Shining Clock 1.3

I blink slowly as a beam of sunlight lazily makes its way across the unfamiliar garage. Groaning softly, I raise my hands and blearily run my eyes before raising in my head to take in my surroundings. I'm lying back in a gray reclining chair tucked off in the corner of the garage. In the middle, there's a table with a half-finished game of Monopoly sitting on it. One of the stacks of money was substantially bigger than the others.

After a few seconds, the events of the previous night catch up to me. I was sleeping in Clara's grandparent's garage since I didn't have a place of my own. The game of Monopoly that was sitting on the table was the last game we had played, and Clara had been handily ahead just like the rest of the games we played.

Just as I move to curl up into a ball and try to continue my sleep, there's a beeping on the other side of the garage door before it begins to open. I wince as even more sunlight comes flooding in, the open space where the door was providing a much larger entrance than the narrow slit of a window that ran sideways across it. A person is standing there, their figure momentarily obscured by the bright light before they step forwards and reveal themselves to be Clara. She's holding a bag that seems filled with boxy shapes.

Placing the bag on the table—and ignoring the game that had been in progress—she turns to face me.

"Good morning," she says far too cheerfully. I wave my arm at her in an attempt to swat her but am rewarded only with laughter at my pitiful attack. It probably would have been more successful if I had been able to summon up the motivation to move from where I was currently lying down. Recovering from her amusement a few seconds later, she continues to talk. "Thought you might be hungry, so I brought a bowl and a few boxes of cereal from my house. No milk, though, so you'll have to have it dry."

My only response is an incoherent groan. Of all the things she could have been, why did Clara have to be a morning person? Seeming to take notice of the fact that I—like any reasonable person, at least—despise waking up, she turns to leave.

"Wait," I manage to croak out. She turns back to glance at me.

"Yeah," she asks.

"I'm up," I say more clearly this time. I slowly manage to drag myself out of the chair, eliciting more laughter from her as I flop down onto the floor. "And... thanks."

Walking back over to the table, she slides down the sides of the bag to reveal the different kinds of cereal. "Well, if you're up I might as well explain your options for breakfast."

She lifts up the first box. It's brown and has an image of a cartoonish orange bird eating brown pellets. "First off, I brought Cocoa Puffs."

Something inside me tells me no. I shake my head to give it voice. "No thank you. What are the other options?"

The Cocoa Puffs are placed back inside the bag, and another box is pulled out to replace them. "Lucky Charms," she asks.

"Yes. Do want." The words escape my lips before I realize I spoke them. She seems surprised at my sudden choice and makes this known. "Are you sure? You haven't even seen the last box."

"As sure as my specialty is time, yes." I narrow my eyes. "Cereal. Gibbit. Now."

She shrugs and sighs. "Well, I guess some people have no appreciation for Cap'n Crunch."

She tosses the box and bowl over to me as I make my way over to the table.

One and a half bowls of the stuff later, I glance across the table at her, taking a break from dropping handfuls of the cereal into my mouth. "So, where's Merry?"

Clara starts. "Huh? Oh right, Merry. She's probably still asleep at her house right now. She never was one to wake up early."

Sounds to me like something any reasonable person should be. There's clearly something wrong with people who enjoy waking up in the morning. I keep my opinion to myself. "Oh."

I glance down at my cereal again. I guess someone who would bring over breakfast for a friend couldn't be so bad, even if they are a morning person. "Uh. Thanks for the cereal, I guess."

She grins. "No problem. Besides, now I know what your favorite is. Merry's is Cocoa Puffs, if you were wondering. She probably wouldn't have been too happy if you had eaten her box."

I find myself filing away the information in the off chance I'll need to use it later. A thought crosses my mind. "So, aren't we going to start training some time soon?"

She shrugs and leans back. "Eh, we'll just wait for Merry to get here. Besides, there's plenty more to talk about than what your favorite cereal is!"

And that was how I found myself talking to Clara for the next few hours.