Azula: Chapter 1 part 2

Instructions

For a few hours, they painted in sync, their movements with the paintbrush matching the other's. They were about to start cleaning up when a loud knock interrupted them. “Moriah, Autumn, open the door!” Her dad shouted. Moriah internally rolled her eyes; her dad couldn’t seem to remember that Moriah’s hearing was pretty sharp and she could easily hear him without all the shouting. “Hi, Dad,” Moriah whispered as she opened the door before quickly walking off to go clean up the paints. She was a really quiet person and hardly ever talked unless it was to Autumn. As she walked to her room, she scooped up Layla, who was sticking her nose in and trying to eat the groceries, and brought the wriggling dog to her room. Setting Layla on her bed, Moriah started rushing around her room, putting away her favourite set of watercolour paint, and wiping paint off of her small easel and putting it in the corner of her room. She looked around her room, which wasn’t very clean. Instead of having her bed made, she slept in a nestlike mound of pillows and blankets with Layla curled up next to her. Her desk was covered in splatters of paint and pencil marks and most of her things were used or from thrift stores, but it was home, though not up to her parents’ standards. After a few minutes of sitting on her bed with her legs scrunched up to her chin and stroking Layla’s feather-like fur, Moriah decided to grab her flute and practice playing the instrument. She opened her window; she always enjoyed listening to the chatter of nature while she played, and carefully grabbing the flute case from her shelf, she opened the case and connected the joints. She blew a soft, whispery melody into the evening sky, with the robins outside occasionally joining in. After dinner, Moriah went downstairs and to the garage, where she found her bike; Since the weather had grown warmer throughout the day, the thin layer of snow had melted, leaving small puddles strewn across the ground. Moriah mounted the bike and biked toward the sunset, revelling in the effortless motion of her legs. Veering toward the park, Moriah’s eyes locked onto a weather-beaten path, enclosed by trees. Without another thought, she veered onto the path, wondering what would be ahead. After ten minutes of biking along the trail, Moriah realized that the path ended in a mossy clearing, strewn with oak trees. From there, there was a thin path which she assumed led back to the park. She looked up at the sky, realizing it was getting dark. I’ll explore later, she decided. He didn’t want her parents to get mad at her for staying out too late. Hands numb with cold, she started back to her house. When she was back home, Moriah put some water in a kettle to make tea. Stirring in a little bit of sugar and honey, she poured the boiling water into a large mug and warmed her numb hands on it. The tea that she was drinking was supposed to help with sleep but never seemed to work properly. Her parents had insisted that she didn’t need medication and was fine, but Moriah rarely got more than six or seven hours of sleep per night. Even though Moriah didn’t need much sleep, she still woke up tired every morning. She brought her tea into her room, placed it on her nightstand, and called Layla’s name. A few moments later she heard the pattering of pawsteps on the hard kitchen floor. Layla came trotting into the room with her tail wagging wildly and leaped up onto Moriah’s bed. Layla curled up on her usual spot, right next to Moriah’s face when she would lay down. Moriah quickly brushed and flossed her teeth, then curled up in her heap of blankets, tucking a few over her. She read for a while, running her fingers through Layla’s soft fur. She checked her alarm clock, which read 11:15, turned off her reading lamp, and lay in bed, her book on her lap. She sighed in frustration, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to sleep for a long time. Moriah lay there for almost an hour, scrunched in a ball with Layla snoring softly beside her. She groaned in frustration, got up carefully, making sure not to disturb Layla, and began pacing the room, back and forth. With a gusty sigh, she continued to pace until her limbs grew weak with exhaustion. When she found it difficult to continue pacing, she flicked on and dimmed her lamp, picked her book up, and continued to read until her eyes stung from lack of sleep. Glancing at her clock, she realized that it was past one a.m. Figuring she should try to get more sleep, Moriah put her book onto her desk and flicked her lamp back on. Remembering a sleep exercise she had heard of, Moriah began counting her breaths, and after a while, she sank into sleep.