fandomhigh | Library [Sunday, October 28]

He's at the desk now, doodling instead of writing. Productive, really.

And, oh, look who decided to limp in and make an appearance. Adah, of course, had her usual, pre-scribed greeting ready to be handed over, but she thought she might make the effort to lean over and see what the Eel was doodling before getting right to the conversation, assuming the usual length of her traverse toward the desk hadn't given him sufficient time to prevent such peeking.

The doodles today consisted of crudely drawn Vipers, a house in the middle of an empty field with one flower and random shapes. Creativity was so his middle name.

He didn't look up immediately, content to try and get the Viper's wing length right so she had plenty of time to peek.

Adah wondered, briefly, as she took in little sketches, if she should have brought some crayons. Noticing him still drawing, she didn't want to be too much of a distraction by forcing another paper under his eyes, so she just spoke, quietly, a simple, barely-whispered, "Hi."

"Hi there," he said, smiling immediately and looking up, the doodle forgotten. "I'm glad to see you. Welcome to the library."

Adah smirked a little; how nice to be welcomed to a place she felt she was practically already living in this week. Still, now that the Eel was willing to take a break from his masterpieces of artistic contribution, she had, for him, a notebook, drawn from her bag and settled between them on the desk.

"I actually came in for books today," she had written earlier this morning before preparing for the state of movement, "but I don't think they're going anywhere. How are you?"

"I'm good," he said, dropping his pen and leaning against the desk. "If the books try to go anywhere, I'll yell at them for you. How are you doing? Good weekend?"

Adah's head tilted a little at her notebook as she tried to think of how best to answer a question like that, all things considered, tucking her hair behind her ear before reaching for her pen with a decision.

"It was an interesting weekend, to say the least; the artist kid who likes my roommate still needed to finish the room. Because he invaded it, then, I went and spent some time with River. When I got back the next day, I discovered half my room to be descended into jungle. This is strange because it made me feel homesick for a place that was only home for three years, so I left in favor of a ridiculous book and talked a bit with a giant blue fellow covered in hair. Which brings me to today, where I'll eventually satiate the homesickness with some books on African viruses and diseases to either make me glad I'm not there to catch them, or miss it even more since I'm not there to observe them at work."

"And how was yours?"

"Not as filled as yours," he said, smiling again. "Took a walk yesterday, spent some time thinking about stuff, took a nap, read a book."

He shrugged sheepishly.

"I think I'm kind of boring. I'm sorry you're homesick. If I can help, let me know."

"Not boring at all," Adah wrote in her best teasing penmanship. "Then again, perhaps you're just lucky that I find walking to be incredibly impressive. I think the homesickness comes from the fact that the painting on the wall just reminds me of how I could get leave the hut in the morning, get lost among the fifty million levels of the jungle all day and, usually, no one would even notice that I was gone. If I tried, I'm sure I could make it so that I could stay in my room and no one would realize I was there, but it still lacks the sounds, the smell, the depth and the feel, you know?"

She frowned a little at the paragraph before sliding it back toward the Eel. Dog, she talked a lot...

"Thank you," he said, blushing a little before falling quiet. "I get that. And it's not the same, when you close your eyes, try to make it feel like you're home. It's not as...shiny, I guess. Not as bright."

He half smiled and ducked his head.

"I didn't have what you had back where I'm from. I could leave, get lost in the city but my mother would notice I was gone or my brother would. I didn't think that I'd be missed but I guess I was. There was a place I used to go to back home. It was quiet, still. There was a lake. I don't think there were any fish but I'd go there and the sun would start going down and it'd make the lake this eerie orange color. It was bright, almost glowing and I could close my eyes and it would be warm and quiet. It was...it was nice."

Adah smiled a little, closing her eyes as the Eel slipped into his description so she could better imagine it, picture it, and also feeling relatively glad that he seemed just as inclined to talk as she was today. It balanced things out, made her feel not so bad. It did sound nice; for all the things the Congo had to offer, there was nothing quite like that. All the water was mud and churned with ill intent, so it was nice to just sit there for a moment and try to imagine something new based on the Eel's simple descriptions, even though she had a feeling that her mind's eye altered it far from the reality. Didn't seem to matter, though.

After a brief silence to let himself remember that place, he leaned a little heavier on the desk, rubbed a hand across the back of his neck and sighed.

"Hmmm. I guess I can get kind of homesick too," he admitted quietly. "For all the things I wanted to leave behind, some things sneak up on me and realize it wasn't all bad."

Still smiling a bit wryly at his comments, Adah opened her eyes slowly from the imagining, to pick up her pen again.

"Strange how that works, isn't it? We left a lot of things behind in Africa; I suspect that why I want to go back, as if to try to carry them out, as if being somehow more capable to do so now than I was then...And then I remember that the only time it really came to light that I had been wandering off was when a bushback was found ripped to pieces by a lion near the village and everyone thought it was actually me. They thought I was dead and then, lo, out of the darkness, I emerged, unharmed and whole. I had no idea at the time that I would have been seconds away from that fate if the wind hadn't shifted at just the right moment, and I remember that and I remember how miraculous it really is that I was able to carry even just myself out of there. You'd think that would change my mind about missing it, but some things just get under your skin, like a virus, and refuse to leave no matter how hard you scratch to get it out."

"I'm glad you were all right," he said quietly, smiling just a little. "I don't...there's nothing really similar to that feeling back on Caprica, never knowing if you're in danger or not. There's crime, sure, but my family was almost insulated from that. A byproduct of the last name, I guess."

It didn't sound that bitter.

"There was a major war, before I was born, that my father fought in. The people of my universe created something and, after years of slavery, the creation rebelled. Went to war with the humans. Lasted for nearly 13 years, that war did. My father made it out alive, obviously. It ended after a lot of death. An armistice."

Adah was quiet for a moment, head tilted as she listened still well after the Eel had finished speaking, lips pressed slightly together.

"It's impossible for me to feel like our fathers are terribly similar," she wrote when she'd made her decision on what to say. "There was a major war before I was born, too. In fact, the year I was born was the year it ended. Not because of something created, but of something already there, the consistent need for men on this planet to need to play with guns and lives. My father made it out alive, obviously. It ended after a lot of death...and then there was the Congo, a war there as well, but not many people even knew about that one. The other one was expansive enough to involve the whole world, so everyone cared. This one involved a small scrap of land that hardly anyone cared about, so it didn't get nearly as much press coverage."

Adah frown again as she looked over her words before passing them over, giving her the chance to add.

"I'm just a bright merry ball of sunshine today, aren't I?"

Surprised into laughter at her last sentence, he grinned and shook his head.

"You always make my day brighter," he said, trying to lighten the mood by both putting a hand over his heart and fluttering his eyelashes at her.

Keeping herself from rolling her eyes, but just barely, Adah leaned in with a smirk to write, "If I'd known my comment would have launched that whole thing, I would have kept it to myself, and instead talked about the fact that, in the Congo, there are snakes big enough to swallow a man alive, whole, so that you're still cognizant and aware of the fact that you're slowly being digested."

"Well, damn," Lee said, eyes wide. "That's...impressive. Caprica had...mice. They didn't eat people, though. At least, not the ones I'd seen. Will you go back? To the Congo? After you're done here."

Adah grinned a little at the wide-eyed expression, feeling accomplished in having impressed him. "After medical school, I might," she wrote. "My sisters are still there. Well, in Africa, anyway. With the war, I'm not sure if the Congo will still be the Congo by then, and we're actually not sure exactly where Leah is at the moment. My mother had heard from Rachel, though; she's in Johannesburg, last we heard, which is actually in South Africa, a good deal away."

He nodded and said, "I'll probably end up going back to Caprica when I'm finished here, if not sooner. Finish military school, join the Colonial Fleet and live in my father's shadow."

He shrugged, smiling a little.

"Could be worse. I mean, I could be getting eaten by a snake, right? What kind of medicine are you going to study?"

"Don't dispense the dream so quickly," Adah grinned as she wrote. "You might still be eaten by a snake yet. And I'm noticing a distinct lack of modeling in that plan; how disappointing to see such raw talent go to waste. As for me, I fully intend to have my name repeated a multitude of times in medical journals for my groundbreaking work in the field of virology, studying viruses and the diseases they cause until I know every single one of them as well as I know the back of my left hand."

He's doing some wandering now, drifting through the aisles.

Around all day yay!

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Lunch

Afternoon

OOC