Bedtime Story: WEIRD Sleep Habits Of Medieval People

This 3-hour sleep story is designed to help you fall asleep fast and stay asleep all night. Ideal for anyone searching for a sleep track, a long bedtime story for sleep, or a gentle sleep meditation for deep rest.

What if you found yourself in medieval times, not as a tourist, but as the one living it, drawn into the simple and deeply human sleep habits of ordinary medieval people? This second-person immersive narration places you inside a small timber cottage, settling onto a straw mattress after a long day of labor, experiencing segmented sleep, the quiet pause of midnight wakefulness, distant animals shifting in the dark, and the slow return to rest that shaped nightly life in the Middle Ages.

A soft, steady fire crackles in the background, creating a warm and calming atmosphere throughout the story.

Told slowly and gently, this track is designed to keep your mind lightly engaged while helping your body relax, unwind, and drift into sleep.

Transcript

Hey guys,

Tonight we're diving into something we all understand,

Sleep.

Or at least,

What we think we understand,

Because how people slept in the middle ages was far stranger than you'd expect.

Now get cozy,

Let the day melt away,

And we'll drift back together,

Into the quiet corners of the past.

Past You wake up in the dark,

Confused.

You're not sure if it's morning or midnight or somewhere in between,

But you do know one thing.

You were asleep,

And now you're very much not.

The air in the room is cold and stale.

You shift slightly under the heavy wool blanket that smells like wet barn and burnt tallow,

And for a moment you think maybe you just had a bad dream.

Maybe your sleep got cut short by the usual suspects,

Noise,

Discomfort,

A rat climbing across your chest,

But no.

Around you,

You start to hear others moving too.

Someone's stirring the fire.

Someone else is muttering what might be a prayer or a recipe or both.

A child coughs.

An old man stands up and starts pacing like this is normal.

And it is.

Welcome to your first night of medieval segmented sleep.

See in your world,

Sleep is a single continuous marathon.

Eight hours,

One pillow,

Blackout curtains,

And something about REM cycles that makes you feel guilty for checking your phone after 10pm.

But here,

That concept doesn't exist yet.

You don't sleep once.

You sleep twice.

In chunks.

First sleep,

Then second sleep.

And in between?

A delightful little intermission of medieval wakefulness.

That's what's happening now.

You're in the middle of what the locals simply call the watch.

It's not insomnia.

It's not a sleep disorder.

It's just what people do.

Everyone expects it.

People drift off not long after sunset,

Wrapped in scratchy layers and flattened into hay and about four hours later,

They wake up.

Quietly.

Automatically.

As if summoned by a body clock wired to the sun and the silence.

No alarms.

No caffeine.

Just this shared eerie instinct that somewhere around midnight,

It's time to rise and do.

.

.

Things.

The room is dim,

Lit only by embers and a single candle that someone re-lit with a stick from the hearth.

The glow bounces off the stone walls and illuminates faces in half-light.

A woman squats near the fire,

Stirring a pot like she's preparing a second dinner.

A man in the corner flips through what looks like a religious text,

Mouthing the words silently.

Someone else steps outside to check on the livestock.

Because yes,

There's a real chance your goat has broken loose again.

Apparently goats don't believe in fences or sleep.

You lie there listening.

No one seems panicked or even particularly tired.

There's no sense of crisis,

Just a soft ghostly rhythm to it all.

People talk in low voices.

Some pray.

A few sneak in awkward intimacy under a blanket.

Not because they're scandalous,

But because medieval medical manuals say this is the best time to do it,

The body being calm of mind and well-rested,

Which feels like a polite way of saying nobody's awake enough to argue.

Eventually,

You sit up too.

You're not sure if you're allowed to,

But no one stops you.

You wander over to the fire,

Trying to warm your hands without looking too obviously new here.

Your blanket falls from your shoulders and you instantly regret it.

The air is colder than you thought.

The woman stirring the pot doesn't look at you,

But she does shift to make room.

In the corner,

The old man has fallen back asleep upright,

Head tilted,

Mouth slightly open.

He looks like a statue carved by someone in a hurry.

This waking period usually lasts about an hour or two,

Depending on the season and the personality of the rooster.

It's not busy,

But it's not passive either.

It's useful time,

And people make the most of it.

There's laundry soaking in a bucket.

Someone sharpens a blade by the door.

Another young man leans over a wooden table,

Copying verses from a borrowed prayer book.

It's a strange middle space between night and day,

Work and rest,

Sleep and consciousness.

And here you are,

Trying to stay warm and act like this is completely fine.

You think about crawling back into your bed.

If you can call a bag of straw and bones a bed.

But something about the stillness of the watch keeps you seated.

No one is scrolling through anything.

No one is listening to podcasts or doing breathwork or checking sleep stats on an app that shames them for not getting deep sleep.

They're just awake,

Together,

Quietly,

Like a communal ritual no one had to invent because it invented itself.

Eventually,

As silently as it began,

The watch begins to end.

One by one,

People drift back toward their sleeping places.

The fire is stirred once more and covered.

The candle is pinched out.

No words are exchanged.

The woman with the pot covers it and lies down beside it,

As if keeping it company.

Even the goat outside makes a soft,

Grudging bleat before settling again.

You lie back down,

Pull the itchy blanket over your head,

And try to find the shape of comfort again.

You know that second sleep is coming,

That the body will soon slip back into rest like it never left.

You also know that in a few hours,

The church bell will ring,

Or a rooster will scream,

Or someone will step on you trying to get to the door.

But for now,

You close your eyes.

The watch is over.

Second sleep awaits.

You don't know what time it is,

But it feels wrong to be awake.

The fire has burned down to a soft pulse of orange in the hearth,

And the air tastes like smoke,

Wool,

And something unwashed.

You blink a few times,

Hoping to fall back asleep,

But it's no use.

Your body isn't panicking,

It's waiting,

Listening.

And then you realize everyone else is already up.

A few feet away,

Someone shifts under a blanket.

There's a rustling of straw,

The clink of iron,

The low murmur of a voice reciting something old and sacred.

The room is dim and flickering,

But alive.

A man crosses the floor with a ladle and dips it into a bucket,

Sipping like it's the middle of the day.

Someone else is carefully trimming the wick of an oil lamp,

And you can hear the subtle rhythm of breathing layered with the whisper of turning parchment.

The midnight hour has begun,

And here,

That doesn't mean sleep,

It means opportunity.

You sit up,

Unsure whether to join in or fake unconsciousness.

Your blanket falls away,

And the chill reaches your spine like it's owed something.

Across from you,

A girl no older than 15 is reading aloud from a cracked psalter.

Her voice is soft,

Deliberate,

And oddly cheerful,

Like she's done this every night for years.

She doesn't look tired.

No one does.

They look focused.

You shuffle over to the hearth,

Trying to ignore the way the cold floor seeps through your feet.

An older woman is poking the ashes with a piece of iron,

Coaxing a few embers into flame.

Without looking up,

She nudges a stool in your direction.

You sit.

She offers you a bit of bread,

Hard as wood,

And says nothing.

This is the watch,

The quiet window between first and second sleep.

Not everyone uses it the same way,

But everyone uses it.

In some homes,

It's a time for prayer.

In others,

It's a chance to check traps or fix a shoe or whisper things that can't be said in daylight.

You watch a man by the door pull on his boots and slip outside with a torch.

No one asks where he's going.

He doesn't explain.

The woman beside you finally speaks.

Goats do to birth,

She says,

Like that explains everything.

And maybe it does.

You nod solemnly,

As if you too have monitored livestock mid-slumber before.

The bread cracks in your mouth like dry bark.

Across the room,

Someone is mending a tunic by candlelight.

Two boys are whispering about something one of them saw in the woods.

Eyes,

Maybe.

A figure.

Possibly a demon,

But also possibly just the blacksmith's apprentice.

There is nothing frantic about it.

The watch is not a break in sleep,

It's a rhythm.

You wake up not because something's wrong,

But because something is expected.

Medieval physicians claimed this hour was good for the blood,

The bowels,

And the soul.

Like your organs needed the pause to realign.

And as strange as it feels,

You can't deny there's a kind of logic to it.

An eerie,

Unspoken agreement that nighttime isn't for collapsing into unconsciousness and hoping for the best.

It's for tending to what matters.

Fires,

Animals,

Fears,

And occasionally,

Each other.

A man enters from outside,

Stomping snow off his boots.

He smells like smoke and frozen hay.

She's laboring,

He says to no one in particular,

And disappears into the back room.

You're not even sure who she is.

Another voice replies,

Pray she bears this one head first.

And someone else begins quietly singing a hymn under their breath.

Near the fire,

A woman fingers a set of beads and stares into the embers like they might answer something.

You've never seen such peace in such strange circumstances.

Nothing feels urgent,

But nothing is wasted either.

The candlelight throws warped shadows across the wall,

Bending the outline of a broom into something that almost looks human.

You try not to look directly at it.

Eventually the mood shifts again.

The psalter is closed,

The bread is gone.

The old woman lets the fire settle back into its glowing hum and wraps her shawl around her shoulders.

The boys retreat to their blankets.

You follow,

Unsure if you've done this right or wrong.

You curl up on your pile of straw,

Now slightly colder but somehow calmer,

And try to breathe like someone used to this.

Sleep returns,

Not as a surprise,

But as an agreement.

You drift off knowing second sleep is waiting,

Just as it always has.

In a world without clocks or sleep trackers,

Your body has remembered something your mind forgot,

That the night doesn't belong to you all at once.

It arrives in pieces,

And sometimes in between it gives you a moment to wake,

Not in panic,

But in practice.

A strange,

Sacred pause before the silence begins again.

You're lucky,

They say.

You've got a spot near the window.

It's not a large window,

More of an opening,

But it's got a shutter that almost closes,

And there's a small sliver of moonlight bleeding through the cracks.

Someone even calls it fresh air,

Like that's a feature.

You nod politely,

Try to look grateful,

And then lie down next to it like you're not sleeping in the crosshairs of everything that wants to kill you in the dark.

The first thing you notice is the cold.

It seeps in quietly,

Like a rumor,

Starting at your toes and moving up your legs until you're not sure whether your blanket is made of wool or just very committed mist.

The air from the window doesn't drift.

It lunges.

It curls around your neck and down your back,

And every time the wind changes,

It finds a new part of you to ruin.

There is no glass,

Just wood and superstition.

The shutter rattles on its hinge like it's planning to escape,

And if it does,

You're going with it.

You consider moving,

But space is currency,

And your spot's already been claimed by proximity.

Besides,

Sleeping by the fire is reserved for children,

Elders,

Or anyone with an obvious cough.

You're not important enough to sleep warm.

You're window-adjacent,

Which,

In medieval terms,

Is roughly the same thing as bait.

You pull your blanket tighter and shift toward the wall,

Trying to find a position that doesn't feel like being embalmed in frost,

But the wall has its own issues.

It's damp.

Not in theory,

In practice.

Actual moisture weeps through the stone and into your bones,

Reminding you that the outside is always trying to become the inside.

You roll the other way,

Toward the room,

And stare at the shutter.

It stares back.

There's a reason people avoid windows at night.

Actually,

Several.

Some are practical.

The draft,

The damp,

The occasional rat trying to achieve verticality.

But others are more urgent.

The medieval mind doesn't separate sleep from danger.

To sleep near an opening in the wall is to risk more than discomfort.

It's to risk intrusion by man,

Spirit,

Or something in between.

Everyone knows thieves prefer windows,

Not doors,

Which are loud and noticed.

Windows,

Especially ones with missing hinges or rotting edges,

Are perfect for slipping in quietly and stealing whatever's closest.

Blankets,

Boots,

Or people.

You're now closest.

Congratulations.

Then there's the night air.

Not just the cold,

But the belief that the air itself changes after dark,

That it turns sour,

Heavy,

Dangerous.

Miasma,

They call it.

A floating poison that carries disease,

Madness,

And whatever else they can't explain.

Sleeping near a cracked window means breathing in the devil's vapor.

And if you're lucky,

All you'll get is a fever.

If you're not,

You'll wake up dead.

People leave herbs on the windowsill to ward it off.

Lavender,

Sage,

Rosemary if you can spare it.

Sometimes garlic,

Though that's a bit aggressive unless vampires are actively involved.

You don't have any herbs.

You have a soggy blanket and a creeping suspicion that something just moved outside.

You hold your breath.

You listen.

Just wind.

Maybe.

Or a fox.

Or the shadow of your own doubt forming claws in the torchlight.

The thing is,

You're not just afraid of what's outside.

You're afraid of what might come through.

Things without names.

Things old women whisper about but never describe fully.

Sleep demons.

Restless spirits.

Creatures drawn not to warmth but to breath.

And you,

With your inconvenient lungs,

Are practically ringing the dinner bell.

Someone coughs across the room.

Another person shifts and mutters in their sleep.

The shutter creaks again.

You think about stuffing something in the gap.

Hay.

A rag.

Your own face.

But you know it wouldn't matter.

If the cold wants in,

It will come.

If something worse wants in,

It already has your name.

You lie back down and pull the blanket over your ears because everyone knows sound can't pass through wool.

Tomorrow,

They'll tell you that you're lucky to have light from the moon.

That some people sleep in corners with nothing but spiders and regret.

That a little night air is good for the blood builds fortitude.

You'll smile and nod and pretend your toes didn't turn blue while defending your lungs from medieval science.

Eventually,

You sleep.

Not because it's peaceful,

But because your body gives up.

The cold becomes background noise.

The wind,

A lullaby written by ghosts.

You forget about the window and the wall and the air trying to kill you.

You dream of warmth you've never known.

When you wake,

The shutters close tighter than before and someone's left a sprig of rosemary on your blanket.

You don't ask who.

You just breathe as shallowly as possible and hope the air's in a good mood.

The good news is you've been given a place to sleep.

The bad news is it's not a place and it barely counts as sleep.

You're led into the room by candlelight,

Past a man sharpening a knife with his foot,

A child chewing on a chunk of bark like it's a bedtime snack,

And a cat that may or may not be dead.

It doesn't move.

No one checks.

It's none of your business.

Your host gestures to a dark corner near the wall and says,

There.

You squint.

There.

Appears to be a fraying sack stuffed with what smells like wet hay and the memories of old potatoes.

There's a stain.

You hope it's old.

You also hope it's not sentient.

You say thank you because what else are you supposed to say?

You've lost the right to be picky.

In the modern world,

Beds are curated.

Memory foam.

Orthopedic pillows.

Temperature control.

Lavender spray.

Maybe a meditation app whispering confidence into your ear.

Here,

You sleep wherever there's room,

And by room they mean any square foot not already claimed by a person,

Object,

Livestock,

Or puddle.

It's not about comfort.

It's about not dying in the mud.

You sit on your bed.

It crunches.

You lie back.

It wheezes.

Something shifts underneath you with the faint energy of protest.

It could be a rat.

It could be your imagination.

You don't move.

Instead,

You wrap the wool blanket around your shoulders and immediately regret it.

The blanket is damp,

Not soaking,

Just faintly haunted.

It smells like fire,

Mildew,

And armpit.

You try to ignore it.

You've already lost this battle.

To your right,

There's a sick goat.

It breathes louder than you do.

Every few minutes,

It lets out a wet,

Philosophical cough like it's reflecting on the futility of life.

No one reacts.

Apparently,

The goat lives here now.

It has seniority.

Across the room,

Someone's snoring like they're trying to drill a hole through their own skull.

Another person's sleep talks in a language that might be Latin or just very ambitious nonsense.

You shuffle to your side,

Curl into yourself,

And try to create a fortress out of nothing but bone and resignation.

There is no privacy,

No partition,

No polite fiction that this is normal.

You are in a room full of strangers,

One questionable goat,

And a straw pile that has already given up.

You wonder where the others sleep.

Turns out,

Everywhere.

One man is by the hearth using a pile of firewood as a pillow.

A woman has curled up on a bench with a toddler in her lap and her foot wedged in a cooking pot.

Someone is wedged under a table like a medieval Tetris piece.

One person sleeps sitting up against the wall with their eyes open.

You try not to stare.

The hierarchy is unspoken but deeply felt.

Proximity to the fire means status or seniority,

Or you're dying.

Sleeping near the door means you're either brave or expendable.

Sleeping in the corner?

That's where the cold collects.

The floor is crooked.

The walls leak.

The ceiling drips something that smells of disappointment.

But no one complains.

They're used to it.

You,

On the other hand,

Are trying to breathe shallowly and think about something else.

Anything else.

Maybe this is a rite of passage.

Maybe you're building character.

Or maybe you're just one unfortunate roll away from inhaling goat hair and splinters until morning.

Eventually,

You close your eyes.

Not because it's quiet,

And definitely not because it's clean,

But because your body needs sleep more than it needs dignity.

You drift in and out.

Someone steps on your foot.

Someone else mutters a prayer.

The goat coughs again.

You roll onto your back and immediately regret it.

The floor seems to rise up to meet you in a way that suggests resentment.

At some point in the night,

The candle burns out.

The darkness swells.

The room sighs as one big breathing mass.

You are no longer an individual.

You are now part of the collective medieval pile.

You share warmth,

Space,

And fleas.

If not yet in body,

Then in spirit.

You surrender.

When you wake,

Your mouth tastes like wool and ash.

Someone has placed a wooden bowl of cold porridge near your head.

You don't ask who.

You eat it because it's there.

The goat sneezes on your shoulder,

And you flinch just enough to jostle whatever is still living inside your blanket.

You don't check.

There's no point.

This is sleep,

Medieval style.

Not an experience,

But a negotiation.

You don't sleep where it's peaceful.

You sleep where no one else got there first.

Where the floor isn't soaked.

Where the air isn't howling.

Where the goat won't bite you until morning.

And if that counts as rest,

You take it.

Because in a world like this,

The only real luxury is surviving the night still partially upright.

It begins with a fight.

Not a dramatic one.

No swords.

No shouting.

Just two brothers and a splintered bed frame,

Each holding one end of a mattress like they're about to perform a sad,

Hay-stuffed tug of war.

Their mother just died,

And this apparently is what she left them.

Not land.

Not silver.

A bed.

One mattress,

Filled with feathers if you're being generous,

And probably lice if you're being honest.

You're told this is normal.

Feather beds are valuable.

Not just comfortable,

Valuable.

The kind of thing that makes it into a will,

Right alongside the family ox or the cooking pot that only leaks sometimes.

In fact,

You're told,

Some disputes over inheritance aren't about land or titles.

They're about who gets to sleep like someone who matters.

You watch as the older brother insists the bed was promised to him.

The younger one claims he was the one who nursed their mother at the end.

And besides,

The mattress is technically half his since he helped kill the geese.

They go back and forth for a while until a third sibling quietly rolls up the blanket and walks out the door with it.

No one notices for at least five minutes.

When they do,

No one chases her.

The mattress is the real prize.

You learn quickly that in this world,

A bed is not furniture.

It's an asset.

A feather bed is stitched luxury,

A stitched-together symbol that someone in the family was once rich enough to kill birds for comfort.

Peasants don't have these.

Peasants sleep on straw.

Not golden,

Storybook straw.

Real straw.

The kind that gets wet,

Gets moldy,

Gets reused.

And reused.

And reused.

By humans,

Animals,

Insects,

And possibly ghosts.

You saw one peasant bed earlier in the day.

It looked more like compost with ambition.

The smell came before the sight.

A flattened sack filled with straw or hay or whatever was available,

Really.

Sometimes reeds.

Sometimes moss.

Once,

Even cabbage leaves.

It's not cleaned.

You just shake it out occasionally and hope the worst things inside die naturally.

You asked someone once when it was last replaced.

They laughed like that was the funniest thing they'd heard all week.

When it catches fire,

They said.

By contrast,

A feather bed is a generational relic.

A thing to be guarded,

Fluffed with ceremony,

And fought over when the owner dies.

You've heard stories,

Actual whispered family histories,

About beds being hidden during tax collections,

Smuggled across borders,

Or cut in half during inheritance feuds.

There are cases where two siblings slept in alternating shifts on the same mattress for years just to keep things civil.

No one was happy.

Everyone had back pain.

But no one gave it up.

You get the sense that,

In medieval logic,

The bed isn't just for sleeping.

It's a political object.

The nobles pass down rings and swords.

The farmers pass down sacks of goose feathers sewn together with stubbornness and shame.

And if you inherit one,

It means you're somebody.

Not a lord.

Not a scholar.

But someone who might one day sleep with both shoulders off the ground.

Maybe.

That night,

Your host lets you touch the bed.

Just touch.

You walk into the room,

And there it is.

Off the floor,

Raised on a wooden frame,

With a faded quilt draped across the top like it's royalty in repose.

You press your hand into it,

And it gives slightly.

Not like straw,

Which stabs back.

Not like the floor,

Which never cared to begin with.

The feather bed sighs under your palm.

It remembers softness.

No one sleeps in it tonight.

It's being saved.

Preserved.

Too many visitors,

Too much risk.

They say it belonged to the grandmother.

Or maybe her sister.

It's hard to tell because no one agrees on who died when.

All you know is that it's precious enough that they'd rather let it sit untouched than risk giving it to the wrong person.

Or worse,

To someone who doesn't respect it.

You go back to your corner of straw,

Grateful you weren't murdered for making an indent in the quilt.

Your own sleeping sack smells like burnt soup and hooves.

You lie down,

And the straw shifts beneath you like it's offended.

In the quiet,

You can hear someone whispering about the bed again.

They're arguing over whether it's better to keep it here or send it with a cousin.

One voice says it should be buried with its last owner.

To prevent theft or hauntings,

It's unclear.

Another voice says that's a waste.

The feathers,

After all,

Are still good.

Eventually the voices fade.

Someone sneezes.

Someone else groans in their sleep.

You shift to your side,

Careful not to dislodge anything structural.

The mattress might be ancient,

Shared,

And slightly cursed,

But it's better than most.

You think of the brothers,

Still pulling at the ends,

Each convinced the inheritance was love in cotton form.

But here,

Love doesn't come in hugs or heirlooms.

It comes in feathers.

And if you're lucky,

No blood on the blanket.

You arrive at the inn just after sunset,

Soaked from a rainstorm that didn't ask your permission and too tired to argue with your legs.

The building leans slightly to the left,

As if it gave up halfway through construction and never recovered.

Inside,

It smells like stew,

Feet,

And smoke.

Someone's snoring already.

Someone else is arguing over the price of cheese.

A dog limps by,

Dragging what might be a boot or a dead rat.

It's unclear.

No one reacts.

You pay your coin,

Or maybe just your promise,

And the innkeeper nods toward the stairs.

You climb them like they owe you something and reach the top to find a single wooden door already half open.

Inside is a room.

Technically,

It has walls and a floor and an effort at ventilation.

There is no bed waiting,

No pillow,

No turndown service.

What there is is a pile.

A human pile.

Eight people,

Maybe ten.

It's hard to tell because most of them are wrapped in cloaks or wool or each other.

There are limbs overlapping,

Someone's head tucked under someone else's knees,

And one man sitting upright in the corner with his eyes open like he's trying to astrally project somewhere less terrible.

You blink.

No one makes room.

You're just supposed to figure it out.

So you do.

You step carefully over a snoring man with a feather in his hat and squeeze yourself into a thin sliver of space between a woman humming to herself and a large man who is visibly sweating through his third layer of clothing.

You try not to touch anyone.

It doesn't work.

The moment you lie down,

Your elbow hits a shin,

Someone's braid drapes across your face,

And a knee lands squarely against your lower back with the force of deep ancestral resentment.

This is how medieval inns work.

Privacy is an illusion.

Space is a luxury.

Beds are communal,

And the only real rule is don't die in your sleep unless you do it quietly.

The idea of booking a private room doesn't exist unless you're a noble or carrying something incredibly contagious.

For everyone else,

Sleep is a group activity,

Like a meeting no one wanted to attend.

The man next to you clears his throat and says something that might be a greeting or a warning.

You nod.

He shifts.

The sweat transfers.

The woman beside you is still humming,

Something low and repetitive,

Like a lullaby sung by someone who has never seen peace.

Her eyes are closed,

But her fingers keep moving.

She's either praying or counting lice.

There's no blanket for you,

Just the warmth of strangers and the vague aroma of onions.

You shift slightly,

And a child you didn't know was there kicks you in the thigh.

You apologize.

The child does not.

A dog climbs onto your shins and sighs with the satisfaction of someone who knows exactly what they're doing.

It curls into a shape that makes your legs irrelevant.

Someone farts.

No one reacts.

The room is warm,

But not in a cozy way.

It's warm in the way a crowded market is warm,

Dense,

Wet,

And non-negotiable.

The air doesn't move.

The ceiling leaks slightly in one corner,

But no one's there.

That's premium space.

Everyone wants the middle,

The center of the mass.

The innkeeper says it retains heat.

What it really retains is collective body odor and breath.

You try to sleep.

You try to forget that you can feel someone's heel pressing into your ribs,

That you're inhaling three other people's exhalations,

That someone just muttered the phrase don't let it see you in their sleep.

You try not to imagine what it is.

The woman stops humming.

She starts whispering instead.

It's worse.

You wonder,

Briefly,

What happens if you snore.

Or sleepwalk.

Or wake up in the night needing to relieve yourself.

Where would you even go?

Down the stairs?

Past the arguing cheese man?

Out into the rain?

And behind the compost heap?

It feels like too much.

You decide instead that you will simply not have needs.

That's safer.

The night drags on in slow,

Sticky inches.

Occasionally someone shifts,

And it causes a domino effect across the pile.

Knees dislodge,

Backs roll.

A head ends up on your shoulder.

You let it.

There's no point resisting.

You're part of the living architecture now.

A support beam made of resentment and fatigue.

Eventually the room falls into a kind of rhythm.

Not quiet,

But consistent.

Breathing,

Muttering,

Shifting,

Sighing.

It's almost musical.

You stop fighting it.

You let yourself drift.

Not into rest.

There's no rest here.

But into the heavy gray space between awareness and surrender.

Morning comes without warning.

A rooster cries in the distance.

Or maybe just someone pretending to be one.

People start to stir.

You peel yourself off the floor,

Remove a small piece of someone else's beard from your sleeve,

And stand up slower than gravity intended.

No one says good morning.

No one says anything.

You leave the room,

Limbs aching,

Heart a little confused,

And head down to whatever counts as breakfast.

The dog follows you.

It knows you're weak now.

You don't argue.

You made it through the night.

The stranger pile has let you go.

For now.

You feel it before you see it.

A small itch just beneath your collarbone.

Then another on your shin.

Then your scalp.

You tell yourself it's just the straw.

Or the wool.

Or maybe your imagination.

But deep down you know.

You've joined the ecosystem.

In this world you don't sleep alone.

You share your body with things that don't ask permission.

Fleas.

Lice.

Bedbugs.

Tiny medieval roommates with no concept of personal space.

They live in the seams of your tunic,

The folds of your blanket,

The corners of the room.

You are their host.

You didn't invite them,

But they've moved in anyway,

And they're redecorating your skin.

You shift in your straw bed,

Trying to scratch without moving too much.

You don't want to wake the person beside you.

They're snoring peacefully,

Which means either they're used to it,

Or they've given up entirely.

You envy them.

The innkeeper warned you,

Sort of.

He said,

Don't mind the little ones.

They only bite if they like you.

You thought he meant mice.

He did not.

He meant the ones so small they can live in your socks.

You laugh quietly to yourself.

You're a favorite.

There's no soap.

Not real soap.

There's lye,

Which is just pain pretending to be hygiene.

There's ash,

And maybe some sand if you're lucky.

But there's no lavender-scented anything.

No scrub.

No shampoo.

No comfort.

Clean is a concept,

Not a condition.

Clean is how you describe something that hasn't been too recently infected.

The people around you don't scratch.

That's the scariest part.

They just exist with it.

One woman casually plucks something from her sleeve,

Flicks it into the fire,

And keeps talking.

A man beside her has a small comb made from bone and uses it like a violinist tuning an invisible instrument.

No one watches.

It's not rude.

It's normal.

You finally sit up and examine your blanket in the firelight.

You try not to recoil.

Something crawls.

Something hops.

Something else might be dead or pretending.

You stop looking.

The blanket is warm,

And that's all that matters.

You tuck it back around your shoulders like the denial it is.

A child near the hearth is being checked for lice.

Their mother parts the hair with mechanical efficiency,

Pulling out nits like it's a daily routine.

Because it is.

Lice aren't considered a problem.

They're a fact.

Like the weather.

Or taxes.

You have them.

Everyone has them.

You just try to keep the numbers down,

Like population control,

But for parasites.

Someone mentions vinegar,

Not to drink,

But to rub on the scalp.

It stings,

But it works,

Unless your lice are stubborn,

Which they usually are.

You don't ask for vinegar.

You just sit there,

Scratching slowly,

Pretending it doesn't bother you.

This is survival.

This is etiquette.

The bites don't itch forever.

That's the trick.

After a while,

You stop feeling them.

Not because they're gone,

Because your body decides to stop alerting you.

It has better things to worry about,

Like staying warm,

Breathing smoke,

Or not rolling into the fire.

You learn to adapt.

You shake out your tunic in the morning,

Not to clean it,

But to knock the worst of the living debris loose.

You check your boots before putting them on,

Not for pebbles,

But for things with legs.

You don't ask for fresh sheets,

Because sheets aren't fresh.

They're inherited,

Shared,

Sometimes scraped,

Occasionally burned.

The woman next to you leans over and hands you a small twig.

It's chewed at one end.

You look at it.

She smiles faintly.

To scratch,

She says.

You take it like a gift,

Because it is.

In the corner of the room,

Someone is boiling water,

Not for tea,

But to scald a tunic.

The steam rises,

Curling into the rafters where moths live like royalty.

No one opens a window.

Cold kills fewer things than heat.

This is the closest thing to pest control you'll see.

Eventually,

You stop scratching.

Not because it's over,

But because your skin is tired.

The bites have formed their own community,

A sort of raised relief map of your suffering.

You lie back down and press your cheek into the pillow,

Which isn't a pillow at all,

Just a bag of straw with dreams stitched inside.

Sleep comes,

Not like a blessing,

But like a truce.

You and your pests settle into an agreement.

No major movements until morning.

You'll let them feast if they let you rest.

It's not peace.

It's coexistence.

In the darkness,

You feel something crawl across your ankle.

You flinch.

Then you don't.

Your body understands now.

This isn't an invasion.

It's local culture.

You drift off with one hand on your stomach and the other still holding the scratch twig.

Just in case.

Someone announces it's bedtime by snuffing the last candle with their fingers.

You expect people to start undressing,

Maybe pulling off boots,

Loosening belts,

Winding down like civilized sleepers.

Instead,

They begin adding layers.

A woman pulls a second tunic over her first one.

A man unfolds what looks like a blanket,

But then wraps it around himself like a toga and fastens it with a bone pin.

A child is being stuffed into what appears to be a sack with sleeves.

Someone else calmly ties a clove of garlic around their neck.

You're confused,

But no one else seems to be.

This is just how people dress for sleep.

Not for comfort,

Not for style,

But for survival.

Sleep here isn't something you ease into.

It's something you prepare for,

Like a storm or battle.

The room is freezing,

Even with the fire still flickering.

The stones in the wall feel like they've been holding on to January since it began.

There's no insulation,

No central heat,

No hot water bottles or heated mattress pads,

Just wool.

Wool and prayer.

And if you don't have enough wool,

You layer shame on top.

You try to follow suit.

You leave your boots on.

You wrap your cloak around your body twice and lie down,

But immediately your toes go stiff and your fingers feel like they've been soaking in snow.

You watch a man next to you pull on what can only be described as sleep armor.

Three layers of tunic,

A leather vest,

Two scarves,

And a padded coif tied snug under his chin,

Like he's heading to the front lines of a particularly cozy siege.

Someone's rattling in the corner.

You glance over and realize it's not rattling.

It's chain mail.

A young man,

Possibly a mercenary,

Or just very paranoid,

Is lying on his back with his helmet beside him and his hauberk still on.

His sword rests across his chest like a blanket of poor decisions.

No one questions it.

He might be expecting trouble.

He might just be cold.

There's a boy near the hearth who's been dressed for bed by his grandmother.

She's layered him like a pastry.

Shirt,

Tunic,

Wool robe,

Another tunic.

Then a knitted cap pulled low over his eyebrows.

She tucks a strip of linen into his collar like a scarf then kisses his forehead with the same intensity you'd use to bless someone before battle.

The boy doesn't move.

He looks like he can't.

You look down at yourself and wonder if you've made a mistake.

You brought one blanket and a reasonably thick cloak.

You thought that would be enough.

You were wrong.

Cold in the medieval world is not ambient.

It's aggressive.

It doesn't creep.

It lunges.

And it always finds your ankles first.

Across the room,

A woman mutters a prayer while adjusting her fourth sock.

Her nightshirt hangs loose,

Belted with twine,

And you spot another clove of garlic at her waist.

Whether it's for warmth or warding off demons,

No one says.

Maybe both.

She lies down with a sigh like someone clocking out of their shift at the apocalypse.

You ask someone about the garlic.

They shrug.

Bad dreams,

They say.

You ask if it works.

They shrug again.

I still wake up.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement,

But you're considering it anyway.

You've already accepted the lice.

Why not add cloves?

Eventually,

You lie back down,

Shivering under your blanket,

Limbs coiled tightly inwards.

The man next to you shifts,

And you hear the soft jingle of his armor settling.

Somewhere behind you,

Someone coughs into fabric.

A baby lets out a single cry,

Then goes silent.

The fire pops once,

Spitting out a shower of sparks.

You can smell smoke,

Sweat,

Wool,

And the faint tang of tallow and onions.

No one is comfortable.

That's the baseline.

Comfort isn't the goal.

Preservation is.

To survive the night without losing sensation in your fingers is considered a victory.

Warmth is earned through layering,

Proximity,

And sheer willpower.

You envy the boy with the wool pastry shell.

You envy the woman who has mastered the scarf and garlic method.

You even envy the man in chain mail.

He's probably cold,

But at least he's armored against it.

Sleep doesn't come easily.

Your feet are too cold.

Your shoulders ache.

Your nose won't stop running.

But eventually,

Exhaustion beats discomfort,

And your mind drifts just enough to forget the sting in your fingers.

You start to dream of beds that don't require tactical planning,

Of duvets,

Of central heating,

Of socks that match.

When you wake,

The man in armor is gone.

So is the woman with the garlic.

The boy is still bundled,

Looking vaguely victorious.

You stretch your neck and something pops.

You've survived the night.

Barely.

One toe at a time.

No one says good morning.

Someone just hands you a piece of hard bread and nods toward the door.

You nod back and silently vow to steal someone's second tunic before sunset.

You're not dressing for bed anymore.

You're dressing for war.

You wake up in a panic.

Your body is drenched in sweat.

Your mouth tastes like ash and wool.

In the dream,

A man with no face handed you a glowing fish then told you to bury it under the church before sunrise.

You didn't.

You overslept.

Now you're sitting upright in the dark,

Wondering if you're going to hell.

Someone beside you stirs.

A voice murmurs.

You saw something,

Didn't you?

You hesitate.

The dream is still clinging to your skin like fever.

You nod.

The voice doesn't ask for details.

It doesn't have to.

Around here,

Dreams are more than dreams.

They're confessions waiting to happen.

In the medieval world,

Sleep isn't just rest.

It's litigation.

Your dreams are spiritual transcripts.

Every image,

Every word,

Every impossible animal juggling fire while reciting scripture is interpreted as either a message from God or a full-blown demonic visitation.

There is no middle ground.

Your subconscious is a courtroom,

And you're the defendant.

Earlier that week,

Someone dreamed of drowning and was told to fast for three days to cleanse the omen.

Another man confessed to lust because he saw a woman's ankle in a dream and woke up slightly too cheerful.

A child claimed he spoke with angels in his sleep,

And now no one lets him near sharp objects.

You've seen a priest nod solemnly at a dream involving a talking sheep,

Then assign penance with a straight face.

There's no such thing as a weird dream here,

Just suspicious ones.

You once mentioned a dream where a goat danced on two legs.

You meant it as a joke.

They didn't laugh.

A woman crossed herself.

Someone else muttered about fire and brimstone.

Now you think about that goat every night,

Just in case it shows up again with a message you're supposed to decode.

Maybe it wasn't just a goat.

Maybe it was the devil.

Or maybe the devil just has a sense of humor.

You try to lie back down,

But your body resists.

The room feels hotter now,

Like the dream left something behind.

You pull the blanket up to your chin and stare at the rafters,

Half expecting something to crawl out of them.

Dreams have rules here.

If you sin in one,

It counts.

If you see a demon,

You tell someone.

If you don't,

And something happens later —plague,

Famine,

A cow giving birth to a two-headed calf— it's your fault.

There's a system for this.

Dreams are shared at breakfast,

Dissected over broth and bread.

Someone always knows what it means.

Your teeth falling out?

You've been dishonest.

Flying over a field?

Pride?

Being chased by dogs?

You're avoiding repentance.

No one dreams just because.

There's a reason.

And if there isn't,

They'll make one up.

The Church treats dreams like surveillance footage.

God watching your soul with a shaky camera and bad lighting,

But still admissible in court.

Monks keep dream journals.

Some priests specialize in interpretation.

One woman in the next village is considered touched by the Divine because she dreamed of a burning tree that never fell.

And the very next day,

A lightning strike took out half the manor's orchard.

She's not allowed to eat alone anymore.

You shift again,

The dream still echoing behind your ribs.

You wonder if you should confess it,

Not because you think it's sinful,

But because someone else might.

And if you don't say it first,

Someone could say it for you.

That's worse.

Silence is guilt here,

Especially if your dreams involve glowing objects,

Riddles,

Or animals with opinions.

Someone across the room starts talking in their sleep.

It's a low,

Breathy murmur,

Words you don't recognize.

Someone else shushes them.

You hear the scrape of straw in a whispered prayer.

Everyone pretends to sleep,

But you know no one really is.

They're waiting to see if the dreamer says something dangerous.

If the name of a saint slips out,

Or a sin,

Or a prophecy,

Then they'll decide whether to wake him or salt the doorway.

You close your eyes and try not to think of the fish,

Or the faceless man,

Or the dirt under the church that you didn't dig.

You tell yourself it was nothing,

Just a fever dream,

A product of bad bread or cold feet.

But part of you knows that's not how it works here.

You'll have to explain it.

Maybe not today.

Maybe not even this week.

But it will come up.

And when it does,

You'd better have a spiritual takeaway.

By morning,

You've decided to confess the dream.

But leave out the part where the fish talked.

That might be too much.

You'll say it was glowing.

Yes,

But silently.

Reverently.

Like a symbol.

Not an omen.

Definitely not a threat.

You'll throw in a quick prayer about humility and maybe ask for some fasting bread,

Just in case.

Because here,

Sleep is not safe.

Dreams are not private.

And your soul is always on trial.

Even when you're just trying to rest.

At first,

You think it's just someone getting up to relieve themselves.

A soft shuffle across the floorboards,

The creak of a shifting body,

The almost polite rustle of wool.

You try to ignore it.

You're half asleep,

Half frozen,

And fully not interested in conversation.

But the shuffling doesn't stop.

It circles.

Then it thumps.

Then it bumps into the side of your straw mat with a force that says,

I'm not awake.

And I don't care who knows it.

You open your eyes.

And there he is.

Standing.

Eyes open,

Sort of.

Arms slack.

Face vacant.

He's not blinking.

Not breathing right.

His nightshirt is soaked with sweat down the back.

And he's holding a candlestub in one hand that isn't lit and doesn't seem like it ever was.

He's staring at the wall.

You realize,

Slowly,

He's been muttering something.

A prayer,

Maybe.

Or a threat.

It's hard to tell when the words come out backwards.

No one else has noticed yet.

Or they have.

And they're pretending they haven't.

That's understandable.

You think about pretending,

Too.

Then he turns.

His head rotates first.

Too far.

Like a puppet's.

And that's when the woman beside you lets out a gasp sharp enough to cut the silence.

Now everyone's awake.

The room erupts like a kicked beehive.

Blankets fly.

Someone yells,

He's marked!

Someone else shouts,

Check his tongue!

One older man just starts praying immediately,

Eyes clenched shut like the mere sight of the sleepwalker might invite eternal damnation into his socks.

You watch as the sleeper stumbles toward the hearth,

Dragging one foot behind him like something ancient is borrowing his bones.

Someone grabs a bowl of water.

Another snatches a bundle of herbs from above the door.

A third person ties a strip of linen around their own wrist and whispers a name you're not supposed to hear at night.

You're no longer in a sleeping room.

You're in a mobile spiritual crisis center.

Welcome to medieval sleepwalking protocol.

Panic first.

Ask questions later.

The theory goes something like this.

When a person walks in their sleep,

They are not themselves.

The soul has stepped out,

Gone wandering,

Or worse,

Been pulled out,

Which means whatever is inside the body now might not be friendly.

It might not even be fully human.

There's a word they use,

Not sleepwalker.

That would be too simple.

They call them noctum carried,

Night carried,

Like the person was taken somewhere,

By someone,

For something.

And if they make it back,

It's your job to make sure they're still them when they do.

Someone tosses salt at the man's feet.

He doesn't notice.

Someone else is waving smoke in slow circles around his head.

The priest's apprentice has entered the room,

Half-dressed and barefoot,

Holding a wooden cross like it might start glowing if pointed correctly.

He begins speaking Latin with the speed and confidence of someone hoping no one checks his grammar.

You stay seated,

Still,

Breathing through your nose.

You were not trained for this.

The man suddenly jerks,

Drops the candle,

And begins to hum.

It's tuneless.

It might be crying.

It might be laughing.

Either way,

Two people rush him and wrap a blanket around his shoulders like they're trying to smother a small thunderstorm.

He doesn't resist.

He just slumps and whispers,

She wouldn't let me go.

That's it.

That's enough.

One of the women starts tying his ankle to a wooden beam with a frayed leather strap.

For next time,

She mutters,

If the spirit wants to leave,

It'll have to drag the bed with it.

You learn quickly that this isn't a one-time event.

Sleepwalking isn't just strange.

It's an emergency.

A soul-out-of-body situation.

A doorway left open.

And doorways,

Especially at night,

Are not to be trusted.

The solution?

Tie them down.

Literally.

Ankles to posts.

Wrists to mats.

Some people even thread twine around their toes and loop it to the bed frame just in case.

A tangle of knots and knots and knots meant not to restrain the person,

But to restrain the exit.

And if that doesn't work,

There are prayers,

Chants,

Chalk symbols on the doorframe,

A bowl of fresh milk left by the bed.

Not to drink,

Just to watch.

If it curdles by dawn,

You'll know something passed through.

Eventually the man is laid back down,

Wrapped like a parcel and breathing normally.

Someone sprinkles ashes around the mat and recites three psalms in a row,

Just to be thorough.

You don't sleep.

No one really does.

You lie there with your eyes open,

Wondering how close your soul is to the edge of your body,

Wondering if the dreams that feel like falling are actually you,

Starting to drift.

Before sunrise,

Someone ties a thin cord around your ankle.

You don't argue.

You just nod.

Because if there's one thing worse than being a sleepwalker here,

It's being the one who didn't tie themselves down.

You thought it would be better.

A castle,

Stone walls,

Thick doors,

Maybe even a private bed.

For once you were optimistic.

You walked through the arched entry with your head high,

Soaking in the torchlight,

The tapestries,

The dramatic echo of your own footsteps.

You were ready for warmth,

For quiet,

For the sort of sleep only the rich can afford.

And then you were shown to your room.

It's technically a room.

Four stone walls,

One narrow slit of a window,

And a bed that appears to be made of velvet,

Wrought,

And an idea someone once had about luxury.

There's no fire.

There is,

However,

A draft so persistent it feels sentient.

You try to close the door behind you,

But it doesn't latch.

It never latches.

No castle door was built to shut quietly,

Or fully.

Every gust of wind,

Every passing servant,

Every click of boot against stone finds its way into your chamber like it owns the place,

Which you realize it probably does.

You sit on the bed.

It exhales,

Not in a comforting way,

More like a wet sigh.

You put your hand on the blanket.

It's heavy,

Not from thread count or craftsmanship,

But from age.

Centuries of use and unwashed history.

It smells like damp velvet and the kind of perfume that could only be applied with a hammer.

You pull it back,

And the sheet underneath is moist,

Not soaked,

Just committed to being unpleasant.

There's no straw here,

No communal pile,

No goat hacking up philosophy in the corner.

This is noble living,

Which apparently means cold,

Cavernous,

And echoing with every godforsaken sound this stone tomb can produce.

Somewhere in the distance,

Someone drops a bucket.

It ricochets across the flagstones like it's auditioning for a war.

Footsteps follow,

Then voices,

Then a slamming door that wasn't even yours.

You lie back anyway,

Because you're tired,

Because you've earned this somehow,

Because even the wet velvet beats sleeping with someone else's knee in your ribs.

But as soon as you close your eyes,

You hear it again.

The servants,

Always walking,

Always muttering.

None of them understand how to walk lightly.

The boots are made of wood.

The floor is made of stone.

The acoustics are designed by demons.

You pull the blanket tighter.

It clings to you like mildew.

The pillow is no help.

It's flat,

But somehow lumpy,

Possibly stuffed with expired feathers or unsuccessful curses.

You shift.

The bed frame creaks loud enough to alert the guard tower.

You hold your breath.

Nothing happens.

Then a draft creeps across your collarbone like a petty ghost looking for attention.

You wrap the blanket around your head and begin bargaining with gravity.

At least in the rat pile,

Everyone was quiet or too miserable to move.

Here,

People are awake at all hours.

You hear servants laughing three corridors away.

A dog barks somewhere near the kitchens.

A door slams again.

Always the doors.

Always the wind.

The tapestries flutter like they're trying to warn you of something,

Probably pneumonia.

You'd kill for the warmth of too many people,

The stink of shared sweat,

The rhythmic snoring of strangers packed together like sausages.

Here,

You have space,

Cold,

Echoing,

Judgmental space,

And a velvet blanket that has probably absorbed more noble sweat than any battlefield.

Your toes are freezing.

The fire in the hallway must have gone out hours ago.

No one brings coals to your room because technically,

This isn't your room.

You're a guest,

A tolerated one,

Which means you don't get warmth.

You get reverence and silence.

And that one creaking rafter above your head that seems to groan every few minutes like it's considering falling.

You hear the latch down the hall again.

It echoes like a church bell.

Another set of footsteps.

You roll onto your side,

Pull the blanket tighter,

And press your face into the pillow,

Which now smells faintly of dust and forgotten secrets.

You long for the straw pile,

For the dog curled against your feet,

For the woman who hummed tunelessly and smelled like garlic.

That was sleep.

This is performance.

Eventually,

Your body gives up.

Not because you're comfortable,

But because exhaustion always wins.

You drift into a restless,

Shivering half-sleep punctuated by whispers,

Bangs,

Gusts,

And dreams of being buried alive in velvet.

When you wake,

The blanket has slid halfway off.

The candle is out.

Your neck hurts.

The cold has moved into your bones and started redecorating.

You sit up,

Look around,

And feel absolutely nothing for the stone walls.

You miss the rat,

The pile,

Even the goat,

Because castles weren't built for sleep.

They were built to impress people you'll never meet and echo every mistake you make at 3 a.

M.

It begins with a bell,

Not a gentle one,

Not the kind you hear in bedtime stories or the background of a pleasant morning.

This one is iron and judgment,

Rung from a tower that seems closer to heaven than to earth,

Though the sound crashes down like thunder into your bones.

You wake instantly,

Heart pounding,

Vision smeared,

Brain still inside whatever dream you were having,

Something about warmth,

Probably.

But that's gone now.

The cold isn't just present.

It's awake.

It slithers down your back and coils around your ankles like it's been waiting.

The monks are already moving.

They don't speak.

They don't yawn.

They rise with the practiced dread of people who've done this every night for decades.

You try to stay still,

But someone touches your shoulder and says nothing,

Just a nod,

A gesture.

You're expected to follow.

It's 2 a.

M.

Welcome to Matins.

You swing your feet off the mattress,

Or what passes for one,

And immediately regret it.

The floor is stone,

And the stone is not just cold,

It's ancient cold,

Cold that's been steeping in silence for centuries.

You fumble for your cloak,

Wrap it tight,

And shuffle barefoot behind a procession of wool and discipline.

No one looks at you.

You don't blame them.

Down the hall,

The bell tolls again.

You swear it echoes inside your teeth.

The corridor is lit by a single torch that seems more symbolic than functional.

Shadows stretch long across the walls,

Flickering like saints disapproving of your posture.

You descend a narrow staircase where the cold gets worse,

Which you didn't think was possible,

But here it is.

Cathedral cold.

Monastic cold.

Cold that feels holy in the way pain sometimes does.

They file into the chapel without a word.

You follow,

Because what else is there to do?

The air inside the chapel is heavy with wax and stone dust and something older than language.

The monks kneel.

You try to kneel.

Your knees argue.

The floor doesn't care.

You bow your head like you belong,

Even though your breath is fogging in front of your face and your toes feel like they've been turned into glass.

Then,

From the silence,

The chanting begins.

It's low,

Measured,

The kind of sound that doesn't rise so much as emerge like a vibration from the walls themselves.

Latin psalms,

Ancient and precise.

You don't know the words.

You don't need to.

They roll over you,

Cold and sharp and repetitive.

You try to follow along,

Mumbling syllables that might be right or wrong.

No one corrects you.

You glance around.

No one is blinking.

No one looks tired.

Their mouths move in rhythm,

Their spines straight,

Their eyes half-closed in something between prayer and defiance.

You are the only one shivering.

You are the only one watching the candle wax pool like spilled breath.

Time unravels.

The chanting continues.

The bell tolls again.

A second reading.

Then a pause.

A silent bow.

Someone begins a different verse,

Slightly faster.

You don't know what's happening,

But your knees hurt,

Your hands are numb,

And your thoughts are crawling towards sleep like wounded animals.

And yet,

You stay awake.

That's the purpose.

Not comfort.

Not understanding.

Awakeness.

You are not here to rest.

You are here to be aware of sin,

Of salvation,

Of cold.

You're here to deny the flesh and submit to something greater than warmth.

You think of your bed,

Lumpy,

Sure,

But dry.

You think of the pile of bodies you once despised and now miss.

You think of garlic necklaces and sleepwalking men and dogs that didn't judge.

But here,

In this stone temple of sacred insomnia,

There is only breath and cold and sound.

Your lips crack as you mouth the last response.

The final psalm ends.

The echo lingers,

Then folds in on itself.

No applause.

No warmth.

Just the sound of fabric shifting as the monks rise.

You rise too,

Legs screaming.

Your feet hit the stone again.

You shuffle back through the corridors,

Through the dark,

Through the sleep you almost had.

No one speaks.

No one smiles.

This isn't a community.

It's a covenant.

And you were a guest in it,

For now.

Back in your cell,

The bed feels like a sin.

But you crawl under the blanket anyway.

It's still cold.

Everything is.

But your ears still hum with Latin.

And your chest feels slightly hollow in the way silence sometimes does after music.

You lie awake for a while,

Afraid to fall asleep in case the bell returns.

It always does.

Eventually.

It starts with a grunt.

Not yours.

Something heavier,

Wetter.

Then a shift in the straw beside you,

Slow,

Deliberate,

And accompanied by a smell that doesn't belong to any human diet.

You open your eyes just in time to see a pig reposition itself half an inch closer to your legs and exhale with the force of a bellows.

Congratulations.

You're not alone in bed tonight.

And that's by design.

Because here,

In this drafty corner of someone's barn-turned bedroom,

The animals sleep with you.

Not because it's cute.

Not because you miss your pet back home.

But because they're warm and the wind has been howling through the thatch like it's trying to peel your soul from your ribs.

The pig,

As it turns out,

Is not just company.

It's central heating.

A dog is curled against your back,

Pressed close enough that you can feel its ribs rise and fall.

It smells like earth and whatever it killed earlier that day.

But you don't move.

You need its warmth.

It needs yours.

That's the deal.

And above your head,

Tucked into a little wooden box nailed to the wall,

A pair of chickens murmur softly in their sleep.

One lets out a sleepy cluck,

Shifts on its perch,

And settles again.

You're not sure which one wakes you up in the morning,

The sun or the chicken.

But it doesn't matter.

They both beat the rooster.

There's no mattress here.

Just straw over dirt,

With a few sacks stitched from old tunics laid on top like someone thought that would help.

It doesn't.

But what does help,

Surprisingly,

Is the pig.

Its belly is like a furnace wrapped in bacon grease.

It snorts in its sleep and occasionally kicks,

But compared to the cold stone of a castle floor,

It's paradise.

You've named it Harold,

Not out loud,

Just in your head.

Naming something makes it feel more intentional,

Less like you've lost the last shreds of your former life.

In the first hour,

You were horrified.

You kept flinching every time the pig shifted or the dog licked its paws or the chicken farted,

Which,

Yes,

Chickens apparently can do.

But now,

Halfway through the night,

You're starting to understand.

Warmth doesn't come from fireplaces here,

Not unless you're rich.

It comes from breath and fur and body heat shared without shame.

You're part of a pile again,

But this time the pile snorts.

Someone else in the room coughs,

A human this time,

An older man sleeping under a blanket made of stitched wool and probably sorrow.

He doesn't stir when the dog barks softly in its sleep or when you shift to keep your foot from going numb.

He's used to this.

They all are.

You're the only one who flinches when the pig sneezes.

In this world,

The animals live inside,

Not because they're loved,

But because they're needed.

Every ounce of heat matters.

The walls are thin.

The wind cuts through everything.

The thatch lets in snow if it tries hard enough.

So the animals sleep where it's warm and where they can't be stolen.

Chickens are alarm clocks and dinner.

Dogs are guards and blankets.

Pigs are heat,

Meat,

And occasionally a source of existential comfort in the dead of night.

You wonder what your past self would say if they saw you now,

Curled up beside livestock,

Trying to fall asleep while feathers drift down from above and a dog dreams loud enough to vibrate your spine.

But your past self didn't have to choose between freezing alone and cuddling with barnyard friends.

That version of you didn't understand what desperation smells like.

You do now.

It smells like straw,

Pig breath,

And salvation.

The dog stretches,

Jabs you in the kidney with one paw,

And sighs.

You don't even flinch this time.

You shift to make room.

You're learning,

Adaptation through submission,

Through understanding that sleep here isn't about comfort.

It's about survival.

And in the hierarchy of survival,

Your body doesn't care if the warmth comes from a silk sheet or a slightly flatulent pig named Harold.

Warm is warm.

Morning comes slowly.

The chicken starts first,

A few soft clucks followed by a rustle.

Then the dog sits up,

Shakes its coat,

And sneezes directly into your arm.

The pig is last to move,

Groaning like an old priest before rolling to its feet and snorting toward the door,

Clearly unimpressed by the rising sun.

You stretch,

Stiff and grateful.

Every joint aches.

You smell like everything that happened in the night.

But you're not cold.

Not really.

Not compared to what you felt before.

And for that,

You reach over and scratch Harold gently behind the ear.

He grunts,

Unimpressed.

But you mean it.

You survived the night,

Wrapped in fur,

Feathers,

And the faint hope that you're not dreaming.

You'll never look at a barnyard the same way again.

It's the kind of silence that has weight,

Not the cozy,

Library hush you remember from childhood or the polite stillness before a performance.

This is different.

This silence feels like a rule,

A law carved into stone and whispered into bone.

It surrounds you,

Presses into your ears,

Sits on your tongue.

It's not natural.

It's enforced.

You're sleeping in a monastery tonight,

And here,

Silence is not a suggestion.

It is a sacred vow.

Not just during the day when monks glide through the corridors like ghosts avoiding eye contact,

But at night too.

Especially at night.

The kind of silence that could smother a sneeze.

The kind that makes you hyper-aware of how loud breathing actually is.

How every shift of a blanket,

Every twitch of a foot feels like a drumbeat in a cathedral.

You were warned in a hushed whisper by a younger monk who may or may not have already broken his vow just by telling you.

No talking.

No whispering.

No humming.

Sleep in silence or don't sleep at all.

You thought he was exaggerating.

You thought they'd be lenient with guests.

They are not.

You lie in a long stone dormitory filled with narrow beds tucked against the walls,

Each one barely wide enough to contain the average sinner.

The other men around you have already arranged themselves into corpse-like poses,

Hands on their chests,

Eyes closed,

Breathing slow.

You wonder if they're truly asleep or just performing piety for each other.

Either way,

You know better than to ask.

Your first mistake was clearing your throat.

Not loudly.

Just a soft,

Subconscious attempt to scratch the dry edge inside.

A small sound,

Almost tender.

But it echoes.

Oh,

It echoes.

Brother Thomas opens one eye.

Just one.

A single ancient orb peering out from under a woollen brow like a warning candle.

You freeze.

He doesn't move.

Just stares.

Then closes it again.

Message received.

You will not clear your throat again tonight.

You adjust your blanket.

Slowly.

Carefully.

Like diffusing a bomb.

You're afraid to exhale through your mouth.

Every creak of the cot feels like a confession.

You try to slow your breathing.

Match the rhythm of the room.

It's quiet.

Too quiet.

You're not used to sleeping without noise anymore.

Without some background hum.

A murmured podcast.

The whir of something electric.

This silence is ancient.

It has teeth.

And then,

Just as your heartbeat begins to settle,

Someone snores.

It's a wet,

Sudden,

Absolutely unapologetic burst from somewhere down the line.

It starts like a cough but rounds out into a low rumble.

Like a bear discovering Gregorian chant.

No one moves.

No one sighs.

But the air changes.

Something tightens.

A ripple in the stillness.

You see Brother Thomas shift beneath his blanket.

He doesn't get up.

Not yet.

Just rotates one shoulder like a soldier rehearsing his draw.

The snoring continues.

A full-bodied nasal opera.

Rattling through the stone walls like thunder filtered through a horn.

You close your eyes tighter,

Trying not to laugh.

Not because it's funny.

But because the alternative is weeping.

Another monk stirs.

A soft rustle,

Followed by the unmistakable,

Universally recognized gesture of irritation.

The blankets snap.

The snorer pauses.

Half a second,

Then louder.

Brother Thomas sits up.

You open one eye,

Careful.

He's silhouetted by moonlight streaming through the thin slit of a window,

Looking like a sainted gargoyle with unfinished business.

He doesn't say anything.

Of course he doesn't.

He just rises,

Bare feet silent on the stone floor,

And moves down the aisle like a shadow with a grudge.

The snoring continues.

Oblivious.

Innocent.

A crime of the unconscious.

You watch as Brother Thomas reaches the offender.

He doesn't shake him.

Doesn't speak.

Instead,

He lifts one hand and flicks the side of the snorer's head with the precision of a man who's done this many times.

Not hard.

Just enough to jolt a snort.

The man inhales sharply,

Mutters something that sounds like amen,

And rolls over.

Silence returns.

Brother Thomas walks back without triumph.

This was not vengeance.

It was maintenance.

You lie still for a long time after that.

You don't dare turn over.

You don't scratch.

You don't breathe too deeply.

The silence,

Now restored,

Seems even more sacred.

It's like the room is holding its breath and expects you to do the same.

And yet,

As the hours stretch on,

You realize something.

The silence isn't just fear.

It's comfort,

Too.

A kind of unity.

Dozens of men all agreeing,

Without a word,

To simply exist quietly.

To rest without interruption.

To suffer gently together.

Eventually,

You fall asleep.

And when you dream,

It's of something breaking the silence.

A bell,

Maybe.

Or a laugh.

But when you wake,

It's still quiet.

And you're still in the monastery.

And Brother Thomas is watching.

You don't remember falling asleep,

But something wakes you.

It isn't noise.

It's the absence of it.

The fire has died.

The last ember cracked out a while ago.

No one breathes loud.

No dog snoring.

No pig shifting.

Just cold,

Dark stillness.

So complete it feels unnatural.

Your eyes open,

But they don't help.

The room is blacker than anything you've ever slept in.

Not modern darkness,

Where screens blink and streetlights bleed in through windows.

This is the dark of old worlds.

Where the night itself feels alive.

You lie still.

You listen.

Somewhere in the room,

Someone mutters a prayer.

It's soft.

Repetitive.

A whisper to no one,

Or maybe to everything.

You don't know who it is,

But you can tell by the rhythm that they're afraid.

You are,

Too,

Though you haven't decided of what yet.

Earlier,

You laughed when someone tucked a plate under the bench.

A little wooden dish with a crust of bread,

An egg,

And what might have once been an apple.

For the angels,

The woman said,

Not smiling.

Or the others.

She didn't elaborate.

You asked who the others were.

She didn't answer.

You thought it was quaint.

Sweet,

Even.

Like a bedtime ritual from an old storybook.

Now in the dark,

That dish feels like insurance.

And you're painfully aware that you brought no offerings,

No charms,

No wards.

Just your blanket,

Your aching joints,

And the suspicion that you are not entirely alone in the room.

Someone shifts.

Not a human.

Someone.

A presence.

You pull the blanket up to your chin.

Not because it's cold.

Because if something is moving in this room,

You'd rather it think you're already dead.

They say night belongs to things that don't belong anywhere else.

That while people sleep,

The other world wakes.

Spirits.

Saints.

Devils.

Things that slip in through cracks in walls and prayers left unfinished.

No one argues with this.

It's not a belief.

It's a rule.

Even the bravest man here won't whistle after sundown.

The stories vary.

A child once woke up with handprints on his cheeks and no memory of crying.

A midwife saw her dead sister's face in the hearth coals.

One man swears a fairy laid beside him every night for a week until he finally spoke her name aloud.

And she vanished,

Taking three of his teeth with her.

You don't believe all of it.

But you also haven't moved in ten minutes.

There's a draft but it doesn't touch your skin like normal air.

It moves around you.

Past you.

You feel it hesitate at your ear.

You try not to breathe.

The woman across the room is still muttering.

It's louder now.

A chant.

She sounds like she's trying to drown something out.

Or warn it off.

You don't know which is worse.

You remember now.

They told you not to sleep with your feet facing the door.

You didn't listen.

You thought it was about etiquette or airflow.

But it wasn't.

It was about spirits.

It was about not giving them a straight path to drag you out if they came looking.

You turn your feet sideways under the blanket.

Just in case.

A floorboard creaks.

This house is old.

Everything creaks.

But not like that.

This creek was weighty.

Planted.

You freeze again.

There's a sound like breathing.

But it's not from a body.

It's from the room.

The entire room inhaling softly.

You want to say something.

Call out.

Just one name.

But your voice is gone.

Buried under every superstition you never used to care about.

You remember what else they said.

Don't open your eyes if you wake in the third hour.

Don't speak to anyone who whispers your name.

Don't answer the door even if you hear your mother's voice on the other side.

And if something sits on your chest,

Don't fight it.

Let it pass through.

You clutch your blanket tighter.

Fabric bunched under your nose.

You smell straw and sweat and a hint of old garlic.

Someone's necklace maybe.

A charm against demons.

You wish you had one.

You wish you had anything.

The plate on the floor shifts.

Just once.

A soft scrape.

You hear it.

So does the woman.

Her prayer stops abruptly.

Nothing else moves.

The silence returns.

But now it's wrong.

It's not empty.

It's expectant.

The kind of silence that waits to be broken.

And you don't want to be the one to break it.

You press your head into the mat.

You close your eyes.

You count slowly,

Even though you forget the order.

Numbers dissolve under fear.

All you know is you are still breathing.

Still here.

Still untouched.

Eventually,

Morning comes.

Dim and cold and full of the usual aches.

The room is as it was.

The others are waking.

No one mentions the night.

No one mentions the plate.

Now empty.

You don't ask.

You don't need to.

Because whatever passed through the room last night,

It left quietly.

And that's the best you can ever hope for.

You think you're asleep.

You're not.

Not really.

Somewhere in the distance,

A bell begins to toll,

Low and steady,

Cutting through the night like an old war drum.

It's not the kind of bell you hear and feel comforted by.

This one doesn't invite you to dream or rest.

It demands attention.

It pulls you from the edges of sleep and into a world where darkness feels sharp and breathless.

The bell tolls again.

And again.

Each clang carries the weight of the village's rhythm,

The unseen heartbeat of a community that refuses to pause even when the moon is high.

It's the sound that tells you the night is far from quiet and sleep is a fragile,

Fleeting thing.

You open your eyes to cold air slipping in through cracks in the wall.

Your breath forms a ghostly mist.

The fire has burned low.

The blankets are thin.

You feel every chill like a needle tracing your spine.

Outside,

The world is alive in ways you forgot existed,

Nocturnal and unforgiving.

There's another sound now,

A rooster crowing from the farmyard.

It's loud and insistent,

A wake-up call that has echoed for centuries.

But this isn't the gentle alarm clock you set on your bedside table.

This crow pierces the cold air,

Echoing off stone barns and thatched roofs,

Rattling windows and rattling nerves.

Then,

From the tavern down the road,

You hear laughter.

Raucous,

Slurred and dripping with too much ale.

Someone stumbles and curses loudly in the dark.

The village drunk is making his rounds,

A walking warning to the sober and the weary.

His footsteps thud heavy on the dirt path.

You try to ignore him,

But the sound bounces off the walls like a curse you can't shake.

If you think this is the worst of it,

You're wrong.

From the edge of the woods comes the distant howl of wolves.

Lonely and haunting,

It cuts through the night air like a knife.

The villagers don't talk about it much,

But everyone knows the stories.

Wolves aren't just animals here.

They're omens,

Spirits,

And sometimes something darker.

Their cries remind you that the night belongs to more than just humans.

Sleep is a battlefield.

You pull your cloak tighter around your shoulders and try to nestle back into the thin straw bed.

The cold bites,

But the sounds are worse.

Each clang of the bell,

Each rooster's crow,

Every drunken shout and distant howl slices through your attempts to drift away.

You count breaths,

Heartbeats,

Tries to find that fragile edge of unconsciousness,

But it keeps slipping away,

Pulled back by the relentless chorus outside your window.

The village bell tolls again,

Once,

Twice,

Three times.

Each strike seems to mark not just the hour,

But a command.

Wake.

Be alert.

Remember you are alive and vulnerable.

The rooster crows again,

Louder this time,

As if competing with the bell for dominance over the night.

You imagine it puffing out its chest,

Daring the wolf's howl to drown it out.

Neither succeeds.

From the tavern,

The drunk stumbles closer,

His voice now a mix of song and curses,

Hiccuping with abandon.

The scent of spilled ale drifts faintly through the open window.

You try not to breathe it in,

But it settles in your lungs anyway,

A reminder that life here is rough,

Unruly,

And never silent.

The wolves howl once more,

Nearer now.

Their cries seem to weave with the bell and the rooster,

Forming a strange,

Wild symphony of rural nightlife.

You lie awake,

Heart racing,

Mind spinning stories about what prowls outside,

About what the bell calls you to remember.

It's not just time passing.

It's a warning.

The night is alive.

The cold is relentless.

And sleep?

Sleep is a prize only the strongest claim.

Eventually,

The bell tolls fade into a steady rhythm,

The roosters crow slow,

And the tavern's drunken revelry moves away down the road.

The wolves retreat into the shadows,

Leaving behind only silence and cold.

But by then,

You are already wide awake.

You have met the night's chorus and found yourself lacking.

You get up,

Rub your stiff limbs,

And prepare for the long dawn,

Because in this village,

The day waits for no one,

Not even those brave enough to call sleep their refuge.

The rhythm of rural life is enforced not by clocks or calendars,

But by bells,

Roosters,

Drunks,

And wolves.

And if you think you can sleep through it,

Good luck.

You lie down,

Pulling the rough blanket up to your chin,

And immediately regret it.

The straw beneath you is uneven,

Poking at your ribs like a dozen tiny accusatory fingers.

Your neck aches,

Your back stiffens,

And your mind starts to wander toward all the ways this night will be longer than the last.

But then you remember the advice,

Whispered from wary lips.

Don't lie flat.

Not if you want to wake up.

It sounds absurd,

Dangerous even.

But in this world where superstition and survival dance hand in hand,

It's gospel.

They say if you sleep lying flat,

Completely horizontal,

Like a corpse in a coffin,

God might mistake you for dead.

Not metaphorically.

Not spiritually.

Literally.

You become invisible to mercy,

Undetectable to divine breath.

Your soul could slip away,

Unnoticed,

Taken before its time.

The risk is too great.

So you prop yourself up,

Using whatever you can find.

A stack of rough pillows,

A wooden chest turned on its side,

A heap of old cloaks folded clumsily.

You arrange and rearrange,

Aiming for that precarious balance between uncomfortable and unbearable.

Because comfort is a luxury reserved for the dead or the foolish.

You lie back,

Your head tilted awkwardly,

Supported by lumpy cushions that threaten to collapse at any moment.

Your shoulders protest the unnatural posture,

And your legs,

Bent at odd angles,

Ache from blood rushing where it shouldn't.

Every muscle demands release,

But you hold still.

You remind yourself,

This is survival.

The room is cold,

Stone walls echoing the slightest sound.

You breathe in shallow bursts,

Wary of the rise and fall of your chest.

You imagine an invisible ledger,

Where angels tally the living and the lost.

And you desperately want your name checked off the right column.

Monks,

Nobles,

Peasants.

They all swear by this practice.

It's not just superstition,

But discipline,

A nightly ritual as crucial as prayer or confession.

Some claim that by sleeping upright,

You not only avoid death,

But keep sin at bay.

Lying flat invites dark dreams,

Temptations,

And demonic visits.

Sitting or reclining keeps you alert,

Watchful even in rest.

You try to find peace in the awkwardness.

You close your eyes and count your breaths,

Focus on the rhythm of your heartbeat.

But your body betrays you with aches and twitches,

Reminding you that this is not rest,

It's endurance.

The night stretches,

Time slows,

Shadows creep along the walls,

Lengthening and shrinking like restless spirits.

You hear distant sounds,

Footsteps echoing,

A dog barking,

The faint toll of a bell far away.

Each noise jolts you,

Pulling you from the fragile edge of sleep.

You shift slightly,

Trying to ease the strain without tipping over.

Your neck cracks audibly,

A sharp reminder that comfort has been sacrificed for survival.

Around you,

Others sleep the same way.

Half sitting,

Half lying,

Each person contorted into a unique shape of discomfort.

There is solidarity in this shared struggle,

A silent agreement that death must be cheated,

Even if it means waking every hour with numb limbs and sore joints.

You wonder if God really can't tell when you breathe lying flat,

Or if it's just a story grown from fear and cold nights.

But it doesn't matter.

In a world where dying mid-dream is feared more than hunger or the plague,

Belief is its own protection.

Hours pass.

The first light of dawn begins to seep through the small window,

Casting pale beams across the stone floor.

Your muscles scream for relief,

But you hold your posture a moment longer.

You have survived,

For now.

As the morning prayers begin and the monastery stirs awake,

You slowly ease down,

Careful not to upset the balance you've fought to maintain.

The moment your head touches the pillow horizontally,

A strange mix of relief and anxiety washes over you.

You know you've cheated death,

At least for one night.

But the fear will return tonight,

And every night after,

Until you learn to sleep upright like the rest,

Propped between pillows and prayers,

Fighting to stay alive one breath at a time.

And so,

You carry the stiffness and the cold with you,

A small price to pay in a world where sleep is never just sleep,

And lying flat can mean lying still forever.

The room smells faintly of sickness,

Not the sharp,

Sudden smell of fresh wounds or feverish sweat,

But a slow,

Creeping scent,

Like damp earth and old regrets.

You lie in your bed,

The thin straw mattress beneath you rough and uneven,

The heavy wool blanket tangled around your legs.

Somewhere close,

A cough breaks the silence,

Dry,

Rattling,

Unrelenting.

A sound that twists your stomach and sets your nerves on edge.

You freeze,

Listening.

The cough echoes off the stone walls,

Bouncing between narrow beds lined up like silent sentinels in the dim light.

You know that cough.

It carries a weight,

A darkness heavier than the night itself.

It's the plague.

A man two beds over hasn't stirred in three days.

The skin visible beneath his threadbare shirt is pale,

Almost translucent,

And his breathing is shallow,

So shallow you wonder if he's still breathing at all.

The other occupants pretend not to notice.

They call it exhaustion,

The after-effects of too much labor or too little food.

They say he'll recover.

You want to believe it,

Too.

But you've heard the stories.

The sudden black swell on the skin,

The fever that burns like a furnace inside the body,

The delirium,

The sweat-soaked nightmares,

The strange spots that bloom like evil flowers on the skin,

The death that comes swift and terrible,

Leaving nothing behind but silence and an empty bed.

You pull your blanket up higher,

Seeking comfort where there is none.

Your hands are clammy,

Fingers clutching the threadbare fabric as if it could shield you from what lurks in the air.

The cough comes again,

Rougher this time,

And you turn your head away,

As though the sound might not find you if you don't meet its gaze.

At night,

The plague does not just ravage bodies.

It infects minds,

Spreading fear like wildfire.

You see it in the eyes of your neighbors,

The haunted looks,

The whispered prayers,

The furtive glances when no one is watching.

Everyone is waiting,

Waiting for the next person to fall silent,

For the bed beside them to grow cold and empty.

You wonder how many have already gone without anyone noticing.

How many bodies lie wrapped in crude shrouds behind locked doors,

Taken away in the dead of night by grim-faced men who say little and carry more?

How many funerals have passed with only the smallest crowd,

Too afraid to gather,

Too desperate to mourn?

The village is shrinking,

People vanish,

Swallowed by the plague or by fear.

The markets grow quiet,

The fields go untended,

The laughter fades into memories.

Even the animals seem to sense it,

Staying closer to home,

Avoiding the restless stir of a world unraveling.

You pray harder now,

Not just the usual prayers,

But frantic ones whispered into the darkness,

Begging for mercy,

For protection,

For a miracle.

You clutch a small wooden cross given to you by a priest before the sickness spread.

It's rough and splintered,

But it is yours,

A talisman against despair.

Sometimes you hear the monks chant in the chapel.

Their voices rise and fall like waves,

Carrying ancient psalms that speak of suffering and salvation.

You wonder if their prayers reach beyond the stone walls,

Or if they circle back,

Swallowed by the cold air.

You catch yourself watching the village doctor as he moves from house to house,

His leather satchel heavy with herbs and tinctures that may or may not help.

He wears a mask,

An eerie beaked thing stuffed with flowers and spices,

Meant to protect him from the invisible enemy.

But you know the mask is as much a symbol as a shield.

He's just as afraid as the rest of you.

Back in the room,

The man next to you shifts.

You glimpse a fevered hand twitching in restless dreams,

A face contorted by pain and panic.

His breathing grows ragged,

And the cough erupts again,

More violent,

More desperate.

You squeeze your eyes shut,

Willing the sound to stop,

Willing him to find peace.

No one speaks of death openly,

But it hovers in the air like a dense fog.

Even the children sense it,

Their games fading into silence,

Their smiles brittle.

Mothers clutch their babies tighter,

Whispering promises they hope to keep.

You wonder how many nights like this you can endure,

How many mornings you can wake to the same coughing,

The same dread,

The same cold uncertainty.

How long before the sickness claims someone you love,

Someone you can't bear to lose.

The candle flickers,

Casting long shadows that dance on the walls like ghosts.

You pull the blanket over your head,

Shutting out the room,

The sounds,

The fear.

You pray for sleep,

For rest,

For a moment's peace from the plague's relentless grip.

But sleep is elusive.

Your mind races with questions and memories,

With the faces of those who have already left and those still fighting to stay.

You think of the prayers you recited as a child,

The lessons from the church,

The promises whispered in the dark.

And you pray again,

For healing,

For strength,

For forgiveness,

For the courage to face whatever dawn may bring.

Because in these plague years,

Every breath is a gift,

Every heartbeat a victory.

And every prayer is a lifeline thrown into the darkness,

Hoping to pull you through the longest night of all.

You lie awake,

Eyes fixed on the rough ceiling above,

But sleep is nowhere to be found.

Your mind races,

But not with the worries of tomorrow or the day's burdens.

No,

This is different.

This is something deeper,

Darker,

Something that whispers from the edges of your thoughts like a shadow you can't shake.

Insomnia,

They say.

But here,

In this world,

Insomnia is never just a restless night.

It's a curse.

You didn't used to believe in curses.

You thought sleeplessness was caused by too much ale,

Too little food,

Or perhaps the chill in the air.

But now,

After nights like this,

When your body aches for rest and your mind won't grant it,

You begin to wonder.

Maybe it's not just the world's troubles.

Maybe it's something else,

Something you brought upon yourself.

The local wise woman told you once that sleeplessness is a punishment for sins unconfessed,

For grudges held too tightly,

For words spoken in anger that never found forgiveness.

She said it might be a hex cast by someone who wished you ill,

An enemy,

A jealous neighbor,

Or worse,

A restless spirit who clings to the living with bitter claws.

You clutch your stomach,

Recalling last night's supper,

A bit of cheese eaten too close to sunset.

The wise woman's eyes had narrowed at that.

Cheese is heavy on the blood,

She said.

Eats at the soul's peace.

Do not eat it past the sun's last bow.

You smile bitterly now.

If only your hunger had listened.

Sleep is an elusive treasure in this place.

When it won't come,

You seek remedies.

You think back to the bowl of herbs left at your door this morning,

Stinging nettle,

Valyrian root,

And a pinch of wormwood all wrapped in a faded linen cloth.

The scent was bitter and sharp,

Promising relief,

Or at least distraction.

You brewed a tea from the herbs,

Sipping slowly under the flickering light of a tallow candle.

The bitterness clung to your tongue,

And you wondered if it was more punishment or promise.

The wise woman's voice echoed in your mind.

Drink deep,

But know that some curses cannot be drunk away.

Sometimes when the herbs fail,

More drastic measures are called for.

Full-body leeching is whispered about in hushed tones,

A method both feared and revered,

Bloodletting to draw out the toxins of sin and curse.

The leeches,

Small and black and hungry,

Are said to pull out more than just blood.

They extract the weight of restless nights,

The poison of sleepless spirits.

You haven't been brave enough to try.

The thought of cold,

Slimy creatures latched to your skin makes your flesh crawl.

But desperation has a way of changing courage into necessity.

The nights stretch on,

Each one longer and darker than the last.

You start to notice the signs.

Your skin feels thin,

As if the curse is scraping at your very flesh.

Your eyes burn from lack of rest.

Shadows seem to dance at the edges of your vision,

Teasing and taunting.

You wake with a start,

Certain you heard whispered words or footsteps in the empty room.

Neighbors tell stories of those cursed with insomnia,

How their eyes become glassy and wild,

How they talk to shadows that aren't there,

How they wander through the village at odd hours,

Chasing phantoms.

They say the cursed cannot pray properly,

Cannot eat,

Cannot rest.

They are trapped between worlds.

You clutch your small wooden cross tighter,

Mumbling prayers you barely remember.

You ask for mercy,

For the lifting of this night-long burden,

For a dawn that promises peace instead of torment.

Sometimes,

Just as you begin to lose hope,

A gentle warmth fills the room,

A breeze that carries the scent of rosemary and lavender,

Plants said to guard against evil and invite restful sleep.

You close your eyes and try to breathe with the calm that follows,

Hoping it's not just a trick of the mind.

You remember the last time you slept deeply,

The feeling of surrender,

The slow drift into dreams unburdened by fear.

It feels like a lifetime ago.

Now,

Sleep is a stranger,

A distant memory wrapped in fog and regret.

But you hold on to hope,

Because in this world,

Curses are not always permanent.

They can be broken by faith,

By ritual,

By the right combination of prayer and herbs and the willingness to face whatever dark force keeps you awake.

So you prepare yourself again.

You place fresh herbs under your pillow.

You chant quietly as the candle burns low.

You breathe slow and steady.

You tell yourself that tonight might be different,

That tonight the curse will loosen its grip and sleep will finally come.

And if it doesn't?

Well,

There's always tomorrow night and the night after that.

Because in a world where insomnia can be a curse,

Rest is the greatest blessing of all.

You collapse onto your mattress,

The kind with springs and a soft top layer that feels like clouds folded into fabric.

It's quiet here.

No creaking floorboards,

No distant coughs,

No snoring competitors in cramped beds mere inches away.

You close your eyes and sink into the luxury without even realizing how profound it is.

Because in the grand scheme of things,

What you're experiencing right now is nothing short of royal.

You might not wear a crown or rule lands,

But this sleep,

This soft uninterrupted rest,

Is a privilege that kings and queens in the medieval world could only dream of.

And you?

You have it every single night.

Think about your walls.

They're solid,

Insulated.

They don't whisper with drafts or moan under the weight of cold wind.

In medieval times,

Most homes were stone or timber,

With gaps large enough to let in more than just air.

Rats,

Insects,

And the bitter bite of winter.

You,

However,

Live inside a fortress of warmth.

No howling wolves,

No chill creeping under the door.

Just the steady hum of central heating,

Keeping you perfectly comfortable as you drift off.

Your mattress might feel ordinary to you,

But back then,

It was the stuff of legend.

A pile of soft feathers,

Carefully stitched linen,

Layers of padding made from rare and expensive materials.

Peasants had straw-filled sacks,

Hard as a barn floor,

Often damp and crawling with pests.

Nobles fought over feather beds,

Passing them down like treasure,

The best kind of inheritance anyone could hope for.

And here you are,

Lying on memory foam or coils that cradle your body like a gentle hand.

Your blankets and sheets are pristine,

Clean,

Pest-free,

Not a flea,

Lice,

Or bed bug in sight.

Imagine sharing a bed where your nightly companions are not only your family,

But also an army of itching,

Biting insects,

Each one a tiny tyrant demanding blood and attention.

The luxury of fresh linens,

Washed and softened regularly,

Is something medieval folk could only dream of,

Or more likely,

Pay dearly for,

If they dared.

You don't have to wear layers of itchy wool or a nightcap to keep warm.

No need for garlic necklaces or strange herbal concoctions to ward off demons or pests.

You slip into pajamas made from soft cotton or silk,

Fabrics that wouldn't have existed in the medieval world outside the most lavish courts.

Even your pillow,

A fluffy cloud of feathers or synthetic fibers,

Is a rarity and a symbol of status and comfort beyond imagining for most people living centuries ago.

Your shower,

Too,

Is a royal indulgence.

Instead of a bucket of cold water or a dip in a communal bathhouse,

You have hot water at the turn of a tap.

The luxury of cleanliness,

Free from the grime and scent of unwashed bodies that clung to medieval sleepers,

Is something to savor.

Baths were rare,

And soap was sometimes made from harsh or questionable ingredients.

Hygiene wasn't just difficult,

It was a privilege.

Even the silence that cradles your sleep is royal.

No church bells tolling at ungodly hours.

No drunken tavern brawls echoing through stone streets.

No wolves howling on the edge of town.

No pigs snuffling beside you or chickens crowing at dawn.

Just peace.

The kind of peace that kings might have envied,

Locked away in their cold castles.

You have access to medicine if you need it,

Rather than prayers or herbs alone.

You can call for help if illness strikes,

Instead of hoping your neighbor's leeches do the trick.

Your nights aren't punctuated by the fear of pestilence,

Nor haunted by ghosts and curses.

Your dreams aren't weighed down by guilt or superstition.

In the grand tapestry of human history,

Your sleep is a triumph,

A victory of innovation,

Comfort,

And safety.

You might take it for granted,

But it's the culmination of centuries of struggle,

Ingenuity,

And change.

The comforts you enjoy were once the stuff of fantasy or privilege limited to the halls of nobility and clergy.

So as you lay back,

Breathing deep,

Sinking into the softness and warmth,

Remember this.

Every night you fall asleep without fear,

Without itch,

Without cold or noise.

You're living a kind of royalty.

You rest on a throne woven from history,

Fortune,

And progress.

You have won a battle many never fought and lost.

And tomorrow night,

When you pull those clean sheets over your head and close your eyes,

You can sleep easy,

Because in this moment,

Right now,

You are royalty.

You just don't know it yet.

You made it through the night.

No fleas crawling,

No church bells tolling,

No chickens squawking at dawn,

And definitely no unexpected elbows from Brother Ambrose jabbing you awake.

Rest easy.

This kind of sleep is a rare gift,

And tonight,

It's yours.