Elijah woke with the dawn. He had spent the night before at a party and carefully sneaked back into his dorm without arousing his roommate. After a few hours of sleep, his internal clock kicked in. Apparently his internal clock did not care about his external schedule. But he wasn't one to waste a perfectly good morning. So he rolled out of bed and threw some clothes on. Then he left for the outdoors, wishing he had put on more than a sweatshirt. It was heavy with dew and a clinging chill. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the fresh, untouched air. Then he pressed his palms together and began to do Sun Salutations. When he was finished, he closed his eyes and had a smoke. He then retreated into the warmth of the indoors.
There weren't many others there. The broody one, the blond one and Rainier but he greeted each one with a smile. He noticed the news flashing on TV. "Why do you watch that, Rain?" he said, pouring himself some coffee. "All they ever show is bad news. I'm convinced they do it on purpose. They show nothing but misery so you feel miserable. Then what do you do with that misery? You spread it around," he shot a look at Eleanor. She was the poster girl of misery. "Then you wind up doing miserable things until you make the news, and the cycle continues," he said, sipping at his coffee as he took a seat next to Rain. "You're feeding into the cycle, Rain," he said sagely.
He pulled out his phone, checking for messages from Jane. They had a project to do but the idea of actually working was entirely repulsive to him at the moment. Maybe he'd convince her to just goof off. Grades were all relative anyway. He texted back to meet him in the common room. As he hit send, he saw a story about some war in some far off country. "See, that's my point right there. I'm convinced that war is caused by a stream of bad news,"