Golden thorns chapter thirty three

"Good lord, Jo. Feel free to turn off your mouth siren" Coran groaned as a fresh wave of pain engulfed his skull. "Remember, inside voice."

"This is too big to be inside voice, Coran. Marie got a date to the dance!" this elicited a moment of silence from the guys, before Coran looked to her and said "wow, nice one. Who is it?"

"His name is Jet Ivory. He is a second year and he asked me to the dance today while we were in the library earlier. I said yes." At this point a fresh wave of sickness overcame Coran. Jo was often cracking jokes about her teammates getting into relationships so he hadn't believed it until then.

"Well congratulations. But now that we've gotten that out of the way. How's about you guys all just keep the noise down okay? Technically I'm still sick and I need my rest." Coran murmured as he rested his head back onto his pillows.

"Oh, right. Sorry" Devlyn whispered "go on you two. Get out of here. Go enjoy the sun for once."

"Okay!" Jo said loudly. "Marie and I need to have a little girl to girl chat anyway. See ya!" once again, Jo dragging Marie by the wrist, the girls left the room. Devlyn turned to Coran. Coran turned to Devlyn.

"Well… that was a thing" Coran said with a slight laugh.

"Yeah… Coran-"Devlyn tried to answer but Coran stopped him. He knew what he was about to say.

"I'm gonna get some more sleep. G'night Dev." He rolled over and pulled up the red covers. Devlyn, silenced, simply stood and put a single hand on Coran's shoulder, before walking slowly over to the desk and sitting, flicking the lamp on in the dark room.

Coran thought to himself. This was cool. He was happy for Marie. He had been wondering which one of his teammates would get a date to the dance first. So… why did he feel so hollow? He didn't even really want to go to the dance in the first place. Oh well. He couldn't afford to be distracted. He needed to get better. He needed to get some sleep.

So why couldn't he? He had been trying to sleep for the past hour, yet he couldn't distract himself from Marie's revelation. Devlyn sat at the desk, quietly scrawling answers for a homework while Coran tossed and turned. Eventually he sat up. "Hey Dev? I'm gonna open a window, okay?"

"Yeah, that's fine." He said quietly over his shoulder.

Coran slowly stood on shaking legs and made his way over to the window. He flipped the latch and pushed open the glass. The breeze was fresh and the sun was bright. A few wisps of white cloud drifted slowly across the sky. He looked down into the gardens below the window. A few students were lounging around, doing homework, gossiping and some were even asleep in the sunlight. He scanned the crowds to see if he recognised anyone and saw Marie and Jo, sitting on a bench, talking quietly to each other. Marie glanced up, saw him and waved. He chuckled and waved back. "D'you know, Dev, I think I'm feeling better now."

"Good. To be honest I was getting sick of this room." He let out a sigh, dropped his pencil and leant back in his chair, rubbing his eyes. "By the way we should probably go pick up our kit from Firebrand. Wanna come?"

"Yeah, let's go." Coran got dressed and they left.

As they headed towards the armoury, they passed by the big hall where they spent their first night here. They saw the two guys from haven, Sun and Neptune wasn't it, enter the hall to the sound of Yang and Weiss having an argument about smoke machines and doilies.

"Hey Dev, why are Yang and Weiss building the dance hall? I thought CVFY were doing it."

"They were, but then they got delayed on their mission so yang and Weiss volunteered. I can't tell whether we're gonna have a posh ballroom style thing or a full on rave."

"Probably some twisted combination of both" Coran replied, "So what are we picking up?"

"Your glaive, my knife and a new charge pack for Jo's baton." Dev replied as they drew up to the armoury. But just as Coran reached for the handle the door flew open and a tall guy with square shoulders and short, dark brown hair collided with him. The guy spoke.

"Sorry about that. The names Jet, Jet Ivory."