There was the usual, annual bouquet of roses on Natalie's kitchen table. Happy Valentine's Day to our Valentine. It was February 15th, and no matter what year she was in right now, it was Natalie's birthday. She was twenty years old today. She felt younger and older all at the same time, but at least she was no longer officially a teenager ( Read more... )

Natalie was finalizing her paperwork to be sent back home to Canada, for her potential admission to the University of Toronto. Since this was a weird sort of application - in the middle of a year, from someone who hadn't been to a school since graduating high school in 2013 - there was a lot of stuff in there, and a lot more to still get in order. ( Read more... )

It said some probably positive things about Natalie's character that it took her a while to notice anything was off, simply because... nothing was. Maybe it was because she didn't use very many words to begin with. Easier to stay truthful that way ( Read more... )

Working straight through the holidays probably meant you were overcompensating for something. Natalie was willing to admit that. Just... probably not out loud to anyone. And besides, Christmas wasn't that big a deal to her, anyway. And it was nice and peaceful at the office, since sane people a lot of the work force was still on break. So, it was ( Read more... )

Natalie didn't feel at all ready for anything. But, Jim was coming over because she'd asked him to. It was time. She wouldn't ever be completely ready, so this was going to have to be good enough. She remembered pretty vividly what Sam had said, about not letting something like this drag on ( Read more... )

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Saturday should not have been a work day, but Natalie couldn't help herself when there was stuff to do. And there was always stuff to do. Dignitaries to get back to, calls to make, and various other things to try and not roll her eyes at too much. Except she rolled her eyes a lot. This was her office, she could do what she wanted ( Read more... )

Of all the strange things Natalie had experienced in her life in recent times, this was the most pleasant one. It was a surreal experience to have her parents in her office, but not a bad one. Her father had immediately taken to examining the few books she had on the shelf (fairly old fashioned for this time period, but she'd wanted her office to ( Read more... )

Sure, it was Saturday. But that didn't mean there wasn't any work to be done. And Natalie was all about work. Honestly, just being able to be in her office had not yet lost its pleasant novelty after the whole space and displacement ordeal, even though just enough time had passed now that she wasn't having nightmares about Achilles every night ( Read more... )

This felt surreal. After the... several months Natalie had just had, taking a day or two to actually be away from Brazil and the Hegemony and Peter was just surreal. Knowing she was going to get to actually see Jim for the first time in over three months? Yeah, weird ( Read more... )

If you'd asked Natalie just a year ago whether she could imagine herself ending up in a situation where she'd be glad almost to the point of tearing up just to just be on Earth... She would've said no, she couldn't imagine a situation like that. And yet here she was. They'd finally returned, and she was looking all calm and collected about it - ( Read more... )