fandomhigh | Library [Sunday, January 13]

"Read it backwards?" Lee asked, eyes going down to the line she was pointing at. "That's kind of awkward, isn't it?"

Frowning slightly, Adah tilted her head and regarded the Eel with a look of slight confusion. She'd been reading like that since she could read, so the idea of anyone finding it awkward was difficult for her to process. "No more so than reading it forwards," she reasoned. "Or forwards five times in a row."

"Maybe I'm doing it wrong," Lee said and tried reading it backwards. It felt weird but he'd never done it before. "Maybe I need to get used to it?"

"Maybe," Adah allowed, although a little skeptically. "I suppose it might be a bit like a different language; it takes a while before that starts to feel comfortable, too..." Her voice sort of trailed off a little the more she spoke, because she was realizing that they were slightly empty. New languages were awkward, at first, but they started, for her, to feel comfortable after about a day of listening. She gave the Eel a light, almost apologetic smile. She couldn't help it, really; it was just that the linguistic genius half of her brain seemed to be fully functional.

And then, suddenly, she quoted, "Chickens white, the beside water rain, with glazed barrow. Wheel, red, a upon depends much. So?"

She gave a smile. "William Carlos Williams, backwards. Reading his name backwards doesn't make any difference, which I why I've always liked his name. But reading his poem backwards changes it entire, from a poem about significance to one about apathy."

Lee listened quietly, smiled warmly as she talked and said, "You should read to me sometime. Backwards."

Adah smiled lightly back at the suggestion. It would have to be backwards, she decided, since it would be such a complete reversal, like the other side of the looking glass. "I'd probably lose my voice before I got halfway," she commented, but note the subtle fact that it was a comment, completely lacking in a refusal.

"And then I'd take the book and start reading to you," he offered, smiling at her. "We can take turns. I'd like to hear you read to me."

"It would only be fair," Adah reasoned, mostly to herself and mostly playfully, "I guess, to make up for all the times you read to me." She looked him calculatingly for a moment before she rounded off her comment with her conclusion. "You're weird." It was the only conclusion that could be reached in light of someone who actually wanted to hear her talk.

"Only a little," he said, making a face at her. He flipped the book closed and pushed it aside. "Not that weird. You're weird too."

"I never claimed not to be," Adah pointed out with a smirk and a light shake of her head. "I know I am. But I have an excuse. I suppose you could ride easily on that whole 'other planet' excuse, but I think we discredited its validity last week, considering your distinct lack of extra appendages or features."

"So, my excuse is that I have no excuse," Lee decided. "I don't have a reason to be weird, I just am weird."

He nodded and then extended his hand towards her, half smile on his face. "Hello, Lee Adama. And I'm weird. Sounds good together, doesn't it?"

"Quite," Adah said, nodding her head with an impressed sort of expression. Then, the expression twisted slightly, eyes dragging toward her left and her mouth forming a firm line of concentration and she tried to focus on the limp part of her body. She got, for her brief and concentrated efforts, a sharp jerk of her right elbow, and a sigh, as she reached over with her left to bend the right in a fashion that would be able to take the offered hand. Her fingers, however, did manage to lightly close around his hand. "Nice to meet you. Ecirp Nelle Hada, and, wouldn't you know, I happen to like weird men."

"Lucky for me," he said, shaking her hand gently, "that I happen to be weird. Guess you like me, huh?"

"You guess correctly," Adah assured him with a light nod of her head.

"And here I thought it was my dashing good looks," he said, flicking a hand through his hair very dramatically.

"Looks fade," Adah reminded him, "but oddities usually only increase with age."

"Are you saying I'm going to get weirder?" Lee asked, amused.

With a short laugh, Adah bobbed her head. "If," she said, "you're lucky."

"Oh, so you're saying I could just get boring?" Lee asked, still amused.

"It's entirely possible," Adah admitted. "It goes two ways: the path of the soulless responsible adult or the path of the crazy cat lady. It's a spectrum, like light."

"What if I don't want to be either one of those?" Lee asked. "What if I wanna be something different?"

"Like I said," Adah explained, "it's a spectrum. There are a range of things long the way, leaning toward one end or the other. But, out of curiosity, what do you want to be? And I can tell you where it lies on the spectrum."

"Hm. You know, I really don't know what I wanna be right now," Lee admitted. "I don't wanna be my father but I want to do big things, good things."

Adah's head tilted slightly. "You and me both," she muttered with a little bit of leaking dissent that made her sigh. "They do say genius and insanity are pretty good friends, if not roommates, so I think you can still be on the crazy catlady path and still do important things."

"You just want me to be crazy," he teased. "I can be crazy and weird."

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