(Untitled)

[gabriel_tam]

It's early afternoon when he opens the door from Milliways into the Tams' New Mayfair home. The tastefully-furnished space of Gabriel's home office lies before them.

"Go on, River," he says, gently. "Go ahead in."

Comments

[river_meimei]

It's a new room. New house. New sourcebox, and desk, and chair.

River takes one slow step into the room, and then another, and runs her fingertips slowly down a clear globed paperweight. Her mother bought it for her father on a trip to Bellerophon when River was very young; at the bottom shimmer layered millefiori circles of greens and blues, dotted here and there with circles of gold leaf.

[gabriel_tam]

Gabriel closes the door quietly and then stands there watching her, hands in his pockets.

Some things change, of course. The office isn't the same as the one as the one that he'd spent so many hours in at the Osiris estate. It's larger, sleekly designed, with the most up-to-date tech, encryption, and security -- not to mention a very specialized Council-quality communications hub.

But some things don't. Although there's more space to work, true to fashion Gabriel's laid out his active files along the desk by project order. The artwork on the walls is familiar, or much of it is at any rate, not to mention the paperweights and image cubes that are scattered about the desk and side table, near the comfortable leather armchair that he sits in when he's simply reviewing things.

[river_meimei]

The setup is much more complex than his office on Osiris, of course, and the equipment purrs to itself nearly silent, tiny lights blinking. The main screens are dark, but the encryption arrays that aren't built in are tucked under and against screens and data-boxes, running lines of bright LEDs. It's state of the art, far better than his old office, and even farther from Serenity's.
(such a slender thread)
His files -- some open, some closed, some covered with face-down pages of mental notes -- are ordered just as they ever were, in tidily fanned lines.
(it isn't mine, I shouldn't have to)
River stares at her fingertips, and the old glass paperweight,

"It looks like the sea, Simon."
"Cái búshì. The sea doesn't look like that. Go find a picture and you'll see. The composition's totally different."
"It should."

and says nothing.

[gabriel_tam]

"Do you want to see the rest of the house?"

It's very quietly asked.