slow progress

[keep_busy]

Eventually Annie goes home for the day. Her mother lives a long but doable walk from campus, but Annie makes the trip by tricycle for speed and safety, or bus when the ice is too bad to allow riding. This is a trike day.

She tells her mother as straightforwardly as she can what has happened.

Her mother wants to meet the boy, but accepts that this should probably wait until the situation with Zevaia changes one way or another.

A few hours after Annie gets home, she gets a call from the Dean's office. There are results in; she can go hear them at the office. Apparently they're not supposed to release them over the phone for some obscure reason of policy.

Coat goes back on Annie, Annie goes back on trike, trike goes back on campus.

Comments

[keep_busy]

"What's next, after me and getting rid of the knife?"

[touchedinthehead]

"Saving my sister."

[keep_busy]

"Yeah, that makes sense."

[touchedinthehead]

"I do try to make sense," he agrees, softly.

[keep_busy]

"Any responses to your ad about knife-hunting yet?"

[touchedinthehead]

"None, yet," he sighs. "I think I need the Dean to give me more information for them to be willing to risk touching a strange artifact. Even to get rid of the knife."

[keep_busy]

"Maybe he'll come up with enough to go on tomorrow."

If he doesn't, the odds that Zevaia won't have died of dehydration start to go way, way down.

[touchedinthehead]

"Maybe," agrees Aldaras softly.

He knows the odds.

[keep_busy]

Annie pauses in their walk to hug him.

[touchedinthehead]

Hug.

"It has a vested interest in keeping her alive. We know it makes them drink rain water...."

[keep_busy]

"And it has been raining. But - yeah." Hug.

[touchedinthehead]

"Yeah."

[keep_busy]

"I hope somebody answers the ad soon."

[touchedinthehead]

"Me, too," he sighs. "I - think she should have been the one to find the necklace, honestly. She's better at the sort of crisis that involves hitting things. I'm - not."

[keep_busy]

Pat pat.

Annie resumes walking.

[touchedinthehead]

Aldaras does, too, looking pensive.

[keep_busy]

"There's not really anything useful I can do, is there?"

[touchedinthehead]

"I - don't know, do you have some method to convince people to help?"

[keep_busy]

"No. People skills aren't really my strongest suit."

[touchedinthehead]

"Do you want to help gather supplies for when we head out? Useful things that we can bring, or - something?"

[keep_busy]

"Uh - sure, but I don't know what people on - wilderness adventures need. Food, I guess?"

[touchedinthehead]

"Food, water, a tent, compass - you genuinely don't have to do anything, but I can find you things to do if you want to do them."

[keep_busy]

"It's sounding like you'd probably have an easier time not worrying about occupying me," she remarks. "I can occupy myself, it's okay."

[touchedinthehead]

"I - okay. I'm sorry," he sighs.

[keep_busy]

"You have nothing to be sorry for."