Second Floor Common Room; Sunday Morning [07/02].

[what_big_teeth]

It was such a dark, gloomy, rainy, sometimes stormy, humid day that Eleanor didn't have much motivation to do anything, but she did, she realize, sort of go into a kind of automatic mode. She'd woken up early, as if her body still felt as though it had to be ready for mass, bright and early, or else she'd face the wrath of the nuns, but there was no mass to go to. She knew there was a church on the island, of course, and considered going there just to scratch some habitual itch, but instead, she rerouted to the common room, poked around for some food for breakfast, and made herself some tea, after failing to figure out quite how to use the drip machine for coffee on the counter.

She sat at the table with a bowl of bright and colorful cereal, hunched over it and the book of poetry splayed out before her, and just sort of enjoying the quiet solitude of the morning, figuring everyone else would still be sleeping, especially with nuns to harass and harangue them toward mass, especially with the warm, gloomy, lethargic weather.

[[ but the common room is, of course, very open! ]]

Comments

[scarlet_and_indigo]

TJ wandered in a little later, still in her t-shirt and boxers from sleep, and waved and yawned. "Morning."

She looked around, then headed for the coffee pot. "No unexpected food deliveries this morning?"

[what_big_teeth]

When Eleanor looked up from her book, she was frowning a little, because if you were surprised by an unexpected food delivery not being there, wasn't it then somewhat expected? But it was far too early for those kind of semantics, so she just looked at TJ a little curiously.

She shook her head lightly. "No," she said. "I don't think so. Maybe on a different floor?"

Although she was pretty sure mostly everyone lived on this one. It wasn't exactly a large student body, after all.

[scarlet_and_indigo]

Definitely too early for semantics. TJ shrugged. "I was hoping maybe there'd be pancakes or waffles or something without having to cook."

She set the machine to brew and went to get cereal. It'd do.

[what_big_teeth]

As TJ got the coffee machine going, Eleanor had watched her carefully to see how she did it. It definitely didn't seem difficult. Easy enough that she could probably figure it out next time.

For now, the tea was fine, and she took a sip of it before going back to her own cereal.

"I'm not much of a cook myself," she admitted.

[scarlet_and_indigo]

"I'm okay, I suppose." TJ shrugged. "I could probably make stuff if I had a recipe. It just seems like a lot of work when I could pick up the phone and order it."

Which she was considering now. "Except I'm not sure where breakfast would be good. The diner, you think?"

[what_big_teeth]

Eleanor shrugged a little. "The diner would make sense," she allowed, "or maybe the bakery? The coffee shop? I haven't gotten very familiar with a lot of the restaurants around here."

[scarlet_and_indigo]

"Oo, the bakery." She looked up their site. "I could go for some doughnuts. Want anything?"

[amicia_the_amazon]

Amicia did not leave the room... often. It was less now out of unfamiliarity, and more about overfamiliarity. She knew, too, that it was not good. But ah well.

Still, the call of Sunday breakfast did sometimes break her stupor. And so there she was, tiptoeing into the common room to collect some oats and milk.

She gave her roommate a quiet nod.

[what_big_teeth]

And Eleanor, who should have plenty of familiarity with sharing spaces with girls she barely knew, never did shake her awkwardness about it, did with Amicia as she did most of her roommates at St. Brigid's: give them their space and try not to attract too much attention or get in the way too much, especially after everything with Lucy.

But she gave a quiet nod back, and maybe the beginning of a faint smile, and a soft, polite, although somewhat still clumsy, somewhat reluctant, "Bonjour, Amicia. Comment ça va?"

[amicia_the_amazon]

Amicia's mouth gave a little twitch, a hint of a smile; at least Eleanor spoke something that she did not have to struggle to understand. "Bonjour, Eleanor. Ça va... ça va."

As always. Not bien, but... all right. Existing.

"Comment est ton petit déjeuner?"

[what_big_teeth]

Eleanor's French was not terribly good anymore, especially since a part of her wanted to denounce it forever thanks to her grandmere, and she covered needing a moment to translate in her head a little with a bite of the colorful loops of cereal. When she swallowed, she still covered her mouth politely at first before she responded.

"Bien...bien. Uhhm...très sucré? J'ai aimé les couleurs sur la boîte..."

Even if Eleanor had paid much attention to popular things back home, Froot Loops were still pretty new on the scene back then, really.

[amicia_the_amazon]

Amicia's mouth-quirk became more of a genuine smile, and she let out an amused huff, and then-- the thought of how Hugo might have felt about Fruit Loops intruded upon her thoughts. The smile fell away.

"Trop sucrée pour moi," she said. "Mais j’espère que ça te plaît."

Would she ever feel less hopelessly awkward?

[what_big_teeth]

Eleanor shrugged a little, swirling her spoon in the rings that were getting progressively soggier the more she dragged her heels on eating them.

"Non mon préféré," she admitted.

Still better than porridge, but a far cry from anything her aunt Margaret would have served.

"Mais..." She gave a look toward the gloomy weather outside the window and looked a little rueful. "Trop ...fatigué?"

She wasn't sure if that was the right word, exactly. In fact, she was almost positive it wasn't, but she figured it was close enough, in context.

[noonedecidesmyfate]

It was a good day for quietly reading curled up in a common room, wasn't it?

"Would you mind company?" Belle asked, holding up her own book as she entered the room.

[what_big_teeth]

Eleanor was tempted to point out that if she did, she wouldn't have moved to a common space and just stayed in her bedroom or gone elsewhere, since her room also had a roommate, but, again, it was too early for that kind of pedantry, so she just nodded a little and offered a faint smile.

"Not at all," she said, nodding to Belle and then looking around at the...copious amounts of available seating. "Belle, right? You were in my poetry class?"

[noonedecidesmyfate]

Oh, but Belle hadn't had anyone to argue over silly things with since Five had up and vanished!

"We had poetry class together," she said, smiling. "Perhaps we'll have more classes starting tomorrow?"

[what_big_teeth]

"Maybe," Eleanor agreed, still feeling a little disappointment that there jadn't been another poetry one this session. Even if it was the same teacher, she didn't think she was going to find the Art of Laziness quite so enriching. "What will you be taking?"

[noonedecidesmyfate]

"I seem to have only signed up for two," Belle said. Oops that was a mistake.

"The Floor is Lava, and Buckle Those Swashes. And you?"

[what_big_teeth]

"Neither of those," Eleanor admitted with a bit of a shake of her head, because the whole idea that those were even classes at all still sort of blew her proper boarding school student mind a little. "But just three."

Also very weird, if you asked her, even if it was just the summer time. At St. Brigid's, summer school was light, but never that light.

"The Art of Laziness, Mr. Eagle's WeirdDON'T class, and a class about getting out of scraps."

Which, you know, a bit too late for that, but if she could avoid fumbling into disasters like the last one in the future, that would be a good thing.

[napking]

What rough beast, slouching--oh, no, no, that was Gray, in tie dye pajama bottoms and a t-shirt with a cartoon sloth sleeping atop a rainbow and 'Gay and Tired' in bubble letters. Although he was slouching, and the state of his bedhead could definitely be described as 'rough.'

"Mor--" he broke off for a yawn. "Morning." A slow blink. "It is morning, right?" His sense of time was sometimes completely out of whack.

[what_big_teeth]

"It is," said Eleanor, with a faint smile for the entirety of Gray's whole state of being right now. "Good morning, Gray. How are you?"

[napking]

Gray yawned hugely and said, blinking, "Sleepy. I'm always sleepy." This was, as anyone who had met hyper!Gray could attest, not true, but sometimes it felt true.

[what_big_teeth]

"Someone did make coffee," Eleanor pointed out, with a nod toward the machine, before lifting her own mug of tea, "or there's tea, if that helps. Weather like this probably doesn't help, either, though, does it?"

[napking]

"Blech," Gray said. "Coffee tastes gross...unless you put a lot of syrup and cream in it, of course." And then it might keep him awake for twenty minutes or so. "And no, the weather really doesn't help. It's so...grey. Kind of reminds me of home."

[what_big_teeth]

Eleanor had to smile, just a bit, at someone named Gray complaying about overall too much grey-ness.

"Maryland was my home for eight years before this, too," she said, "so I'm pretty used to it, too. Have we talked much, about where you're from?"

She remembered everything with the wings, of course, and that the werewolf thing hadn't phased him, and some other things that almost sounded like they should be familiar to her but weren't.