Mira Golob (coppeweb) wrote in invol_rpg, @ 2012-10-11 09:20:00 |
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With the occasional, absent-minded turn of the wrist, she was stirring a cup of tea; with her other hand, she was doodling. “Whatever has brought this on, darling?” said Iris, peering through a curtain of Mira’s hair. “He’s a terrible miscreant, you know, always in a lot of trouble, always running that foul mouth of his. He has no respect for ladies and their sensitivities either. You know what I heard last--” “Oh, shut up, Iris!” Mira snapped silently. It was a horrible affront to the tarantula whenever her darling mistress doled out commands by that private network. When Mira as feeling polite, which was most of the time, she made certain to speak to her pets aloud if she could, and she always asked for permission before giving them directions. But now, as the silent nudge reached across the few inches between Mira’s mind and Iris’s, the arachnid tensed and fell obediently silent. A slight spidery scowl notwithstanding, she had lost all control over her own power of speech. “Besides,” Mira went on, furiously scribbling her napkin into shreds of curly letters and lopsided hearts, “you don’t know him like I do. You don’t understand him, nobody does...” Her eyes had begun to wet, and she blinked several hundred times, as she turned the napkin over. “He’s just...different.” This she said aloud, barely above a whisper, as she traced one large, elegant O in the center of napkin. “Different.” She repeated the word, as if tasting every letter in it one at a time. “Misunderstood. Like us.” On the other side of the cafeteria, standing with a tray in his hands trying to find a place to sit, Omar Calderón needed a change. Kody had turned back into a normal person (well, a normal Kody) which meant that Omar was no longer excused from class and was now forced to see all the people he didn't want to see. He was about done with Lo, things were awkward with Kody, and even though he probably still had Mal and Sol, the constant feeling of people looking at him that he'd had all day just closed him off. He was cranky and anti-social. He'd even scowled at Toni the night before when she accidentally bumped into him, her kindness annoying him. He wanted a change. Something fresh, something uncomplicated. Something... wait. He lost his train of thought when, surveying the cafeteria for an empty table, his eyes fell on Mira Golob. The sun was shining in her hair, and Omar did a double-take, nearly dropping the tray. He had seen her before. Except, he didn't actually remember seeing her before. His mind reeled, trying to place it, but all he could find was the feeling that knew her face. Like from a dream. Was that it? His eyebrows furrowed softly, looking at Mira from across the room, her hair falling around her face as she slowly drew on a notebook. He must have seen her in a dream, but now she was here, real, and sitting alone. If good for nothing else, Omar's general attitude of not giving a shit made it easy for him to approach people since he was rarely afraid of their reaction, but he found his hands gripping the green tray a bit tighter as he walked toward her table. "Hey," he asked, behind her. "Mind if I sit here?" Her eyes snapped up, the tears that had been softly welling there formed what she hoped were pretty pools of crystal in the tear ducts. Yes, she was suddenly very aware of how she looked. She had the strangest urge to run a hand over her hair to make sure every strand was in its proper place. Was she catching the right light from the windows? Did she look too pale under the glow of the cafeteria fluorescents? How was her blouse falling just now? Instead, she straightened her spine, and batted her lashes. “N-not at all,” she stammered, feeling pathetic and angry with herself, as the words came out all faint and knotted. But she did her best to look up at him through her long, dark lashes, feeling confident that those, at least, were exemplary of her better features. She could feel something shift in Iris’s tiny spider brain, but Mira would not relinquish her hold on the arachnid’s free will just yet. She would not suffer through that humiliating beratement. “Please,” she murmured, indicating the opposite chair. Then, remembering the great O surrounded by hearts staring up from her napkin, she quickly plunked her mug of tea down on top of it. As this resulted in hot tea splashing everywhere, the action was followed by Mira becoming a very pretty shade of pink from her ears to her chin. Hurriedly setting his tray down next to her, Omar sprung into action, grabbing a handful of napkins to mop up the spill. It wasn't a huge spill, but the tea was starting to run over the table and he didn't want it to get onto her clothes. He picked up the mug and wiped under it, taking her doodled-upon napkin with him, and then mopped around it. Then his hand brushed hers. He glanced at her, noticing the color in her cheeks, then sat down, suddenly uncomfortable. Bashful, even. "There," he told her, "and here's another napkin." He turned to his food and picked up a fork, started to put it into his food, took it out, paused, then looked back over at her. "I'm Omar." “Yes,” she nodded. She knew who he was. Truth be told, the whole school must have known who he was; but, more importantly, he was sitting next to her. Next to her! “I’m Mira,” she smiled, beginning to feel the tension ease, and her heart went back to making all its beats again. He was actually sitting next to her. “Mira Golob.” With a nod of her head, she had thanked him for the napkin, and with another flutter of eyelash, she boldly forced herself to meet his deep, captivating eyes. They were dark, wild, the windows to some beautiful, mysterious soul that, in that moment, was hers and hers alone to gaze into. He was sitting next to her, she thought, and in her excited state, she had released her hold on Iris’s brain. “Would you look at you two,” the tarantula sputtered, as she skittered down Mira’s arm and came to rest on the table between them. “A pair of lovesick fruit flies.” It took a moment for Omar to even notice the tarantula on the table in front of him, so intent was he on looking into Mira's eyes. He rarely looked into a girl's eyes, opting instead to stare at her chest or, if necessary, someplace near the eyes that let him avoid the connection that came with eye contact. Mira's eyes though were like a treasure hidden in plain sight. He might not have noticed them immediately, but once his own eyes found them, he could barely believe the beauty. When he did finally notice the spider, he lurched back suddenly. "Oh," and oh was right. He'd heard of a girl with spiders, and finally it made sense why she was sitting alone. People probably couldn't look past that. Well, Omar could. He would and he could. He wasn't afraid of some spider, especially a tarantula. They had plenty of those in Puerto Rico. He had probably killed a number of them, not that he would ever think of killing this one. "Sorry - just shocked." He looked at the spider closer. He hadn't been able to hear Iris, of course, but it almost looked like she was looking at Omar. "Nice to meet you," he said to the tarantula. Then, looking back into Mira's warm eyes, "and you too, Mira Golob." Mira was more than used to people jumping and running away at the sight of Iris and her other pets. It was true that many of her fellow students, especially her teammates, had seemed to become used to the spiders, even a few were friendly with them. Still, friends like Jimmy and Leigh were few and far between. The usual reaction involved a lot of stammering or backing away or, in the tragic case of Edith, a total loss of control. Such things had hardened Mira to the cruelties and misunderstandings the student body so often leveled at her eight-legged friends. But to say that she hadn’t blanched ever so slightly at Omar’s surprised reaction to the sudden appearance of Iris would not be entirely true. She had, almost by instinct, steeled herself for the inevitable moment when he would finally ran away forever. His apology turned her to butter. And, when he spoke to Iris such politeness, she melted. “Pleasure’s all mine,” Iris drawled, lazily wending her way through the flatware and napkins and the remnants of spilled tea. “If it’s alright with you, darling, I think I’ll just sit over here. Alone. Where I won’t be anymore trouble to you.” With one final harumph, she was silent. “You too,” Mira said, ignoring the tarantula, her breath caught in her throat as he let her linger in his eyes. “It is so nice to have company. And such nice company too.” While Omar wasn't entirely sure he would be considered nice company by many parties, he wasn't going to try and dissuade her. Not when she seemed to be able to tolerate him. Possibly more than tolerate him, because she was looking at him and he couldn't ignore the slight flush across her face. The coy looks. The way her lips... "Yeah, you too." He stabbed his fork into a piece of General Tso's Chicken and shoved it into his mouth, trying to stop thinking about her even as she sat right next to him. It had been so long since he felt a little nervous around a girl - Krystal had went after him and Lo was only a friend. Well, she had been, though he was done with her shit now. There had been a few other girls, but mostly drunken hookups or someone he knew was into him first. Not this situation, where he liked someone out of his league. When he liked someone and had no clue why they should like him back. But damn, the way she looked at him. He shoved another bite of food into his mouth to get his mind off that gaze, and then another, scarfing nearly the entire plate in just a few gigantic bites. Finally, after most of his chicken was gone, he wiped his lips and looked back up at her. "Can I get your number?" “You humans,” Iris had been saying, as she watched the lunch guest (uninvited, as far as she was concerned) shovel meat into his inelegant mouth, “no sense of refinement.” Mira ignored her. In fact, she scarcely even heard her over the sound of her own heart pounding in her throat. To distract herself from the funny flip-flop feeling in her stomach, Mira leaned over her own tray and jabbed at a few leaves of lettuce rather enthusiastically with her fork. She felt fairly certain that if she put another bite of food into her mouth it would come skittering back up her throat and land in Omar’s lap. And that was certainly the last thing she wanted. No, the only thing she wanted right now was to be alone with Omar, and to look into his eyes some more. Perhaps touch his forearm. She found she didn’t even like Iris sitting there watching them, which was an unusual feeling for Mira, and she didn’t quite know what to do with it. “Yes, please,” she said without thinking, then added rather hastily, “That is, if you will promise to text me.” There, that was flirting properly, wasn’t it? A small smirk spread over Omar's mouth and he gave her a nod. "Definitely," he told her, pulling his phone out of the pocket of his leather jacket. He fumbled with it a moment before finally remembering how to add a number, then typed in "Pretty Mira" before handing it to her. Her blush deepened when she saw the moniker, but she said nothing. She added her number with an almost elegant deftness of hand, and turned the phone back over to its owner without meeting his gaze. She felt suddenly shy again. “I do not want that boy calling at all hours of the night,” said Iris, taking a stroll up Mira’s opposite arm, and curling up on her shoulder once more. “You know, we tarantulas don’t like our mates to be quite so...overgrown. But then you are small for a female, I imagine it must be difficult for you to find males who aren’t bigger than you.” Oh, she did wish the tarantula would leave them alone. “You are very bold,” she said with a sly smile, “to ask for my number so plainly. But I am glad you did.” Omar shrugged. "Gotta be bold or I'd miss out talking to you. Couldn't have that." He looked at her again, the sunlight still in her hair, her eyes still wide and bright. It was almost funny how he asked for a change and now, right in front of him, was someone new. Someone who, just maybe, could give him a chance without so many preconceived notions about him. He wasn't sure, but there was already a connection that was clear. So maybe he could give it a chance. "Should go now," he said, getting up, "but I'll definitely text you, pretty Mira." |