Silence fell upon the two of us once again, and a casual glance at Midnight revealed that his eyes were quickly becoming wider. I felt myself giving a quizzical look before realizing that we were both disappearing. Without any hesitation, Midnight sat in a familiar position and cast a spell, the same one which he did outside of the palace to cement our progress, and spoke in a relieved tone. "Almost forgot to do that," my principal huffed before I was whisked away from the closet and summoned to my bed, the dream finally concluding.
First, there were two things that I could sense the first few instants that I was awake: first, the alarm clock in very close proximity to my head was blaring, which I swiftly silenced by rolling over to my left side and reaching with an arm. Secondly, there was a sharp pain in my side. Pulling back my covers and reaching toward the problem spot, my hand gripped a door stopper. I was immediately reminded of my unsuccessful attempt to bring it into the dream. Clasping the wooden object in my hand, I swung my legs out of bed, the pain from the door stopper accompanied by a general achiness everywhere else on my body. Still shaking from the tense but brief moment inside of the dream, I reminded myself that nobody was going to hurt me in the waking world and began to start another day. Before traversing to the kitchen, I peered over at the bottle of pills that were still sitting on my nightstand. I finally decided after inspecting the strangely yellow capsules that I was going to save them for when I was in real pain, as I only had a somewhat sore body.
I saw Midnight next to the corner as I was heading for Day's class, which I had first thing in the morning. This time, he began to look me over, invisible to the swarm of students due to a cloaking spell that he had cast on himself. "Did you take a pill this morning?"
"No," I replied truthfully.
"I strongly recommend that you take that medicine," Midnight encouraged while inspecting a rather sore patch on my scales where the door stopper had been digging in my side.
"Yeah, but..." I began to explain, "they do work, it's just that I might start to depend on them to function at all when I wake up."
Midnight took a slow, deep breath. "Alright. I just thought that bruise was something that should be healed." My principal slowly backed away from me, sipping from his mug. I nodded, prompting him to continue. "I believe you should be getting to class now. The crowd that was around the door has dissipated almost completely now."
I nodded at my principal, bode him farewell until we met again during the magic class, and stepped inside of the classroom, taking the stairs until I sat next to Boingo.
"Hey, Feste!" The alien greeted in his usual energetic tone.
I mirrored his high level of enthusiasm, which didn't seem very visible. "Good morning."
Wanting to keep the conversation going, Boingo continued to look at me. "Did you and Midnight do anything last night?"
"Yes. We... er..." I involuntarily shivered as I remembered my encounter with the girl, but I slowly began to describe the progress and Midnight and I had made throughout last night, including our experiment to bring something into the palace, which turned out to be a failure.
At the end of it all, I noticed that Boingo had begun fidgeting with his notebooks, frantically flipping through their pages all scrawled with notes written by Boingo placing a pencil between his teeth. "Well, I... I started talking with Endora for more than a few minutes last night."
"Oh?" I was curious; Boingo was wearing an expression that signalled embarrassment. "What did you two talk about?"
Boingo was hesitant and a bit careful in his response. "After we met up, she was just as bored as I was and we... we ended up talking about just school things." Boingo began to turn away, not wanting to look in my general direction as he further described his conversations. "She said over and over while we were talking that you two weren't in a relationship," he sighed. "I still don't think that's true."
At this point, I was beginning to become a little frustrated from Boingo's assumption. "The only times we would talk were when we bumped into one another," I defended. "Other than that, we don't talk to each other at all." I contemplated carrying the subject further, deciding for it. With a gulp, I decided to form words on the fly. "B-But when we were at the beginner's club, I... I did have some feelings-," I began to stammer, but we were cut off by Day's voice.
"Alright, everyone is here! With that, class will begin," my teacher boomed over his talking students. Instinctively ignoring Boingo's presence until the situation blew over, I quickly gathered my materials for today as I felt blood rushing up to my head.