Solstice, Book 1: A Prince, A Thief, Etcetera

Chapter 2: Morning Exercise

As soon as Sister Rose roused him from his sleep the way she did every morning, with a sharp rap at his door and a wheezy bark, he dressed, brushed his teeth, and took a quick puff from his inhaler before trudging downstairs for breakfast. According to a long list of doctors he'd seen as a child, he suffered from some wicked respiratory disease none of them had ever seen before. Sort of like severe asthma, but not quite. Yet still close enough that they treated him as if that's what it was. It figured, Levi often thought. As if he didn't have enough quirks to set him apart from everyone else; he couldn't even be sick like a normal person.

He didn't bother trying to fix his hair that morning. He never did. It was thick and stringy and always messy, sticking out at odd angles all over his head, just the way he liked it. The sharpness of his face didn't seem quite so severe when his hair was tousled like that. Plus, when it was shaggy, it covered his slightly pointed ears.

When he arrived in the large dining room, several of the other children were already seated at the table eating. It looked like pancakes and sausage, Levi observed with delight. He quickly fixed himself a plate and took a seat next to a plump boy with crinkly black hair named Todd Fitzpatrick.

"Mrnin'," Levi grunted through a mouthful of pancakes. Todd looked up from his plate and gave him a sticky smile.

"How many times have we been over this, Levi? It's chew, swallow, breathe, and then speak." He shook his head, clearly trying to appear gravely disappointed but the film of syrup coating the lower half of his face rather dampened the effect. Levi gave him a playful shove.

"How did you sleep?" Todd added.

"Well enough," Levi replied, helping himself to more syrup before continuing quietly, "I had that dream again."

Todd's smile turned sympathetic. It was an expression of his that had unfortunately become quite familiar to Levi. "About your mum?"

"Yeah." Levi dipped a piece of sausage into the pool of syrup on his plate, popped the whole thing into his mouth, and chewed slowly, reflecting on the dream--the nightmare. It was a little different each time, but it always ended the same way. Horribly.

It started with him and his mother together, only to be somehow driven hopelessly apart. The night before, they had both been standing in a glass room surrounded by water, when the walls shattered and the waves crashed into them and drove them further and further away from each other, until Levi could no longer see her. He had woken up coughing and unable to breathe, groping in the dark for his inhaler.

"It's been happening a lot lately. Maybe you should see a psychiatrist," Todd suggested.

Levi rolled his eyes, although he may have had a point. The nightmares had been coming to Levi much more regularly over the past few weeks, even more than Todd knew. Normally, he only had them a couple times a month. Now they seemed to occur almost every other night.

"Well you're not the only one who's got it rough, mate," Todd said. "Someone's told Sister Rose that I've been peeing in the showers again... I don't think my backside will ever be the same."

Levi laughed. "You're disgusting!"

"What? I don't get what everyone's problem is. I can't think of any place better to go than the shower."

"How about a toilet?"

"Oh, the shower is way more convenient."

"How d'you reckon?"

"You're already naked, so there's no fiddling with zippers or waistbands; there's no little hole to aim for; you just release at your leisure, and soapy water washes it away and takes it to the same place the toilet would anyway; and then once you're done, you can scrub your entire body clean, not just your hands, and there's no extra trip to the sink involved." He finished with a flourish of his fork, flinging a syrupy piece of pancake across the table ("Oops. Sorry, Lonnie").