By A. E. Charles
The sun had just started to peek out from behind the other house and the sky was a bright array of oranges, pinks, purples, and in some parts, blue. The air was filled with a fresh smell, coming from the dew resting delicately on the grass on the ground outside. Small remnants of fog remained low to the ground, but the mist slowly dissolved as the sun continued its ascent into the sky. The rays of the sun eventually streamed through the windows and sheer curtains, letting large amounts of light into the bedroom, which fell softly onto the bed and surrounding pieces of furniture. The room was bright though, even without the light shining in. Rather simple, the room consisted of a bed, a dresser, a vanity, a nightstand with drawers in it next to the bed, and a lamp resting on top of the nightstand. The bed frame was a traditional canopy, with a king-sized mattress neatly resting on a thick, wide, dark brown square. It had poles at each corner go up to about a foot lower than the ceiling. There was a rectangular pole, similar to the size of the bottom of the bed, which connected the poles on the corners of the bed together at the top. Hanging on all four sides of the rectangle at the top were sheer dark green curtains. They cascaded down around the entire bed, and acted as a barrier between the outside world and the bed, protecting whoever rested on the inside.
Currently, that was Nikolas. The young boy slept soundly, sprawled out upon the white comforter, with the blanket that had cartoon plants on it thrown lazily on top of him. He stayed calm like this for a few more minutes before stirring and stretching his arms up above his head. He moved slowly, trying to brush off the sleepiness he still possessed, but eventually, he sat upright and looked around. He looked at his surroundings and knitted his eyebrows together in deep confusion. He had no idea as to why he wasn’t in his own room. He wrapped his large blanket around his shoulders, slid to the side of the bed closest to the bedroom door, and carefully jumped off the edge of the bed to the floor. He walked cautiously over the door and stood in the entrance.
“Mama?” He yelled out into the hallway. He heard no reply to his shout.
“Mama?” He yelled again, this time as loud as his little voice could yell after just waking up from sleep. It took a couple of seconds before he heard a reply coming from down the hall. “I’m in the kitchen, mon doux. I made waffles!” His mother shouted at him, letting the ‘s’ at the end of waffles drag out for a small while. Hearing his mother’s voice and knowing she made waffles, his favorite food, he rushed out of the door and ran down the hallway, stopping only when he got to the island in the middle of the kitchen. The aroma of the waffles imbued the air with a warm and sweet scent and it overtook the entire kitchen. “Syrup?” the boy asked, walking around to the highchairs positioned at the island. The woman turned and looked at the boy, being careful not to let the waffles burn.
“You know where it is. You can get it yourself.”, she said promptly and turned around to focus on the waffles again. The boy walked from the chairs and to the pantry and swiftly opened the door fueled by his love for waffles with syrup. Once he identified the syrup, he grabbed it from its location and brought it back to the island, climbing up on one of the chairs. “Here you go, Nik,” she said to him while handing him a plate with four waffles on it. He started to pour a large amount of syrup on the waffles when his mother said “Once you’re done, please put the plate in the sink and get ready for school”, which he nodded to in response.
With that, the woman turned off the waffle maker, grabbed the coffee she had made earlier that morning, and turned and started walking to her room to get ready for the day.