you’re on the crapper." Cinnamon said, "We’ll always be with you, Eron… come play with us… forever… and ever…"

"Would you stop that?!" Eron laughed as he threw a pillow at her, and then ducked as a book sailed past his head. "Seriously, I’m beat. Can you at least go do something for an hour while I take a nap?"

"We won’t be mean!" Macy said, giving him the whole sweet-innocent look that usually got Eron to go with what they wanted, "Pweaze?"

Eron sighed, "Well, you can stay at the apartment if you want," he leaned back into his pillows, "but I’m gonna go to sleep." He sunk into the mattress and closed his eyes. He neither heard nor felt Cinnamon or Macy move, so he assumed that they weren’t going anywhere any time soon. After a few minutes, he finally sunk into unconsiousness.

Eron sat on the remains of the fallen skyscraper. He said nothing, only gazed at the ball of black, white, and red, still constantly swirling in the middle of the city. "Mom…" he said weakly. Why he said it, he didn’t know. He had never known his parents before, or didn’t remember them at any rate. He just… said it.

Small bits of energy flew from the sphere and practically grazed Eron. Any of these would have killed him if it had so much as touched a single thread of his fur or hair on his head, but he didn’t notice this. He kept his eyes fixed on the sphere. Then he stood up. No, he didn’t stand up, his legs pushed him upward. He didn’t control them at all. Nor did he notice this.

His legs pushed him off of the rubble, and he floated forward… for what seemed like an eternity. He never seemed to get any closer to the sphere though… His wings didn’t seem to want to carry him farther…

Wait… wings…?

Eron opened his eyes. Cinnamon’s eyes weren’t gazing back at him, nor were Macy’s. He glanced to where they were before he fell asleep, and they weren’t there. He glanced at his clocked… 8:34 PM… (Crap…) he thought, (I guess I was more tired than I thought… guess I’ll have trouble getting to sleep tonight…)

"So, you’re finally up!"

"Eh?!" Eron wheeled his head around to where his TV sat in the corner of his room, accompanied with his PS2. In that corner, Cinnamon and Macy sat watching one of his anime DVDs. Cinnamon was looking over her shoulder at him.

"You’re lucky we didn’t do anything evil to you." She stretched, "We really should’ve…"

"Nah, he needs his sleep, Cinnamon." Macy said, "You saw how relieved he looked when he didn’t wake up to see you on top of him."

"Aww, but his wake-ups aren’t complete without me scaring the daylights out of him!"

"Speak for yourself…" Eron muttered as he half-fell half-pulled himself off of the bed. He shook his head wearily. What was with these dreams lately? He had never had a problem with nightmares ever since he was a little kid… and the rare few that he experienced never got to him like this. They had some sort of eerie reality to them, yet it they were completely unreal… or something like that. An ethereal reality… "Heh… it sounds like a name of a book." He commented to himself as he poked his head into the kitchen. Sarah was there, reading a book.

"Hey, Sarah? Did I miss dinner?"

"Oh, yes. I’m afraid that Cinnamon and Macy ate the leftovers though… you can make a sandwich if you’re hungry." She looked over her book, "Are you feeling okay? Usually your naps don’t last longer than an hour or two hours, but you were in bed for over 3 and a half hours there…"

"Doing kinky things!!" Cinnamon’s voice trailed from Eron’s room.

"WHAT?! I WAS NOT!!" Eron yelled back. Sarah laughed as she returned to her novel. She was finishing up Dragonlance: The War of the Twins. Eron had read this and the proceeding four books. He made a mental note to go to a bookstore tomorrow and pick up the next in the series as well as a new sketchbook (He had taken a liking to drawing).

He fixed himself a sandwich and returned to his room to watch anime with Cinnamon and Macy. Before he knew it it was 4:30 AM, and he, Cinnamon, and Macy were all laying on the bed, sinking into sleep.

(This is relaxation as its finest…) Eron thought to himself as he drifted to sleep for the second time that day.