Changing Prudence (EDITING - ON HOLD)

Chapter 7

Cole barged into Rue’s room as was his usual job in the morning. He found her cocooned in her duvet as usual, he whipped out the pan and spoon from behind his back and thrashed the spoon around the pan, creating a thunderous noise that echoed around the room.

Rue woke with a start for the second time that morning; she threw the duvet to the bottom of her bed and glared directly at her brother. ‘Do you have to do that?’ Despite her sudden awakening, she was still very groggy and her head was pounding from the lack of sleep and the noise created by her brother. 

Cole would never get tired of this, ‘I wouldn’t need to wake you up if you would just get your lazy backside out of bed before me.’ He walked towards her door and stopped in his tracks, turning back to take a second glance at her, he realised she looked as if she had camped out in a forest last night.

She looked down at herself wondering what was interesting her brother so much and realised she had fell asleep on the floor of the forest last night she must be a total mess. How was she going to get out of this mess!

‘Why are you wearing the forest floor?’ he asked her inquisitively.

She looked in the mirror and saw that her was tangled with leaves and mud and she had a thin layer of mud coating her arms. And her clothes must have got dirty under that rock because they were even worse than her hair in places. She looked like the wicked witch of the forest. She shook her head trying her best to look perplexed. She could always try to pretend she had walked down to the woods beside the field in her sleep. ‘I don’t know.’

He beat her to it so she didn’t have to make the lie up herself. ‘Don’t tell me you have been sleepwalking again. I can’t believe I didn’t get it on camera… that would have made a blockbuster!’ she sounded utterly disappointed, he had managed to get most of her night time treks on film since her parents realised she was doing it. She had once walked down the street and sat on a bench, apparently Cole had carried her back to bed, and she didn’t even realise until her brother shown her the video a week later.  

He fished his phone out of his back pocket and snapped a picture before she could even realise. She charged at him and tried to reach his phone out of his hands to delete the horrendous picture. She gave up, finally realising that there was no point in fighting him, he would just manage to snap another picture just as soon as she had deleted it.  He grinned with victory, as he jogged out of the room shouting back for her to get ready. He was taking her on another trip to the forest today and he wanted to leave early to spend as much time as he could out of the house.

As soon as Cole was out of her room she gathered her clothes into a bundle, a brush and some shampoo and rushed to the bathroom hoping it would be vacant so she could get a quick shower without being bombarded with questions while she still looked like Tarzan. She got lucky, but she had no doubt her brother would be spreading the news about her little adventure last night.

She let out a sigh as the warm water loosened her muscles that were in quite a bit of pain, no doubt from sprinting around the forest last night. The pain in her back from sleeping on the forest floor had somewhat lessened since she got back into her own bed.

She spent about quarter of an hour in the shower, before she heard a knock on the door, breaking her out of her stupor. It was Cole ‘Hurry up, we’re leaving in ten minutes.’