Adventures in the Palace
Legal: All characters, settings and references to the world of Tortall belong to Tamara Pierce under United States copy-write law and jurisdiction.
Breakfast
A very sleep group of pages stood in the breakfast line in the mess hall of the palace. Prince Jonathan, heir to the throne, couldn't decide which he wanted to do more, eat or go back to sleep. Holding his tray, trying to perilously balance it, he grabbed just about everything in the line. First the fruit, then the toast, next eggs and slices of ham, then a slice of pastry, finally, grabbing a large mug of milk, he made his way over to the usual table. Alan"na", right behind her prince, merely grabbed an apple and a piece of toast. Sitting down next to her friends, and being shortly joined by equally sleepy Raoul, Gary and Alex, she noticed that they were all basically asleep on their feet. She started to laugh as she realized the food they had grabbed was far from anything they would normally eat, as Alex started to shovel eggs in to his mouth (which he hated) and Jon was taking a swallow of orange juice, which he had sworn off of at one point in his childhood. Deciding to have some fun with her tired friends (she had been up for over two hours working with Coram's sword, while she knew they were exhausted from trying to finish their etiquette essays last night) she started with Raoul.
"So Raoul, did you get your essay finished last night?" Alanna sweetly asked.
"Of course I did, I got all five pages finished by the third morning bell (3 am), so there." He mumbled.
"Ahh, Raoul, did you say five pages?" Alanna asked.
"Of course, five, I actually do get my work done you know."
"Well… I heard that there was only one page due, not five."
"What??!" Raoul stuttered, "You told me yesterday that it was five pages"
"I did? Oh, I'm sorry" Alanna giggled, managing to look surprised and really innocent.
"Yeah right your sorry" Raoul growled "just wait Alan, just wait". With that last threat, Raoul turned back to his breakfast and started to dose off again.
One down, three to go, Alanna thought smugly to herself. Deciding to hit two birds with one stone, she zoned in on what Jon and Alex were eating.
"Say Jon how is your juice this morning?" She asked in a syrupy voice.
"Humabugh…" Was all Jon was able to reply, being mostly asleep, that is, till he focused on what his young friend had asked, too a huge swallow of his orange juice, and promptly spewed his orange juice across the table, spraying Alex who had just started to shovel another fork of eggs in his mouth.
"Ahhhh, what the heck, what is going on, blahh, spitsh, why, what, is this crap, what????" Jon continued to sputter, making no sense at all yet to rid himself of the offending taste. Meanwhile, Alex had thoroughly woken up from having orange juice sprayed on him, was going through a similar process of trying to rid himself of eggs.
"Alan!!!!" Both of the boys yelled, "What have you done??"
Laughing, Alanna managed to get out "I didn't do anything, you clumsy oafs; you're the ones who filled your plates!" She shouted gleefully. The two pages grumbled and went to get cleaned up. 'One left' she thought, 'one left'. Knowing Gary would be the hardest, she watched him for awhile, trying to figure out how to get him this morning.
"Alan," Gary suddenly called.
Surprised to be addressed, Alanna just looked up at him.
"I have something to tell you, umm, that I think you may not quite like." Gary started,
"Gary…." Alanna begin to accuse "what have you done?"
"Well, remember the math homework you lent me last night, the one that took you almost three bells to complete?"
Starting to become filled with dread, she could only nod.
"I, well, accidentally spilled my wine on it last night when I was working on that essay, and I'm really sorry, but I'm afraid that it may be ruined." Gary explained.
"You did what???" Alanna screamed. "How could you do that, you know how long that took me. You know how much more work that blasted teacher will give me, how could you???" Taking a deep breathe about to continue yelling at her large friend, she suddenly realized that both Gary and Raoul were laughing outright and Jon and Alex, who had returned, were grinning wildly.
"What's going on?" Asked Alanna, suddenly very suspicious.
"You don't think I would really do that would you fire-top?" Laughed Gary, "I've been watching you get these other great monkeys all during breakfast, I wasn't about to let you get me to!"
Looking very sheepish, Alanna just glared at her friend, picked up her tray and stormed off to drop it off, all the while hearing Gary, Raoul, Jon and Alex laughing behind her. Returning, she death started Gary and blankly stated that he was 'going to get it'.
"It was worth it Alan, just wait till later" Gary snickered.
Unable to hold her grin any longer, the five friends jumped at the bell and hurried off to the etiquette class, where the dread essay was due…
Authors Note: Well, I hope that you enjoyed that. The stories will be about the days of the Alanna, Jon, Gary, Raoul, Alex, George and others throughout their page years. Next one will be longer, and I'm always open to suggestions for their "situations" they will get in to!