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 Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2008 7:19 pm
Georgina had received something out of the ordinary in her evening post.
She had found the envelope with no return-address between the electric bill and a postcard from Perr, who was on vacation in the tropics with his newest boyfriend. She'd dropped the rest of her mail onto the foyer table and ripped open the mysterious letter, which smelled heavily of perfume, and mumbled pieces of it to herself as she read aloud.
"According to our technology... Love life sucks... What do those letters mean?" mumbled Georgina. Enclosed with the short note was a sort of survey, with a note at the top imploring her to please, be honest. Georgina raised her eyebrows and exhaled heavily.
"Wot's that?" said a soft tenor voice from just over her shoulder that was accompanied by a considerable shadow; Ollie in all his gigantic pinkness was leaning over her, but with minimal reading capabilities he wasn't able to comprehend the writing. Georgina jumped, clapping the letter to her bosom, then glared up at him with a faint flush to her cheeks.
"Don't scare me like that! It's just a letter..." she said, glancing down at it again. The Roman numerals threw her off a bit--did the X mean five, or did the V? Ollie whined insistently. He disliked having things kept from him.
"Why don't you go watch television? I'm sure Blue's Clues is on," Georgina said, sort of imploring, hoping she'd be able to make a decision in peace. Blue's Clues was Ollie's favorite program--bless him, Georgina thought, as she recognized his thinking expression--and it seemed to work. He nodded, smiling in his own dim way, and squeezed his way through the front hallway into the living room. Relieved, she sighed to herself and scudded her way to the kitchen, grabbing a pen from the old jam jar full of writing utensils she kept on the part of the counter closest to the door. She sat down at the kitchen table, pen in one hand and questionnaire in the other as the sound of one of the children's channels filtered in through the living room. The whole concept of this mystery dating service seemed like a scam, but it didn't ask for any credit card information or money or anything. Just personal stuff. And Lord knew how her love life had been going recently...
"Why the hell not?" Georgina asked nobody in particular, and began to fill out the form.
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Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 6:14 pm
The next letter from the dating service was not as sweet-smelling or carefully packaged, which made Georgina a little hesitant to open it. She retreated to her bedroom to read it, since she didn't want Ollie looking over her shoulder, and plopped on her bed before messily ripping the envelope. Inside were three profiles with accompanying photographs, all of them from men. Interesting men. Georgina made a soft groaning sound in the back of her throat, wondering what she had gotten herself into, and started to read.
To be sure she wasn't imagining things, she had to read a few of the profiles twice; dragon, merman, and elf sounded like things from her tattered book of mythology instead of people who would possibly court her. Georgina shook her head. She wasn't in any position to be picky, and squeezed her knees together self-consciously before resorting to the old picking game: eenie, meenie, mynie, mo. The mo landed on the one named Greloren, the half-elf.
Businesslike, but still with a flutter of stomach-bound butterflies, Georgina grabbed a pen and the notepad from her nightstand, which mostly had idle doodles and vague details from previous dreams. She assured herself that this other person was probably as nervous as she was, and started to write.
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Posted: Sun May 18, 2008 1:03 am
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Posted: Sun May 18, 2008 1:15 am
Another month had brought another letter from the dating agency, and another date. Georgina came home in tears, not big dramatic wailing but a disquieting series of stifled sobs that came in intervals of several minutes. She refused Ollie's offer of a hug when he saw her crying, and laid on the couch and did not move after that. There was no crying during the night either, not a peep, though the way she burrowed in the cushions concerned Aristotle, the cat-lizard, who was as perceptive as Ollie was dull.
She slept in the same dress she'd worn for the date, and come morning she ate a slice of bread before returning to her spot and dozing some more. Aristotle, the only one awake since Ollie slept a good 14 hours a day, trotted up to the couch and nosed her hand, which was dangling over the side. He got no response besides a twitch of her fingers and chirped in annoyance, then busily etched some letters in the varnish of the living room's wood floor; he would have been scolded any other day, but Georgina made no move to stop him. This was unusual, since keeping Aristotle from scratching up everything in his efforts to get attention was Georgina's holy crusade.
'You sad' said the message in the floor, and she finally looked up, read it, and snorted. "What made you think that? Twice I've tried this horrible dating game, and twice failed. Second time was my fault. All my fault." She ran a hand over her face, groaning. "I'm not cut out for this..."
'Others out there' came Aristotle's next scribble, a little slower than the last because he had some trouble remembering how to spell the word out. "It's not that easy. Go away," said Georgina testily, and she rolled over with a rustle of fabric from her dress. "And I'll have to re-varnish the floor, too, when I can be bothered... Thank you," she added, dripping sarcasm. The cat-lizard wisely slunk off to go hunt the mice that nested in the grandfather clock, before the moody woman had a chance to throw something at him.
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Posted: Sun May 18, 2008 1:43 am
Georgina broke out of her pathetic little funk, which was beginning to become palpable, when Ollie speared a letter from the mail bin on one claw and shouted, "There's a letter for you! It's from some man named Dau--" She'd come racing in before he got a chance to open it and snatched it from him. She tore it open, biting her lip in dread that it would be an admonishing letter on how horribly she behaved, and she didn't bother moving when Ollie tried to look over her shoulder as she read. To be sure she wasn't imagining it, she read it three times.
"Izzat the guy that made you cry?" said Ollie, narrowing his blue eye, then his brown eye angrily. There was a silence, then she shook her head, all heartbreak forgotten in the face of a tentative hope. Better than nothing. So much better. "It doesn't matter. I need to write him back," she murmured, and drifted into the kitchen to find a pen and some paper.
Ollie yelled after her, "When you're done wif that, take a shower? Pleeeeease?" Georgina didn't reply, but took it into account, then sucked on the end of her plain ballpoint pen as she thought of what on earth she could say. An idea came after a moment, and she started to write. Her penmanship was a loopy scrawl, and the only paper she could find was some yellow lined stuff from a notepad that she had been using to make grocery lists with recently.
Quote: Dear Andrew Daub,
I want to thank you for writing to me at all. I accept your apology wholeheartedly, and I really want to say I'm sorry for telling you something like I did so soon after meeting you, especially since you have your own woes to worry about. I shouldn't burden you with my own, though it wasn't intentional, I just... I don't know what I was thinking. I guess I wanted to get it off my chest and you were in the line of fire.
Since I remind you of things you'd not wish to remember, I won't ask to meet you again, because I don't want to be any more of a nuisance than I've already proved to be. I enjoyed our rendezvous, up to the incident, and just know that I think your letter was beautiful, and you're wonderful. You'll probably make a worthier girl than me very happy.
- Georgina
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Posted: Mon May 19, 2008 7:36 pm
The letter was sent, life resumed, and Georgina was acting almost normal. Around other people, anyhow; it was a slow day in the antique shop when Perr, who had a bad habit of inviting himself in, found her slumped across the counter by the register, face hidden in her arms. The huldra-halfsie stood in front of her for a moment, arms crossed.
"Even when you're bored, you don't sleep on the counter. What's wrong with you?" asked Perr, bold as ever, and when Georgina offered no reply, he slammed his hands down on the countertop. She yelped and started up into a sitting position, glasses askew, then frowned at him angrily but wordlessly.
"Ollie told me yesterday when I dropped by, about the date thing... Are you upset over that?" he said, trying a more gentle approach, since that usually worked with her. When Georgina bowed her head sheepishly, he inserted his index fingers in the holes on either side of her cranium and levered her so their eyes met. She tried to jerk away, as this exercise always unnerved her, but Perr held her fast. He'd had lots of practice, since this was a guaranteed way to get her to pay attention.
"Answer me. You wrote him back, right? Did you say you liked him? It's obvious, if he's got you so worked up," he said firmly, blue eyes narrowed. Georgina faltered.
"I... I told him I didn't mean to be a bother, and he-he'll make some other girl hap--"
"What?! This guy rejects you and that affects you enough to send you into a total depression and then he writes you back like one of those gentlemen in books you go moony over and you just let him go like that?" he cried, and released her at last. She drew away and rubbed her head, but nodded after she felt him staring.
"What else could I do? I told him about what happened and he freaked out! He literally cut and ran! Fat chance he'd ever see me again of his own free will," she retorted, settling back into her slouch over the store counter. Perr massaged his temples, tail lashing.
"Okay, first, you are officially retarded at romance," he said, and Georgina visibly wilted. "And second, you need to get that b*****d's attention again. Write another letter! Tell him you'll settle for a one-night stand!"
"Perr!"
"Okay, okay, well, maybe that's a little overkill," he admitted, wringing his hands, "But you shouldn't just give up like that after making a mistake, even if it was a bad one. I'll have to take it upon myself to become your... your love guru." He felt obligated to pose dramatically, which he did, hands on his hips and his gaze off in the distance like some sort of superhero.
She stared at him, incredulous. "Are you serious? You're in no position to be handing out advice, you can't keep anybody around you for more than a month." Whether it was with male or female, she knew Perr's track record was of romances that were fast and intense and fizzled out quickly, like fireworks. This was not a lifestyle she wanted to lead in the least.
"It's me, not them," he explained as he dropped his pose, "I live for the high of first love. The slowness of steady love, that's boring, so I let them go after my favorite part wears off. But this isn't about me! This is about you, and your quest for that steady love. Go write to the man who made you cry." Perr smacked a fist against his palm, trying to seem determined so it would rub off on her.
"That was the worst motivational speech I've ever heard," Georgina said flatly, "But put the closed sign on the shop so nobody comes in. You have a point."
"Much better!" cried Perr with ebullience, and he darted over to do as told while the girl vanished into the back room. "Maybe you'll be a decent love guru after all," he said to himself, flipping the sign that hung in the window by an old rocking horse from OPEN to CLOSED.
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Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 9:08 pm
Daub Dear Georgina,
Please don't consider this a rejection, you are a very lovely girl and not a nuisance. You very much deserve to find a person worthy of your affection. I simply do not think I am at this time capable of providing you with what you need. Perhaps in a few months the timing would be better. For the moment, I think it would be best that we left it at that and continued our individual searches.
Sincerely,
Daub
There was the sound of furious scribbling to be heard from Georgina's kitchen. This 'letter tag' was getting tedious; Perr was still unsure why, if this strange pair seemed so eager to contact one another with such various bad news, they hadn't just exchanged phone numbers and ranted back and forth audibly instead of by post. The halfsie had been charged with supervising Ollie this afternoon while Georgina minded her shop, and then she'd extended his sentence after getting that last letter. This wasn't so bad, since Ollie mostly wanted to watch his DVD of the last season of Blue's Clues to the point where Perr wondered when the disk would wear out. The big pink lump himself had fallen asleep in front of the living room television while Steve pondered musically in the Thinking Chair, and Perr almost wanted to get up and turn it off but he was hesitant to risk Ollie waking up and pitching a tantrum.
"You okay in there, Georgie?" he said over Steve's triumphant ditty of solving the puzzle. The scribbling stopped. "I'm fine! I'm doing a purge here!" This seemed a lot better than her moping, so he let it drop for a moment. The sound of writing resumed, and Ollie snorted in his sleep fitfully.
After a moment's thought, Perr got up from the armchair he had settled into for the sake of dozing and treating the television as white noise, and he meandered into the kitchen in search of a drink (alcoholic or non, though Georgina had very little of the former in her house). She was sitting at the kitchen table, crumpled bits of paper all around her, and a half-shredded envelope bore the address of the man who'd rejected her that fateful Thursday. Before checking the fridge, he watched her stop after getting halfway through a paragraph, skim it, then ball it into a tight round wad and toss it among the other subpar letters.
"You should've done this with your last letter. He probably thinks you're neurotic, with all those scribbled out bits," Perr observed sagely. Georgina looked up from her newest paper, then shrugged and started writing again. "His fault for making assumptions. I'm not going to let him wink out of my life with some untrue ideas about me. He seems determined to dump me off under all those manners, I might as well set him straight," she replied, some angry venom in her voice. Perr raised his eyebrows, then tugged the fridge door open and pushed aside a carton of orange juice in search of some booze.
"Hell hath no fury..." he said quietly, finding nothing conclusive towards the possible concocting of a Screwdriver and growling in slight vexation.
"Damn straight," said Georgina, signing her name with a flourish, and she stuffed the letter into its envelope impatiently. She held it out over the table. "Now, you go mail it."
"Why me? This is your disaster of a romance," he scoffed, then stood up straight and bumped the fridge shut with his hip.
"You're the one who got my hopes up. I think you at least owe me that much," she replied briskly, and flicked the letter back and forth. In the optimal situation, she could have yelled at him for getting involved, but after many other shouting matches, it was obvious that berating Perr would have little to no effect on his behavior. They both knew this. He opened his mouth to protest, then snatched the thing out of her hands and slipped off to go out to the mailbox. Georgina looked triumphant, and with the side of one arm she swiped the letters (both her rejects and the one from Daub) into the trash can she'd stationed by the table.
Georgina To Daub:
When I received your last letter, I was a little sad, and I wasn't surprised, but then I got annoyed. You're treating me like some delicate little flower who's on the verge of offing herself every time she stubs her toe, sugar-coating everything and hiding behind compliments, and while I appreciate your concern, I want to correct you on that. I wouldn't have told you what I did if I wasn't comfortable with the event and if I hadn't moved on from that phase of my life, and I'm sorry that I assumed you would immediately accept it and we could proceed. I'm disappointed, but I'm quite capable of moving past this and in no danger of committing suicide in the foreseeable future.
Hoping this clarifies things, and that you are well,
Georgina
"And that should be the end of that."
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Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 7:50 pm
Georgina was chopping up carrots for dinner's vegetable soup when Perr came up behind her and tapped her on the shoulder. She nearly sliced off her finger and dropped the knife, then whirled to glare at him. "This better be good." He held up one hand, smiling ingratiatingly.
"I've got something for you!" said the huldra-halfsie, completely ignoring the fact that she'd picked up the knife again. In his other hand was a small object, about the size of a peach pit. He handed it to her, and after a second's scrutiny Georgina accepted it and blinked in surprise. It was a smooth but a bit lumpy oval, pale and opaque and iridescent. Perr looked smug when she glanced back at him, incredulous.
"You got me a bridge orb? Why? These things are illegal, I'd get in trouble if anyone caught me carting it around," said Georgina after a minute, folding her hand around the small object anyways. He shoved his hands in his pockets and shrugged.
"I figured that if your next date, and don't tell me you won't try again because you should, has some vision problems, just let him hold that and then take it back when you part ways. He'll see you when he needs to," said Perr, swishing his tail from side to side and looking pleased with himself. "You didn't even have to ask me."
"Okay, thank you, but how'd you... Eh... Never mind..." Georgina could hazard a guess as to his means of acquiring the thing--the one talent of Perr's was huldra magic, the power of supernatural seduction, and one lonely and/or negligent inventor meant he could either steal one or wheedle it away. She grimaced, trying to clear the image out of her head, and shoved the bridge orb in her pocket hastily before setting the knife down on the cutting block.
Later, when the soup was simmering and Perr had gone off to wherever he spent the nights (she'd never figured out where he went when he wasn't in her house), Georgina took the bridge orb out of her pocket and held it up to the yellowish glow of the kitchen light fixture. It was a gobbet of cheap plastic, hollow and filled with some sort of liquid that gave it its color, not made of any charismatic material like glass or solidified light, but even cheap plastic could be something important.
The next day, Georgina received one last letter from the dating agency, something about a man named Harriet, and with the resolve that this would be the last time she'd attempt one of these fiascoes, she went to meet him with the bridge orb in hand.
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