“Are you awake yet? Goethe, wake up.”

Despite it being a gentle whisper, Goethe groaned and tossed in his bed, irritated by, to him at least, a rumbling thunder.

“Goethe, everyone else is already up”, Helen, the owner of that annoyed voice, said. Goethe noticed, with justified dread, that it was beginning to rise in volume.  The desire of sleep outweighing rational fear, he grunted and rolled over once more. Undeterred, Helen lightly rapped on his door with her index finger, causing the door to shudder against its hinges and the jamb.

Goethe never understood why Helen would knock on the door when he considered the fact that his room didn’t have a roof so she could always look in on him. Whenever he pointed that out, Helen would give a haughty laugh and say that it wasn’t becoming of a lady, let alone a princess, to enter a house without first knocking.

She certainly isn’t behaving like a lady now, he thought ruefully, wondering what damage the door had sustained. He chanced to open one eye and saw a massive face, which filled all of his vision, with eyes drilling holes into him and a tight frown that was beginning to break into a smile. Certainly that face was far from the worst thing to see first thing in the morning.

Snow-white skin was aglow from a morning ray of sunshine that shot through an opening in the bedroom – her bedroom, not his – as if it only existed to heighten her beauty. Emerald eyes showed an irrepressible mirth, despite the fact that she was trying to use them to exert authority – to anyone else, they would have worked. Her red lips where quivering slightly as they feebly fought back a smile, though he knew that they could be worked into a real frown at the bat of an eye. Reddish golden hair – already combed, he noted – was touching the tops of his walls, with the occasional curl spilling into the room. Certainly not the worst, but bad enough, he thought while throwing the covers over his head.

Seeing his stubbornness was not going to yield easily, Helen lowered her face even closer into the room, until her mouth was only an arm’s length – Goethe’s arm – away from the lump of laziness. Goethe tensed a little as he sensed that her massive face was perilously close.  I should’ve just gotten up, he thought, giving a piteous groan.

“Did you know that you missed breakfast already, Goethe?” Helen breathed in an almost indistinct whisper. “Can you guess what you missed?”, and with that she let a long exhalation.

The whisper was already like a shout with her being so close, but her exhaling threatened to blow the covers off. But the noise or the small gale wasn’t the problem to Goethe, it was the smell. Despite having the covers over his head, a warm, humid mist settled around his bed, lingering on top of him and forming a film of a rather heady condescension between him and his sheets. She hasn’t brushed her teeth yet. Damn! Judging by that smell, she has never even touched a tooth brush! His train of thought was cut short as he began to feel dizzy.

“So what did you miss?” Helen asked innocently as she pulled her head back slightly.

“Carrion and dung”, Goethe muttered as he threw a now-moistened pillow at her nose.