Friday, October 11, 2013

Shall We Dance?

Step into my parlor, said the spider to the fly...

Maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but she couldn't shake the feeling she was confronting an unknown beast in it's own lair. If she had been allowed to make a suggestion, she would have tried for something neutral... but, no.  Ms. Bawn had forced the issue, and now had them meeting on her territory, giving the other girl the disadvantage.

Still, as her green eyes roamed the room, she could not think of the advantage as too great.  Not when it looked like Bawn was still just settling in.  For her part, while she had been late to the semester, she had stayed up all night the first night, getting her room exactly as it should be.  She needed that familiarity before she dared sleep in the place.  Apparently, Bawn was more about territory than anything else.

Fair enough.  If she felt she needed to be in control, she could have it... for now.

She did her best to school her features into a look of utter blankness.  It was not even boredom.  It was just... nothing.  Flat eyes, disinterest, non-attachment, as if she could be looking at a field of sparse grass, rather than her new partner's room.  She did, though, take the three steps it would take for her to be inside the room and allow the other girl to close the door without shutting her into it.  While she was somewhat soothed that her new, not necessarily welcome partner was smiling, the slight curl could as easily be that as a laconic beast sizing up it's next meal.

Instead, with a sigh, she spun to face her new partner, thick brown braid swinging back over her shoulders.  Black hair, cocoa skin, and those dark lenses to hide her soul from the world.  Tall, too-thin, but shapely... a pretty girl who had a reason to bow others, she assumed, and probably collected guys like bubblegum cards.  She gave her own wrist a slight pinch for the unfair thought.  All she knew was the girl's rash, unwelcoming behavior in the class, and the rest was her own irritation flaring up.

Maybe the air of the school was poison...

She gave a tepid version of a smile, limp, freckled hand lifting in Bawn's direction.  "Rasmi Proxi."  She floundered for a moment,  knowing she should add some kind of platitude, but nothing came to mind that would not be a horrid lie.  'Nice to meet you?'  'Nice room?'  'Wonderfully cozy in here... I love the touch of cobweb and old gym sock...'  No, none of those quite seemed fitting.  It did not take long for the moment to pass, so she gave a shrug and looked at those shielded eyes again, appearing candid and focused.  "Have you had any thoughts on what to do for our project?  I know there are many options, but I am not quite sure where to go from here or what to tackle, not really.  Human advancements are, in the end, nothing but the mundane's attempts to capture the magic they do not have, which the Professor already knows... All a bit trite, I guess?"

Now that she phrased it that way, herself, she frowned, staring into the air and guessing she could see Bawn's impatience to be free of the classroom.  Still, she shook it off.  "He really did not give us very clear or concise directions.  We could always try to tear apart that bastion of human arrogance, science, and overspending, NASA, if we wanted to..."

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