Wings of Fire as Humans: Jade Preparatory Academy

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Glory Paradise

Glory Paradise rolled over and groggily slapped her alarm clock, nearly knocking it onto the floor.

"Be nice to your clock, Glory," Sunny said, laughing as she leaned over the railing of her top bunk and looked down at Glory's exhausted form.

Glory rolled her eyes as the alarm beeped yet again. "What time is it?" she asked her roommate.

"Six forty-five!" Tsunami yelled from across the room. "Which is a ridiculous time to wake me up with your stupid alarm, Glory! School doesn't start for another hour."

Sunny frowned, and Glory watched with a twinge of worry as her friend simply jumped down from the top bunk. "It's not nice to insult alarms, Tsunami."

Tsunami gave her an incredulous look that Glory found somewhat amusing. "It's an alarm, Sunny. It doesn't have feelings."

"Well, Glory does!"

"I don't care," Glory interjected, forcing herself out of bed. Her cat, Silver, shot out from under the covers and onto the floor with a hiss. "I call the bathroom first!" she called over her shoulder, heading into the common room. Only once she was there, she realized that Fatespeaker, Luna, or Peril might already have claimed it.

"Good," Tsunami called, and Glory imagined her friend burrowing back under her covers.

Glory opened the door to the bathroom, knowing that even if someone was in the bathroom, she would only be opening up to the two vanities. The toilet and shower were through another door.

To her immense surprise, no one was in the bathroom. No one was even taking a shower yet. So, Glory hopped in. It was only until she was out of the shower that she realized she'd forgotten her clothes. Glory sighed, made sure she was fully dried off, and then put her pajamas back on and headed back to her room. She grabbed the first thing out of her closet - jeans and a green ombre tank top - and raced back to the bathroom before someone else got up. Quickly slipping the clothes on, she put her pajamas in the hamper in the girls' common room. Then she went back into the bathroom to do her hair and makeup.

Glory finished fifteen minutes later, and by that time, Sunny had gotten into the shower. The fact that no one else had at least entered the bathroom concerned Glory, but it wasn't as if she could force her friends to get up. In fact, she'd assumed that Tsunami, Luna, Peril, and Fatespeaker would all wait until the last moment to get up and have to fight over the shower. It was part of why she'd gotten up early.

Glory exited the bathroom and headed into the main common room, where Starflight was sitting at the table, reading this year's assigned science textbook and . . . Was he eating cereal? If so, he was doing it very oddly. He had two bowls - one filled with cereal and the other with milk. As Glory watched, he took a spoonful of cereal and then dipped it in the milk before he brought it up to his mouth.

"What are you doing?" Glory asked. Even she was surprised at the amount of judgement in her voice.

"Eating cereal," Starflight answered absentmindedly, taking another spoonful of cereal as he flipped a page of the textbook.

"Uh, okay . . ." Glory said. She decided not to point out that this was a very odd way to go about it. She headed over to the counter and reached into one of the upper cabinets for a bowl. She joined Starflight at the table a minute later, with her own bowl of - significantly less healthy - cereal.

"Hey, guys!" Sunny exclaimed, coming out of the girls' common room. The little Ramil wasn't wearing any makeup, which Glory honestly respected her for. She noticed Starflight's odd eating and made a face at Glory.

Glory shrugged. She hoped her expression conveyed, "It's Starflight; what do you expect?"

Sunny took that as an acceptable answer and joined them at the table. "When do you think the others will be up?"

"Late," Glory said honestly. "I kind of hope Deathbringer's late. We have Kestrel for homeroom! He'll get in so much trouble." She sighed wistfully, and Sunny giggled.

"Riptide probably won't be late," she said. "But I bet everyone else will be."

"Probably," Glory agreed. "Did you hear about the littles' prank?"

"We were texting about it all last night," Sunny reminded her. "Winter has to put an embarrassing note in Kestrel's desk."

Glory laughed. "I bet they won't be late. I don't think Qibli, Kinkajou, and Lynx will let them."

"We should leave early so we can be there when he does it," Sunny suggested, gobbling up the rest of her cereal.

Glory glanced at the clock. "It's only seven forty. We've got twenty minutes till class starts."

"And we should be there fifteen minutes ahead of time so that Kestrel can't even think of marking us late," Starflight interjected. He put his spoon down, closed his textbook, and took his dishes to the sink. He put his textbook in his backpack, then gathered up the three other textbooks he was carrying and motioned to the girls. "Are you guys coming?"

Sunny grinned. She put both hers and Glory's dishes in the dishwasher, put her backpack on, and followed Starflight to the door. They both looked expectantly at Glory.

"I'm coming, I'm coming," she snapped. Her backpack wasn't nearly as heavy as Starflight's - he was carrying textbooks for every class, even though they wouldn't be going to half of them that day. She put it on her back, and as she was following her friends out the door, she heard Deathbringer's panicked voice yell, "You guys! Get up! We've only got twenty minutes!"

Glory smiled.

A/N: Starflight's way of eating cereal is what one of my classmates does! (We were having a debate about which to add first, milk or cereal, in history, and he said he had two separate bowls. Everyone agreed it was weird. I merely found the entire conversation amusing, because I don't eat cereal with milk at all. Yep, just plain cereal for me!)