The Day We Hailed The Heavens

Chapter 15

Chapter Fifteen

Lex Non Scripta

"Wake up, everybody! We've just touched down."

Rose made a feeble sound and turned over, shaking her head and putting her hands over her pierced ears. She had no idea what time it was, or even where she was - all she knew was that she had a migraine like nothing she had ever had before, not to mention an agonisingly stiff neck. On top of that, there had been all those... bizarre... dreams, and now there was some disembodied voice telling her to wake up.

She cracked one eye open to peer at her wristwatch, and gritted her teeth when she saw that it was twenty past two.

In the morning.

"No way," she groaned exhaustedly, reaching a hand up cautiously to touch her throbbing forehead. They'd better have some bloody good tea at this place or I'm going to be absolutely done in for this meeting palaver.

A hand suddenly grasped her shoulder. "Rose?"

Squinting slightly against the bright, white light that somebody had just shone into her eyes, Rose could just about make out Sam's silhouette - the only reason she could really tell was because of the baseball cap-shaped outline that she could see. "Get rid of the light, would you?" she complained hoarsely, her hand in front of her eyes. "Must we get up now?"

"Yep," he confirmed grimly, moving the flashlight away from her face obligingly. "I know it's crap... Mikaela's having trouble waking Alexis and Miles up, too. But I think Jade's going to keep up with that speaker until we manage to drag ourselves outta the cargo hold."

"Fantastic," she muttered dryly.

She accepted his hand grudgingly and allowed him to help her to her feet. Her neck shrieked in protest: it felt like every muscle there had seized up, and the small of her back was painful, too. It was no wonder, really; upon glancing down, she could just about make out the pile of bags that she had bedded down for the night on. None of them looked particularly comfortable, either - the one that she had been resting her head on looked as if it had a heeled shoe of some sort projecting from it.

It was only when her eyes became used to the light that she realised that it was her bag, and her killer stiletto shoes that were the source of her current state of agony.

Jade's bubbly, singsong voice came through the speakers again. "Wake up, sleepyheads!"

"No..." an unhappy voice protested, and Rose was able to see Mikaela shaking a fatigued Miles by the shoulders to wake him when Sam turned the blinding flashlight on them. "C'mon, man, I'm still in the zone here..."

"Aren't we all, mate?" Rose sighed, wavering slightly on her feet. "Anyone got any caffeine?"

"I do," Sam volunteered, and Rose actually went weak at the knees with relief when he knelt down next to the pile of luggage and dragged a hefty backpack from the centre of the pile. "Is coffee okay? I know you like tea... but I kinda hate it," he grinned at her, to a disapproving eyebrow quirk. "Sorry. And this has got a lot of sugar in it."

She couldn't stand coffee with sugar, but she smiled graciously nonetheless. "That's fine... thanks, Sam."

He handed her a large, silvery Thermos before he walked past her towards the still-sleeping Alexis, clearly intending to wake her up.

Unscrewing the cap of the flask, Rose made her way over the piles of clothing that had been acting as makeshift beds for the teenagers and knocked quietly on the doorway to the main cockpit. She was greeted a few moments later by a pristine-looking Jade, who gave her a smile so bright that it could have outdone Californian sunshine in the middle of summer.