room with a view (closed @seven)
The clock makes clicks in time with her breathing. The clouds come and go in tune with the rise and fall of her chest.
Daylight glimmers across rows of four and five, flat cedar and cheap oak lit up in golds and brassy browns from one end of the classroom to the other, as Lena shifts in her sleep, hair sprawled equally as finely as the sun across her desk. Highlighted so, her skin looks pale, her hair almost more blue or green than inkwash black - and yet in spite of both features, Lenalee looks peaceful, feet crossed at the ankles, and so much of her skin warmed by the light.
Perhaps that's why no one had woken her up to leave after she'd finished her exam...only wheedled the sheafs of questions and answers from underneath her curls and crossed arms, and not even roughly at that. Perhaps they'd assumed she'd wake on her own, and that she was a harmless enough girl to let be; perhaps they'd taken pity on her, or someone had mentioned she'd had a very busy night studying for that very test. But at the click of a door across the hall, or perhaps even the one belonging to this very classroom, Lenalee finally stirs, one dark eye peeking out as she turns her face to the side rather than lift it from the cradle of her arms.
"Can I help?" Lena asks, an instinct in spite of the sleepiness of her voice. And second, because it's on her mind but her thoughts are clearly still rather dazed: "Where is everyone?"










