fandomhigh | Library, Wednesday [ 09/19 ]

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Library, Wednesday [ 09/19 ]

There are seven ways for a foot to touch the ground, each with its own particular power. As she came into the library today, to open it up, to stay, to be expected to do nothing more than curl up and point others in the right direction when she herself was pointed so awkwardly, Adah was thinking about spreading ashes and how she used to watch things like that, if the dancer was interesting enough, but it hadn't done her much good in the long run. Still, she was thinking maybe she should start watching again.

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Evie could see the interest and straightened a bit, relieved at moving past the awkwardness, driving her fingers into her hair with a roll of her eyes. "He likes women. Girls. 'Dames.' 'Dollies.' 'Birds.' 'Ladies.' And he's used the most ridiculous chat lines on nearly every woman he meets. I quit introducing him to my friends when I was fourteen. 'Has anyone told you that you look like the Venus di Milo?' is *not* the kind of thing one wants to hear from one's brother directed at any woman, ever." An explosive puff of breath, and a sigh. "He got drunk here last year, and went looking for artifacts to acquire."

Adah's smirk stayed in place. If she were witty or at all prone to talk, she could just imagine her response. Why, no; I'm far more used to getting the Winged Nike; how kind of you to notice my head. And, yes, it certainly did sound like getting this Jonathan in a room with Rachel would be a delicious train wreck that Adah would revel in seeing. He sounded like Toorlexa Nebee, only British. Which, in Adah's mind, meant cleaner, but anyone could be cleaner than that man.

The smile softened a little as Adah started to think it was a shame that E Ive! couldn't read her mind like River could; so many comments going unappreciated. But such was life, and she was getting way too spoiled by River's ability to do that.

Evie shook her head, dolefully thinking of Jonathan, and sighed, hoping he was well. Well, of course he was. At least for the next ten days; she'd been home for a month, in 1917, and gotten a letter from him near the end of it. The vagaries of time travel still confused her, that he could be living out his time in Jerusalem 1917 at a right angle to hers in 2007. But in another week or so, he would be back in the No Man's Land of warfare, no way of knowing if he was well, albeit not in France. If he could just make it until Christmas...

"Will your family visit in October, do you think?" Evie wondered. She gave her locks a look of alarm. "Oh. Dear. I may have to re-dye my hair, if my mother comes. Ohhh dear."

With another quirked eyebrow for the E Ive!'s attention to her hair again, although, really, Adah would find it a little distracting, too, she answered simply this time. After pulling out a dead sister and a twin-caused deformity on the poor girl, Adah did have at least a little sympathy and consideration in holding back the reason why her simple answer was so simple.

"My mother might," was all she wrote, leaving much unsaid.

Evie couldn't discern if that was a good thing or a bad thing; Adah's insistence on writing notes in the Library, while exemplary, meant that such subtleties as tone of voice were completely missing, and her expression remained uncompromisingly stoic. Body posture didn't help either, since she was compensating for unknown injuries and whatever pain might accompany them. Frustrating. Evie supposed she should just be grateful the other girl chose to answer questions directly, or it would be like trying to communicate with the Sphinx. A latent sense of-- fun? If not exactly a typical sense of humor, did seem evident most of the time. "The place becomes rather a zoo when all of the families arrive, but amusingly so, I must admit. Between those who don't want their parents to know what they've been up to--" Which would include her this year, eep. "--and those who don't want their families to speak to their friends about what they were like before this place, it becomes a very complicated dancing-around of visitors and residents."

"And then there are some," Adah responded back, "who would just rather not deal with the crowds. Shouldn't come as a surprise that I'm not exactly good at dancing."

"I'm not either," Evie wrote back cheerfully. "Although Sokka likes my dancing. So I don't mind so much. It's more important to enjoy ourselves than be good at it, we think. We can be good at other things." She looked up from her note to whisper, "Crowds can be overwhelming, though most of the time it reminds me of home. This place really is too small."

Adah took a second to boggle at the completely missed point before writing back.

"Good size for me. Smaller than Bethlehem, larger than Kilanga. Could use fewer stairs."

Evie assessed that, and frowned again. Weren't there supposed to be elevators, and escalators, and dumb-waiters, for access to the upper levels? Wasn't that a law? Part of her brain was working this when she absently asked, "Where is Kilanga? And have you been to Israel?" And then her thoughts caught up with herself, and she said, "That must be quite annoying. You would expect, with as much magic as there is around here, that they might cut down on those sorts of obstacles."

Adah shrugged a shoulder absently. "I'm getting used to them. Kilanga is in the Congo, at the very heart of Africa. The Bethlehem I speak of is not as impressive. Bethlehem, Georgia, where I was born and mostly raised, named for the affluent birthplace of Jesus Christ, although far less likely to be churning out any manger-hidden saviors."

"Africa! Oh, lovely!" Evie looked gleeful, and caught herself, restraining herself to a setting somewhere around 'fidget', lowering her voice again. "Someday, perhaps, I'll be able to visit there-- although I have such a long list, it shall take a lifetime, so who knows when. Georgia is south of here, isn't it? I'm afraid my American geography is sadly lacking. I've only been to Washington D.C. and New York City, aside from here." She tilted her head. "You didn't like Bethlehem?"

Adah nodded slightly. "South of here, yes, and a little to the left. And Bethlehem had nothing for me but judgmental fools, so, no, I was not too terribly fond of the place. Africa was much better; difficult, but better."

"Exotic and romantic and dangerous and much more interesting than a small town in your home country, I should think." Evie took up the pen again, finding it easier to write than to say: "London was as big and as interesting as Cairo, but much more difficult for me. All these things that needed to be explained to the natives, that I'd taken for granted in Egypt." She added aloud, "And I like Fandom very much, but I'm not at all tempted to stay." She frowned. "Judgemental fools? Because of...?" She waved to Adah's shoulder and arm, not knowing how to refer to Adah's disabilities politely. Or what Adah would call politely.

Adah grinned a little at the E Ive!'s gestures and very significantly pointed to her head, tapping her forehead with her fingers before resuming the pen to write. "And that. Mostly that. If it weren't for a chance, rogue grocery receipt, I'd have been doomed to special education."

"Special education, wait, that's... They thought you were mentally handicapped?" Evie gave Adah a bewildered look and said, "That's ridiculous. And where does a grocery receipt come into it? What year *are* you from?" She tended to assume everyone was from 2007 unless they seemed utterly alien, or very definitely from a different time period; now she had to revise that assumption. Silly of her.

"1962," Adah wrote back, simply enough, and then explained the case of the receipt. "And my parents began to have second thoughts about my mental capabilities the day I had the entire week's grocery bill totaled before the cashier had even finished ringing them up..."

Evie had been rather good at math-- not exemplary, but better than many of her classmates-- but nowhere near Adah's level, it sounded like. And forty-five years; yes, a great many things had changed in the interim. But still. "Just because of your physical difficulties? Didn't the doctors set them straight? Or did they never see a specialist, after you were born?"

Adah's smirk was wry and cynical.

"Couldn't be bothered with something like that. My father is a preacher; he didn't exactly have enough money to support three daughters under two and a wife, much less spend money to send one of them through all of that. When I was born, they said I'd never be able to walk, but I did, anyway, so they must have figured I was okay. It's hemiphelgia. Only half of my brain works. And I don't talk. So everyone just assumed I was slow, until I showed them otherwise."

Evie felt a bit like being irate on Adah's behalf, but it was so long ago, and she'd adjusted so well, that it would have been a bit trite to comment on her father now. But some people really did need to be kicked, as occasion demanded.

Then she read the last sentence, and blinked. Re-read it. Then looked up from the note to tilt her head at Adah. "You don't talk? But I thought---" Oh, but wait. Wait! "You-- I thought you were being quiet because we were in a library!"

Adah's stoicism broke for a wry, wide grin.

"And here I hadn't even thought of that; at least that's one thing about the job I won't have to worry about, then."

Evie could have been as embarrassed as she'd been earlier, but really, when you'd missed something that obvious? You had to just give up. She started giggling, and grinned back at Adah widely, then giggled some more. "Oh, lord, I wonder how long I would have gone without noticing, if you hadn't mentioned it?"

If Adah was any good? The E Ive! would have never known. "I almost regret mentioning it now."

"You're terrible!" Evie exclaimed, then looked abashed, and whispered, "Just terrible!" She shook her head, and giggled once more before shaking her head, and writing down, "I leave you to the books that speak in their language, and the silence that speaks in its language, and to people more observant than I, who do not trip over their own feet or tongue or fail to wonder why their conversational partner is not conversing. And shall probably see you sometime later this week. And possibly even speak with you then, again."

Yes, Adah was terrible. And it only encouraged her when people came around to recognizing it.

"'Speak'," she wrote, smirking slightly, "in a figurative sense of the word, at any rate."

Evie stuck her tongue out at her, then wrote: Speak. Communicate. Elocution: from the Latin, locu; speak, say, word. Greek: Mythos. Logos. Arabic: Khitab (speech, formal; or correspondence). Kalima: speech (informal, to a smaller audience; or word). Evie pointed to them, writing the Latin, Greek, and Arabic words in their alphabets underneath them. It's all in how you say it. She wrinkled her nose at Adah, smiled brightly, then waved good-bye, walking backwards toward the door, and *almost* tripping.

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