SO MANY things have happened since I last wrote for Winx Club- SO MANY. I got into anime! I got into high school! I got en pointe in dance! And I feel like I've immensely improved as a writer, but I still don't like my writing. :)
It's good to be back, though.
Celene woke up reluctantly to the buzzing of her phone, feeling like her eyelids were stuck together. Reaching towards its general direction as it jumped and vibrated around on the table, she pressed the button on the top and a hologram of her mother appeared.
Her eyes jerked open, now fully awake. With practiced, panicked quickness, she switched the phone to audio-only so that the hologram wouldn't gather visuals on where she currently was—the apartment the four had bought with their shared allowance. (A blessing of being 'Winx Club Next Gen': astronomical allowance and very little looking into what exactly they were spending that money on.)
"Hi, Mom," she croaked, her voice hoarse like it always was in the morning. She remembered falling asleep at two in the morning on the couch while the others still watched Netflix, and vaguely she recalled Droida and Flame making toast at midnight, but she knew she hadn't been covered with the blanket that was now draped across her body. "Good morning."
"Good morning, Lyrica," her mother's voice came through the phone brightly. She used her real first name. "I was calling because I wondered what kind of bagel you wanted."
Celene raised her eyebrows at the hologram avatar even though it couldn't see her. "Bagel?" Ugh, her back was all kinds of sore after spending the night on the couch. She yawned.
"Didn't you know that we're coming back today? Oh, darn, I thought Ember told all the kids. But yeah, sweetheart! We could cut the trip a few days and I decided to do that! After all, school's ending soon and who knows when we'll get to see each other again?"
Even at her mother's rare promises to spend more time with her, which she usually liked, panic ripped through Celene. "Y-yeah, mom, thanks. You're right. Plain bagel is fine. I've actually got to go..."
"Okay, sweetie. We'll see you in fifteen minutes." Celene ended the call and despite her sore back she practically leapt up. Around her were the results of the sleepover from the night before: Droida slept in a reclined easy chair, Axel was stretched in front of the TV in a sleeping bag, and Flame was sprawled in a beanbag chair, mouth open. Despite the urgency she bit back a smile.
Then she remembered her mother's words. Fifteen minutes, they were all expected to be...
"Droida!" She shook the girl by the shoulders. She had slept in her glasses and there were marks on her nose. "Droida, wake up!"
As the older girl rose, groaning and protesting, she went to Axel, nudging him with her foot. "Everyone needs to get up now, we're having an emergency!"
"Huh?" Droida grumbled, rubbing her back and stretching lazily. Celene rattled Flame around until his eyes opened. There wasn't time for this.
"Where do our parents think we are?"
Droida's, Axel's, and Flame's faces all went blank.
It wasn't that their parents didn't love them. They all loved them. They loved them in different ways. (Well, Celene was sort of scared of Princess Bloom and Queen Stella. Other than that.) But they were never around, and they trusted their kids—they trusted them so much, that they didn't check up on them often, instead just juggling them between their many houses and castles and estates. Which brought them to their current situation—
"Seriously, guys, where are we supposed to be? My mom just called. Our parents cut the trip short and they're gonna be wherever we are in fifteen minutes."
Droida looked around as though trying to see the answer in the cracked wallpaper. "Flower and Petal don't get out of school until next week so they won't know." Flower and Petal went to a secluded boarding school for the arts, in the mountains of planet Elysia. "And Solar's on her class trip til tomorrow. So that leaves..."
Axel collapsed back into his sleeping bag, groaning. "I'd rather Dad kills us for...all the crap we've done they don't know about. Hell, I forget what's not allowed and what is, so I can't really gauge punishment level, but she's worse than anything they can dream up."
Celene kicked him in the shoulder. "Speak for yourself! My dad thinks I'm being supervised all the time. That's probably only why he's okay with living at Red Fountain. He finds out no one knows where I am half the time, he's coming down on me hard."
"Yeah, but it can't be worse than—" Droida was cut off by Flame's sigh.
"You're right. We're gonna have to call her."
At the sighs this statement brought, he held up one hand. "I'll call her. She's my sister."
He dialed the number and a second later, the hologram of a richly-dressed girl around twelve appeared above his phone.
"Huh," Ember said flatly. "What is it this time, Flame?"
"The parents are coming over in fifteen minutes," Flame said flatly. "Make that ten, actually. And I wanted to know—"
"Where you were supposed to be last night? With your girlfriend? And the twins?" Ember sounded very upset. "Yeah, I was wondering if you didn't know. Get lost in the way there? Take a left at Solaria when you should've gone straight?"
"Come on, Ember," Flame said pleadingly.
There was a long silence.
"Have Mom and Dad seen your report card yet?" He asked quietly, and Celene could imagine Ember's face on the other end—the only time she ever looked lost, but then quickly getting angry again.
"Shut up, Flame."
"I write your final project if you tell us where we're supposed to be. That's the deal."
Ember made a sound of discontent, then sighed.
"We're right now at the summer estate on the southern coast, Linphea. Well, I was, after everyone else either couldn't come or didn't."
"Yeah, well, maybe if you didn't act like such a—" Flame waved frantically at Droida to signal her to shut up.
"Thanks, Ember. Bye."
She hung up and they turned to one another.
"Linphea in—" Droida glanced at the clock, "seven minutes. Impossible without some really power transportation magic and none of us are packing the Scepter of Solaria."
Celene felt her stomach sink. "Crap, crap, crap. It's gonna take us an hour by craft at least. Augh, my parents are gonna kill me!"
"Same," muttered the prince of Sparx, and Celene realized it was even worse for him. Her parents pushed her towards a career in singing, sure, but it was nothing compared to the way Princess Bloom treated her son. He'd get in more trouble than she could imagine. Even Ember kept secrets from their parents; of any of their hidden things were revealed it would drag up a cloud of dust that would have all of the Next Gen choking.
Now it looked like there were a bunch of secrets all about to be revealed at once—
Suddenly the air in front of the TV glimmer, than split in half, revealing a portal, and on the other side—the summer estate Linphea. Celene glanced around. "Who did that?"
Axel held his hands up, Droida shrugged, but Flame ran up to it. "I don't care."
Well, that seemed legit. Celene glanced at her two friends. They'd clean up later.
Three seconds later they were tumbling through the other side of the portal and she was sprawling on the floor of the porch, staring up at...Ember.
Ember holding one of the emergency magi-ports and scowling.
"Get the frick inside," she snapped. "You get grounded and I doubt you're gonna be writing my final, Flame."
Celene wondered if thanks were due, and if Ember would even resister that as praise. But one thing was still on her mind. "How did you know where we were?"
"Flame told me," she snapped as the five of them headed towards the kitchen. "In case something ever happened to him, he wanted an emergency contact. You know how it is with us, all of us. We don't tell things."
That was true, they didn't.
Celene waited for the inevitable shoe to drop. Whenever she got the feeling Ember wasn't so bad...
"Oh, and by the way, you freaking suck. Way to disrespect your parents, Celene. Dancing, and that stupid earth apartment that Droida bought like, two years ago? At least you've always had the decency to pretend to our parents that you're here most of the time, but I guess not any more..."
Yeah, it was definitely no strange morning.