Sejanna (347): Sej hates mornings more than anything in the world, but that doesn't stop her from getting up early to drive Janna to the local news station for her audition.
Beds are warm and comfy and good for ignoring the frostbitten breath of Father Winter icing the air in the little apartment. The bedroom is cast in shades of pale gray, as sunless at 6:30 AM as it’ll be all day, and Sejuani grunts as she jams a knee against the rickety desk in the ghostly non-light.
Their little bed calls to her sleep-laden bones, but Janna calls louder; like a spring breeze whispering amongst icicles, urging them to thaw. Coffee helps take the sting out of the early hour, too, and Janna conjures a hot mug of it into Sejuani’s hands.
“Miracle worker, you are,” Sejuani mumbles, bringing the mug to her lips and closing her eyes into the steam.
Janna’s chuckle is music and Sejuani remembers the chimes they hung on the cramped balcony that used to laugh in the long, lazy summer evenings a lifetime ago.
“Negative nine right now,” Janna tells her, because no conversation is complete without a rundown of the current weather. “Feels like negative seventeen. Mostly cloudy with zero percent chance of precipitation; lows will dip into the high teens this afternoon due to wind chill, so don’t forget to bundle up!”
The coffee’s so hot it burns, but Sejuani relishes the heat. She peels her eyes open, her sluggish body craving another few hours of sleep but having to make do with the bitter caffeine, fixing Janna with an ice-blue stare. “You’re a natural,” she says, quiet, “you’re gonna blow ‘em away.”
Janna bats her on the arm, so light Sejuani barely feels it, and flashes the bright rectangle of her cell phone screen. “Weather app,” she admits. “No surprises.”
Janna’s standing there in their little kitchen dressed to the nines and looking more radiant than a Technicolor sunrise, and Sejuani’s chest swells with a warm kind of pride. She nods, shuffling off to grab her coat and stuff her feet into boots, swiping the keys to the rusty old van that’ll complain the whole way to the station.
“C’mon,” she says, “let’s go make you a weather woman.”
