WHERE'S RICK?
WHO: Cygna Jones (cygnettes); Velvet Lyon scheherazading; plus a super special telephone appearance by Jacob Anser (fathergander)!
WHAT: Rick hasn't contacted a certain someone like he was supposed to - accordingly, she's starting to wonder.
WHEN: Late Tuesday night!
WHERE: Cyg and Vel's shared apartment.
How did your flight go? :)
Cygna wasn't a particularly neurotic or obsessive woman; in fact, she prided herself on being perfectly laidback when she needed to be, thank you very much! But Rick had promised to call her after he set foot back on American soil, and she'd promised to check in with him when he did. So sending him a little text message, even if it was early, didn't seem too terribly out of line. When no response came, the woman simply shrugged, assumed he was sleeping off the jet lag, then decided to go about the rest of her day without another thought on the matter.
But on the fifteenth, she waited for the response that was supposed to come: the phone call arranging details for dinner.
As the hours ticked away and the sun slowly set on Tuesday, Cygna started fidgeting more and more. He must have woken up by now. And if there wasn't a phone call, he could at least reply to her text - avoiding both really didn't sound like typical Rick. If he'd actually missed his flight yesterday, he really should have been able to catch the one coming in today. She'd even gathered up her courage and made her own call before changing into her pyjamas, only to have the phone click straight to his answering service.
She tried not to let her growing worry show too much, but Velvet knew her roommate too well not to notice. Finally, caving to a flurry of anxiety, the woman suddenly appeared in the doorway of Velvet's bedroom, wringing her hands.
"Do you think he just doesn't want to go to dinner?"
Velvet looked up from her writing, her brow furrowing with worry as she took in Cygna's state of anxiety. "He still hasn't called?" she asked, closing the notebook and shifting away from the desk to give her roommate her full attention. "That's odd... but," she said, her tone stronger and more reassuring. "I really don't think he'd bail on you like that, Cygna. Something must have come up."
"Yes, I suppose so."
Cygna dropped herself onto Velvet's bed like a lead weight, arms splayed. She stared up at the ceiling, gnawing slightly on her bottom lip - "It could be something at the airport. You know, immigrations is so tough these days. Or maybe something with the research. Maybe it got extended a few days or something."
But a second thought struck her, and the woman wriggled and turned to look at her roommate. "But if they had to stay there longer, he would have left a message, Vel! He has his Compendium with him, I know that. It's free communication and all, and it's kind of more reliable than trying to catch each other by phone, so, I mean-"
As was common practice in their apartment, moments after Cygna flopped on Velvet's bed the other girl was there too - sitting upright, though. "Unless he lost it," she pointed out, musingly, twining a lock of hair around her finger. "It's very annoying when Compendiums are lost. But you're right, he would have found a way to contact you somehow. Gentlemanly, like that." The lock of hair found its way to her mouth, where she held it between her lips thoughtfully, remnants of a bad nervous habit.
"Who else is he keeping in contact with?"
The only response for a moment was a long, exhaled sigh, as Cygna covered her face with her hands. She mumbled out some sort of answer between her fingers.
"I,um,don'tactuallyknow."
"Do you want me to ask Professor Anser?" Vel leaned forward where she sat, mattress shifting with her, ready to get up and get her own Compendium. Or her phone - whichever might get faster results.
Cygna perked up a little - at the very least, her hands abandoned their facepalming position and instead took up residence clasped over her stomach. She looked up at her roommate, mouth twisting in concentration. "Do you think he would mind?"
In some ways, it was a very, very stupid question. Of course Jacob Anser would mind being hailed by two fussy young women at such an hour. But Cygna was starting to get Worried, and like it or not, the woman inevitably went to deliberate extremes when she was Worried.
It was, in fact, the silliness of the question that made Velvet opt for her phone rather than her journal. If Cygna was worried enough to forget exactly who it was she suggested calling and what exactly his opinion was of fussy young women calling late in the evening then (although the question did not go without a look from Velvet), the issue certainly merited a more immediate response. The youngest Librarian went to her bag and fished out her phone. As it rang, she looked to her friend and offered a reassuring smile. "I'm sure it's just something silly getting in the way, Cyg."
After several rings, the phone was picked up, and Velvet was greeted by an irritable grunt - of course a man of Anser's age was asleep by now. "Someone had better be dead." He growled, the hints of sleep in his tone doing nothing to subdue his annoyed tone.
"It's a possibility?" Velvet replied in a very small voice, wincing although she knew Cygna couldn't hear what Anser had demanded. "Sorry, Professor, it's just that Cygna hasn't heard from Professor Jones yet, although he was supposed to contact her once he got back, and that's really unusual for him, so we wondering if you'd heard something...?" The explanation came out all in an apologetic rush, trying to get in the justification for the phone call out in one breath before the older Librarian could bark something harsh at her.
The line fell silent in response to Velvet's elaboration, and while it may seem like the elder librarian had possibly fallen asleep, he was in fact staring at the receiver in pure incredulity. After a few seconds he takes said receiver and bangs it several times against the edge of his bedside table, hopefully enough to to startle his peer on the other end of the line. "You mean to tell me," he finally begins, his tone particularly disagreeable with sleep, "that you called me in the middle of the night, waking me up, interrupting a particularly enjoyable dream starring Connie Chung, because your roommate doesn't have a date? What is this, Dream Phone?" The volume of his tirade steadily escalated, but he did pause long enough to allow for some sort of explanation.
Velvet yelped, holding the phone away from her head as Anser took out his anger management problems on his phone. "Connie Chung?" she returned, ear to the receiver again, tone and expression quite perplexed - she didn't dwell on the woman of Anser's dreams long, however, and her bemusement turned quickly to chagrin. "No, of course not, but you know that he's very, well. He keeps his word. Especially with Cygna - they aren't dating, though. It's, well, it's suspicious, isn't it, that he hasn't called, or written, or anything?"
There was an abashed squeak from somewhere else in the room.
Velvet was answered with a sound that was half-grunt, half-sigh, and so heavy one would expect it to be accompanied by a lung. "You know what I hear? Blah blah blah they aren't dating blah blah blah blah. And you know WHY this is what I hear? On account of the fact that I have this glorious ability to tune out the unique pitch of female hysterics and hone in on pertinent information. They aren't dating, and I would recommend you suggest to your roommate that she overcome this schoolgirl crush, or get in the line of short-skirted co-eds that runs down the hall from his office. I suspect that wherever Jones is right now, he's asleep on top of a pile of stolen Mayan treasure, drunk as a skunk and sandwiched between a pair of mediocre Turkish prostitutes. Good night." At which point Anser's phone is slammed back onto the receiver as hard as he can without actually breaking the damn thing.
The dark, unhappy expression that came over Velvet's face spoke volumes as to the earful she was getting from Anser, and if he didn't hang up on her when he did, he would have received a very sharp reply, indeed. Cheeks tinged with the embarrassment of being spoken to like a schoolgirl rather than a colleague - not to mention her extreme irritation with the man - Velvet exhaled huffily and hung up the phone. "He's so very helpful, isn't he," she said, all sarcasm.
As the conversation wound down and spiralled into the depths of unhelpfulness, Cygna's face fell too. "It didn't sound like it," she said, crestfallen. By now, she had settled into a sitting position on Velvet's bed, and was plucking distractedly at the covers.
"...What now?"
Still sore from the conversation with Anser, Velvet sat down next to Cygna again, tugging irritatedly at a tangle in her hair. "Assume he's 'asleep atop a pile of stolen treasure, drunk and sandwiched between Turkish prostitutes', I suppose!" she sighed, clearly not meaning a single word of that. "Just... wait, I guess. Perhaps he'll call in the morning, and then we can laugh about this tomorrow night."
The horrified look on Cygna's face was worthy of a Kodak moment. She caught the inflection in Velvet's voice that meant her friend was quoting, and she recognised the edge of frustration that certainly meant it couldn't really be true, but still - there were images!
And now Cygna was imagining them.
"Um, you don't-"
She blanched, and faltered into silence. Time to try again. "Maybe I could leave a message on the compendium? Lots of other people know him, and I was just talking to this one girl the other day whose father knows Rick, so maybe he's not entirely cut off out there communicationally. In, um, Turkey. With the-" Turkish prostitutes! "-stolen treasure."
Cygna's reaction made Velvet immediately regret quoting Anser, unhappy though she was with the professor. "That's a good idea," she nodded, abandoning the knots in her hair so she could focus her attention on her roommate. "And then sleep... you can't stay up all night worrying."
"Yes, good idea," Cygna echoed back, hardly even realising she was repeating her flatmate. She was already hurrying off the bed and scurrying into the other room to fetch her book.
WHAT: Rick hasn't contacted a certain someone like he was supposed to - accordingly, she's starting to wonder.
WHEN: Late Tuesday night!
WHERE: Cyg and Vel's shared apartment.
How did your flight go? :)
Cygna wasn't a particularly neurotic or obsessive woman; in fact, she prided herself on being perfectly laidback when she needed to be, thank you very much! But Rick had promised to call her after he set foot back on American soil, and she'd promised to check in with him when he did. So sending him a little text message, even if it was early, didn't seem too terribly out of line. When no response came, the woman simply shrugged, assumed he was sleeping off the jet lag, then decided to go about the rest of her day without another thought on the matter.
But on the fifteenth, she waited for the response that was supposed to come: the phone call arranging details for dinner.
As the hours ticked away and the sun slowly set on Tuesday, Cygna started fidgeting more and more. He must have woken up by now. And if there wasn't a phone call, he could at least reply to her text - avoiding both really didn't sound like typical Rick. If he'd actually missed his flight yesterday, he really should have been able to catch the one coming in today. She'd even gathered up her courage and made her own call before changing into her pyjamas, only to have the phone click straight to his answering service.
She tried not to let her growing worry show too much, but Velvet knew her roommate too well not to notice. Finally, caving to a flurry of anxiety, the woman suddenly appeared in the doorway of Velvet's bedroom, wringing her hands.
"Do you think he just doesn't want to go to dinner?"
Velvet looked up from her writing, her brow furrowing with worry as she took in Cygna's state of anxiety. "He still hasn't called?" she asked, closing the notebook and shifting away from the desk to give her roommate her full attention. "That's odd... but," she said, her tone stronger and more reassuring. "I really don't think he'd bail on you like that, Cygna. Something must have come up."
"Yes, I suppose so."
Cygna dropped herself onto Velvet's bed like a lead weight, arms splayed. She stared up at the ceiling, gnawing slightly on her bottom lip - "It could be something at the airport. You know, immigrations is so tough these days. Or maybe something with the research. Maybe it got extended a few days or something."
But a second thought struck her, and the woman wriggled and turned to look at her roommate. "But if they had to stay there longer, he would have left a message, Vel! He has his Compendium with him, I know that. It's free communication and all, and it's kind of more reliable than trying to catch each other by phone, so, I mean-"
As was common practice in their apartment, moments after Cygna flopped on Velvet's bed the other girl was there too - sitting upright, though. "Unless he lost it," she pointed out, musingly, twining a lock of hair around her finger. "It's very annoying when Compendiums are lost. But you're right, he would have found a way to contact you somehow. Gentlemanly, like that." The lock of hair found its way to her mouth, where she held it between her lips thoughtfully, remnants of a bad nervous habit.
"Who else is he keeping in contact with?"
The only response for a moment was a long, exhaled sigh, as Cygna covered her face with her hands. She mumbled out some sort of answer between her fingers.
"I,um,don'tactuallyknow."
"Do you want me to ask Professor Anser?" Vel leaned forward where she sat, mattress shifting with her, ready to get up and get her own Compendium. Or her phone - whichever might get faster results.
Cygna perked up a little - at the very least, her hands abandoned their facepalming position and instead took up residence clasped over her stomach. She looked up at her roommate, mouth twisting in concentration. "Do you think he would mind?"
In some ways, it was a very, very stupid question. Of course Jacob Anser would mind being hailed by two fussy young women at such an hour. But Cygna was starting to get Worried, and like it or not, the woman inevitably went to deliberate extremes when she was Worried.
It was, in fact, the silliness of the question that made Velvet opt for her phone rather than her journal. If Cygna was worried enough to forget exactly who it was she suggested calling and what exactly his opinion was of fussy young women calling late in the evening then (although the question did not go without a look from Velvet), the issue certainly merited a more immediate response. The youngest Librarian went to her bag and fished out her phone. As it rang, she looked to her friend and offered a reassuring smile. "I'm sure it's just something silly getting in the way, Cyg."
After several rings, the phone was picked up, and Velvet was greeted by an irritable grunt - of course a man of Anser's age was asleep by now. "Someone had better be dead." He growled, the hints of sleep in his tone doing nothing to subdue his annoyed tone.
"It's a possibility?" Velvet replied in a very small voice, wincing although she knew Cygna couldn't hear what Anser had demanded. "Sorry, Professor, it's just that Cygna hasn't heard from Professor Jones yet, although he was supposed to contact her once he got back, and that's really unusual for him, so we wondering if you'd heard something...?" The explanation came out all in an apologetic rush, trying to get in the justification for the phone call out in one breath before the older Librarian could bark something harsh at her.
The line fell silent in response to Velvet's elaboration, and while it may seem like the elder librarian had possibly fallen asleep, he was in fact staring at the receiver in pure incredulity. After a few seconds he takes said receiver and bangs it several times against the edge of his bedside table, hopefully enough to to startle his peer on the other end of the line. "You mean to tell me," he finally begins, his tone particularly disagreeable with sleep, "that you called me in the middle of the night, waking me up, interrupting a particularly enjoyable dream starring Connie Chung, because your roommate doesn't have a date? What is this, Dream Phone?" The volume of his tirade steadily escalated, but he did pause long enough to allow for some sort of explanation.
Velvet yelped, holding the phone away from her head as Anser took out his anger management problems on his phone. "Connie Chung?" she returned, ear to the receiver again, tone and expression quite perplexed - she didn't dwell on the woman of Anser's dreams long, however, and her bemusement turned quickly to chagrin. "No, of course not, but you know that he's very, well. He keeps his word. Especially with Cygna - they aren't dating, though. It's, well, it's suspicious, isn't it, that he hasn't called, or written, or anything?"
There was an abashed squeak from somewhere else in the room.
Velvet was answered with a sound that was half-grunt, half-sigh, and so heavy one would expect it to be accompanied by a lung. "You know what I hear? Blah blah blah they aren't dating blah blah blah blah. And you know WHY this is what I hear? On account of the fact that I have this glorious ability to tune out the unique pitch of female hysterics and hone in on pertinent information. They aren't dating, and I would recommend you suggest to your roommate that she overcome this schoolgirl crush, or get in the line of short-skirted co-eds that runs down the hall from his office. I suspect that wherever Jones is right now, he's asleep on top of a pile of stolen Mayan treasure, drunk as a skunk and sandwiched between a pair of mediocre Turkish prostitutes. Good night." At which point Anser's phone is slammed back onto the receiver as hard as he can without actually breaking the damn thing.
The dark, unhappy expression that came over Velvet's face spoke volumes as to the earful she was getting from Anser, and if he didn't hang up on her when he did, he would have received a very sharp reply, indeed. Cheeks tinged with the embarrassment of being spoken to like a schoolgirl rather than a colleague - not to mention her extreme irritation with the man - Velvet exhaled huffily and hung up the phone. "He's so very helpful, isn't he," she said, all sarcasm.
As the conversation wound down and spiralled into the depths of unhelpfulness, Cygna's face fell too. "It didn't sound like it," she said, crestfallen. By now, she had settled into a sitting position on Velvet's bed, and was plucking distractedly at the covers.
"...What now?"
Still sore from the conversation with Anser, Velvet sat down next to Cygna again, tugging irritatedly at a tangle in her hair. "Assume he's 'asleep atop a pile of stolen treasure, drunk and sandwiched between Turkish prostitutes', I suppose!" she sighed, clearly not meaning a single word of that. "Just... wait, I guess. Perhaps he'll call in the morning, and then we can laugh about this tomorrow night."
The horrified look on Cygna's face was worthy of a Kodak moment. She caught the inflection in Velvet's voice that meant her friend was quoting, and she recognised the edge of frustration that certainly meant it couldn't really be true, but still - there were images!
And now Cygna was imagining them.
"Um, you don't-"
She blanched, and faltered into silence. Time to try again. "Maybe I could leave a message on the compendium? Lots of other people know him, and I was just talking to this one girl the other day whose father knows Rick, so maybe he's not entirely cut off out there communicationally. In, um, Turkey. With the-" Turkish prostitutes! "-stolen treasure."
Cygna's reaction made Velvet immediately regret quoting Anser, unhappy though she was with the professor. "That's a good idea," she nodded, abandoning the knots in her hair so she could focus her attention on her roommate. "And then sleep... you can't stay up all night worrying."
"Yes, good idea," Cygna echoed back, hardly even realising she was repeating her flatmate. She was already hurrying off the bed and scurrying into the other room to fetch her book.