Because I wonder where you are Who: Alyssa Where: The Court When: 9:30-10am
Alyssa had been pacing for a fair bit of the morning. She’d paced and paced and paced and then shifted into fox form and paced some more. Then she’d padded out of her apartment, down the stairs - making sure her reptilian landlady didn’t spot her and try and eat her - and ran around in the garden in front of the apartment block for a while. In the pouring rain. She’d spotted a mouse at one point but, after pawing at it and catching it a few times only to let it go and chase it again for a few minutes, didn’t have the heart or concentration span to dig for it after it disappeared down a hole. Instead she’d sat there, staring at the dark circle forlornly before snatching her back leg at her ear to get at a particular nasty itch. Nothing entirely distracted her from the matter at hand. Not even chasing dandelion seeds across the grass and biting at them distracted her. They just made her sneeze, though for a while biting and sneezing kept her entertained. She had even tried rolling around on her back, getting herself covered in mud as she did so, but that wasn’t much fun after a while. She was starting to get cold. Giving up, she trotted back up the stairs, dodging out of sight when other residents passed by, and nudged her way back into her apartment.
Back inside, the front door leant on and shut, she crossed the floor, sliding more than a little on the wooden floor, and wriggled herself back into a more human shape. she frowned and studied herself, nose wrinkled. She was just a bit muddy so a shower was in order, she felt. That would delay the decision for longer. With great care to avoid looking at the dirty paw prints that gave away her track across the wood, Alyssa wandered into the bathroom and showered. Soon she was back to a clean state, shrugged into her bathrobe - battered and worn from use - and settling down on the sofa, cell phone in hand. Running her hand through her dripping hair, she sucked her cheeks in. Now that she actually had someone to contact with the little device, she didn’t want to use it. But, then again, she really, really did. She couldn’t just be all medieval and wait for Mael to text her first because that wasn’t how people did things any more. She’d read articles about women being looked down on for depending on a man to do everything for them. It wasn’t a good thing to do, she had gathered.
She opened up a new message and sat there, motionless, peering at it. What sort of thing were you supposed to write? Alyssa knew she wasn’t exactly well versed in the ways of the world, or in many things, and that made it all just that bit more frustrating. In the movies she had watched - and she couldn’t afford all that many - even the confident, know all people struggled with talking to people they liked. They got tongue tied. But everything always went right in the end. Alyssa could do the tongue tied, mad blushing bit, it was the happy ending she couldn’t piece together. People were so much more complicated in real life, and she wasn’t the pillar of confidence the girls in the films were. Well, darn. She closed the message again and tossed the phone to the other end of the sofa. With a huff, she dug her elbow onto the arm rest and rested her cheek against her fist. “Real brilliant, Alyssa,” she muttered at herself. Her eyes wandered over the paw prints that led from the door to the middle of the room. Hopefully no one would notice the trail from the garden to her room. She should really clean them up. The ones in her apartment, at least. She made to get up and then stopped herself.
No, no. No more distractions. She was going to send Mael some kind of message, and she was going to send it now. It wasn’t as though she had to write something meaningful and heartfelt... Or was it? Her eyes widened and she bit her lip. Did she have to write something like that? No wait. No, she didn’t. If everything went well at lunch then maybe she would have to write something along those lines, but she didn’t know Mael very well, so she surely couldn’t be expected to write something like that now.
Another twenty minutes passed by, her hair was nearly stone dry and the little notepad text message page was still empty. She shuffled around in her seat. Now her feet were hanging over the arm rest, and her head was lying on her hand in the middle of the sofa. Why was this so hard? All she had to say was: Hey, how about we go for lunch tomorrow? Or: Hey there, just texting to make sure you’re okay. The vampire attacks are getting a little extreme, don’t you think? How about we go for lunch tomorrow? Alyssa rolled onto her back. Why couldn’t she write that? Rolling her eyes at her own stupidity she patted the area around her head for a moment before her fingers found the phone. As she started typing, the little box vibrated and a box popped up.