Chipper Holly, head of the history department in the Chestnut Valley school moped out of his bed at 5:30 am on a cold morning. Stumbling to the sink in the washroom, he looked at the baggies under his eyes. He had not been sleeping well lately. All the students were having a hard time with the latest topic on conservation efforts in the country and they had to pass this as part of the course.
The mid-aged hare proceded to stretch out his long legs and clawed toes as he moved down towards the kitchen to brew a strong cup of coffee. He grumbled, dumping out the grounds of the previous day's coffee into the garbage, and dropped the filter in at the sudden crash from upstairs. Retreiving it quickly, he continued to brew coffee, no doubt his companion would want some.
Chipper shared his apartment with another teacher, for the wages offered were not substantial enough to pay off all the loans that were necessary to become ready professionally for the occupation. This other teacher was young and new to the job, only joining the previous year. His name was Hazel Swift, unusual for a gray fox, but his fur outside of the typical salt-n-pepper color, had large amounts of goldenrod fur and sandstone red. Hazel was a teacher of reading and writing to students, and while he was greatly qualified, his skills on personality and respect were lacking. Much more stricter than Chipper, how he came to be living with a seasoned teacher, is anyone's guess, but it was that it made sense to split the cost of living and Hazel was the first to respond.
Hazel had knocked over the alarm clock in his bedroom, adjacent to Chipper's. Missing it, its alarm still sounding, Hazel grabbed a magazine he had by the bedstand, hoping to throw it on the clock, to give him an extra five minutes. It missed as well. Groaning loudly, Hazel moved out from under the covers and pounded the switch on the clock, finally silencing it.
"Killjoy" he muttered, wishing it wasn't morning already. Slipping off the bed, and arching his back and body, all claws extended while yawning and stretching, he too made his way to the kitchen where Chipper already had the coffee perking. "Tell me again who invented the alarm clock," he said groggily to the hare.
"That isn't something I know right off the top of my head," responded Chipper, matter of factly, stirring a pot on the stove loaded with a porridge-like oatmeal. He added some wild raspberries to the mixture as well as light cream.
Hazel snorted, "Well if I ever find out, I'd like to sock it to him for creating the worst machine known to the mammilian race." He took his place at the table. "You sleep well?"
"Take a guess," said Chipper, glumly.
"That bad, huh? Probably is because you make that slop for breakfast," added Hazel, choosing an apple from the cornucopia in the middle of the table.
"When you get old like me, you'll be praying that this slop keeps you alive an extra few years," smirked Chipper, playfully. "Us old ones need something to keep the meat on our bones."
Hazel gave a weak smile, munching on the apple. It was a typical morning, and likely to be a very typical day on the job.
