Gargoyle Saga: In The Beginning

Chapter Seventeen

Dinner wasn't as fulfilling as I wished it would be. Though I was stuffed from good food, Perri's stark warning about a soldier demon being after me frightened me beyond belief. The only solace I got to even make me get ready for this field trip to London was the knowledge that no singular demon would dare come out and attack two buses full of gargoyles and that was a gospel promise.

The five of us headed to our dorms full and happy. As Fraya, who was nearest to the drapes, pulled them across the large bay windows to block out every inch of sunlight. We all got into our pyjamas and went to bed, for the life of us, no one could get to sleep.

"Anyone else wide awake?" Sophie asked in a droll tone after ten minutes or so of silence.

"Me," Perri said and sat up. "Let's try and tire ourselves out."

"Oh!" Fraya clapped. "Let's play Light as a Feather! Now we're magical, I wonder if we can actually make someone float!"

Grabbing a pillow, like childish teenagers, we threw them to the side of the central heater and Grace volunteered to lie down. Placing our fingers around Grace, she crossed her arms and closed her eyes.

"I did this at a party once," Fraya whispered, "sadly it didn't work."

Sophie sighed. "What makes you think this will work? Because we're magical bogging gargoyles?"

The four of us stared at one another and broke into fits of giggles. Sophie, I've noticed, doesn't swear and hardly cracks a joke. Whether she knows it or not, she has an exceedingly dry sense of humour.

"Shush, or else it won't work," Grace huffed.

"Okay, okay," Perri whispered, who was at Grace's head. "Light as a feather, stiff as a board, light as a feather, stiff as a board, light as a feather, stiff as a board, rise body rise!"

We chimed in on the second go and after a few minutes of silently wishing Grace to be magically lifted into the air, nothing happened.

"Grace can't float, she's too fat," Sophie blurted out. This wasn't true, however, Grace was moderately proportioned. Her eyes flung open and giving her a playful scowl she called her a cow. Sophie slapped a hand to her mouth and shook her head apologising. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean it... I'm just... crap, do you think it's something I ate?"

Fraya and Grace burst into laughter as Perri and I scrutinised what she was saying. "The fish and chips, perhaps though they may be boring, may have a magical enhancement to bring you out of your shell?" Perri suggested. Sophie's behaviour wasn't her own and we knew full well that the dinner ladies put all sorts of magicks on the food, anything was possible.

Fraya jumped up and down on her cushion and pointed at Sophie, "She's been spiked by magical mushy peas!" Well, you'd never seen anything so ridiculous; the five of us practically wet ourselves from laughing.

Wiping tears from her face Grace said, "I wish you would eat bland food always, Sophie. I haven't laughed like this in ages."

Once we'd calmed down, we abandoned the attempt to make any of us float and so stayed in a circle and played, Never Have I. I'd see the games played on American teen movies, but had never played it before. Although after a few rounds, we very quickly got to know about one another.

Fraya was an only child and was born in Korea to an English teacher from England and a Korean woman living in Busan. When she was two they left and moved to the UK in a sleepy village called Little Dorton outside of Rochester.

Perri was born and raised in Llanelli in Wales along with two older brothers and a younger sister. She had applied to go to Cardiff university but as soon as she'd sent off her application, she woke up with orange eyes and her life as she knew it was over. Perri and I were the same as we both had a little sister that we dearly loved. I knew it hurt her to mention her family, as did it with all of us, but it was the current topic of conversation and strangely, no one wanted to change it.