Author's Note: The following chapter contains a little bit of PG-13 in it. You have been warned.
Banana-nana BATMAN!
Chapter Two: Midnight
Morgan waited up late that night, waited until after Daf and Anya had finished giggling in the room next door and had gone to sleep. By that time, Story had been out like a light for some time. It had been a rather exhausting day for the less powerful fairy girl.
She yawned at the thought. The only reason Morgan was up at all was because she was waiting for Grace to come. It would be just like her to get held up and not tell anyone, but when you can text with your thoughts, it was really no excuse. Morgan hoped nothing happened to Gracie. Grace was a year older than her, and a lot more quiet and serious, and she didn't like to worry people.
Her serenity had been apparent from birth, when her mother (the Tecna of Zenith) and her father had looked into her eyes. Riven had been seriously messed up- thinking about his ex-wife and his new wife, and their new baby. He had been on drugs, had been drinking, doing too many dangerous things for the adrenaline rush. But the story went that when he saw the girl who was a product of reason and utter lack of any reason whatsoever- a product of him and Tecna- he promptly declared her his saving grace. The name stuck.
Sometimes Morgan thought Gracie was her savior too. Sometimes she wondered- if she wasn't friends with Grace, would she even be a Winx Daughter, as the four girls had come to be called? And if that was the case (or even if it wasn't) the Lupa didn't know how she would get on. Maybe Story would be… no. She liked the fairy of words, with her blonde ponytail and black eyes. But they would never have the strongest of bonds.
The door creaked open suddenly, and a tall girl with a mahogany-chestnut braid peeked in the room. She smiled, and dimples appeared. Combined with her small nose and bright eyes, she looked like an elf, not a fairy. "Hi," Grace said in a sweet and clear voice.
"Hi," Morgan whispered. "Everyone else is already asleep. What's been keeping you?"
The other girl blushed. "Nothing."
"Tell me. You know I can tell when you're lying to me. I know you too well."
"It's just… you know my mother. She didn't find it logical to go through the first-day-of-school crowds, so we waited until ten to come to Magix. And then there was registration. And after that…"
Morgan didn't give Grace the opportunity to finish. She ran over to the girl and almost crushed the Communication fairy's lips with her own. Grace was startled (she always was; it was sort of strange after a year and a half), but she quickly began to kiss back.
Grace ran her slender fingers through Morgan's bob of wild pink curls. And Morgan despaired that her girlfriend's hair was in a braid, else she'd be doing the same. But after about fifteen seconds, the kissing stopped as suddenly as it started, they pulled back, and looked each other in the eyes. The Lupa stroked Grace's soft face (Dragon, everything about her was so soft!) with the back of her own hand. "I missed you."
"We're living in the same apartment now," Grace reminded. "I don't think we'll need to think about missing each other a lot."
But the unspoken worry was how they were going to keep their relationship a secret. Morgan silently cursed her natural trait of standing up for people in need. When Anya and Dafne had declared that neither of them were going to sleep in the same room as a "loser like Story," Morgan had been the one to decide to be a friend to the girl- by giving up sharing a dormitory with Gracie.
So Grace would be with Anya, and Dafne had her own room. Maybe it paid to be the "leader."
Morgan and Grace just looked at each other for a few minutes more, holding hands. Then Grace went to quietly unpack her bags and Morgan headed back to the room she shared with a girl she barely knew, plopped down on her bed, and fell asleep almost immediately.
Meanwhile, Story stared at the ceiling.
She had not been able to get to sleep, barely even been able to close her eyes. In the common room, she could hear Morgan talking to someone- presumably the Tecna? Was Grace her name? She couldn't make out what they were saying, only small noises, some of them very weird.
Even after Morgan snuck back into the room, and Story pretended to be asleep once again, she couldn't get tired enough. Alfea smelled funny, and the noises were still odd, and she had had a rough first day. At least she didn't have high standards for her classes. So anything good that might happen… well, it would be a pleasant surprise.
She cursed her grandmother (not literally. She didn't actually know how to do that.) for wanting her to enter Alfea so bad that she arranged it so she had no tuition to pay from her own wallet, no grief from her witch of a mother, and no birthday presents threatened if she chose another school. Story's grandma was a very important Alfea alumna, but the sixteen year old would have liked to make her first big decision as a high school graduate by herself.
She sighed, turned over, tried to go to sleep again.
Character Review:
Grace of Zenith, the Tecna: power of communications. Daughter of Tecna and Riven. She is a calming presence to all who meet her. Though she has been in a secret relationship with Morgan for a little over one year and seven months, she is unsure of her sexual orientation.
