The winter winds put up a good fight. They made no effort to hide their infiltration into Adeline’s room, howling eerily as they crept under the space between the door and the floor. The broken aircon only sat and watched the onslaught.
Adeline risked the cold air, jumping out of her blankets. She rushed over and found one of the many socks she had strewn across the floor during the week. With a smirk that should have been too wicked to have been the result of such a simple act, she stuffed the crack with socks and shirts. Who knew only a minute of needing to sit down and research would make her so eager to personify the wind into a malicious force?
It made the task of booking heating repairs near Canberra a little more fun, at least. Anything that made the task feel a bit more hopeful was appreciated. She tread back to the nest of blankets she had made on her bed. Every step felt icy cold under the scrutiny of the freezing floorboards. Next time, she was going to make sure to service the unit regularly. Gods, she would even pick up a weekly dusting routine to prevent blockages like her sister Valerie did.
She wasn’t sure why her mood was souring so quickly. Given her propensity for getting into uncomfortable situations, she thought that she would be able to endure a task as small as this. The morning of training she had endured in the winter cold had properly made the situation even worse.
After an hour of being bruised, the last problem she had wanted to find waiting for her was busted air conditioning. Canberra was so far from the sunny beaches of her hometown. There, she had faced heatwaves and sticky mornings, but it was nothing that a dip in the ocean couldn’t fix. Here, it didn’t seem to matter how many blankets she donned. It was a hopeless cause.