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 Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2012 7:06 pm
School had begun again in earnest and there was one student in particular who was determined to pass her senior year with flying colors. Christabelle Calloway, gray hair and all, was seated in her usual spot by the window in Meadowview's school library. She had a few books strewn in front of her, ranging from essays on colonial literature to the history of World War II. A few big tests had lined themselves up nicely back-to-back in her classes and somehow, Christa thought that was karma for something she may have forgotten that she did. Or didn't do.
Either way, this was putting a serious dent in her Senshi Time, and Christa didn't like that.
Buried in her book, she didn't see the approach of blonde-on-pink-over-black and didn't hear the hop in one particular student's step. This wasn't the time, Christa would have said. She was busy. Things needed to get done. Little did she know Sirsce would neither know, nor care, and was almost Sunshine Incarnate.
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Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2012 2:45 pm
"Ooh..." Any minute now, it was all going to collapse around her.
Despite her smooth beginnings at Meadowview, she began hitting turbulent patches in her academic endeavors around a week ago - minutia, easily dismissed by the people around her - but it tugged at the corners of Sirsce's conscience. In the beginning, it was simply stumbling over her words in front of one of her teachers, and he didn't act perturbed by it, but she wondered what he thought of it. Did he think she was a scatterbrained bimbo? What if he thought she had speech impediments? He might draw the conclusion that she's socially inhibited - or worse - shy! She vividly recalled turning bright red as she pondered that conclusion, right in front of the class! There wasn't the shade of a doubt in her mind that they thought there was something wrong with her.
Around a week later, she dropped her favorite black and white mechanical pencil with a clockwork gear charm chained to the top. It arced off her desk and onto the floor, near her classmate's desk. When she leaned over and stretched as far as she could, the pencil remained tantalizingly out of reach until she lost her balance and fell out of her seat, taking her desk with her. Not only did it make her look like a klutz, but the teacher might've thought she was copying answers! It's a wonder she wasn't thrown out yet.
She sprang into the library today, hoping to brush up on some of her courses, especially that math class that she might possibly fail (again). It felt good to be proactive about her schoolwork, and today she was determined to stay on top of things. At least, that's what she thought.
Now she stood in wedged betwixt an oversized oak bookcase and a craftsman-style solid maple worktable, where a student? Teacher? Sat scrutinizing several complicated texts. Cradled in Sirsce's arms were a handful of heavy textbooks stacked upon another, weaving precariously on her spindly arms.
"Ooh..." Any minute now, it was all going to collapse around her.
The top book, a remedial geometry book with a grey cover full of shapes, petered off the edge of her stack and toppled to the floor in what felt like slow motion. The covers opened and the countless pages flapped free, only to be mercilessly creased when they hit the carpeted floor with a loud thump Sirsce flinched from the noise, causing the remainder of the books to ease out of her grasp, collapsing on the geometry text. The noise rang deafeningly through the silent library, which was bound to catch the attention of the entire room.
She winced at the noise and ducked beneath the table, hoping the narrow table legs might possibly hide her from view. However, nothing would protect her from the sharp glare of the grey-haired woman at the table.
"Ooh... I'm so sorry!" Sirsce muttered, flashing an apologetic (and bashful) smile.
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Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2012 4:12 pm
Disaster was imminent - Christa just didn't know it yet.
There she was, minding her own business, brushing up on her notes before those two big tests. She had everything planned out, spread out and perfectly aligned for maximum academic output. Or input. Some kind of put. Regardless, concentration was all but shattered when World War Three broke out in the middle of Meadowview Library. Books on geometry, history and science committed suicide one by one, leaping deftly from the arms of the one who carried them to their creased doom on the floor. Christa barely saw the blur of the person responsible for literary murder before something brushed her leg.
Okay, either a Peeping Tom or someone exceedingly weird. Really, Christa thought, things could be a great deal worse. She didn't have any bits to ogle, so to speak, so whoever was peeping was in for some disappointment. Rather than dignifying the raucous book-death with a response, the gray-haired teen lifted the book she was reading and leaned back in her chair to spy the one hiding beneath the table. Pages fluttering slightly from their graves on the floor and Christa was greeted with a bashful smile.
"Can I... help you?" she asked, eyebrows raising at the rather... unorthodox charm the young lady was exhibiting. If they were senshi, Christa would have given the girl a gold star for Unintentional Creeping.
The resident librarian came by the scene, clicked her tongue at the teen at the table and shuffled away. "Be sure to clean this up, and be quiet! This is a library!"
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Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2012 6:48 pm
Sirsce flinched at the girl's words, despite their quizzical nature. "I'm sorry!" she squeaked out, brows arching to a point of worry. "I really shouldn't have done that! I was just, there were so many books, and - oh my god, I forgot my homework!" Doom. "Oh no, and some of the pages fell out of these books!" More doom. "Ooh, I even dropped a book on your book!" There had to be some law against that - books should only touch cover-to-cover, and page-to-page is some unwritten, unholy sin.
As the girl stood, her fingers retreated into her mouth, where she nervously chewed at her fingernails, pondering where to start amidst the library carnage. Should she stack the pages? No, no, that was a terrible idea - what if they're from completely different books? They could be out of order. Even worse, they could be in order but from completely different books!
Okay, Sirsce. You can do this. Get it toge-
"... And be quiet! This is a library!" The librarian stopped by, scolding her with a cold fury that only the most bitter of old ladies could produce. Even the stern glare that punctuated her lashing emanated seething hate. Afterward, she simply trundled off, looking for more unsuspecting teens to berate.
Sirsce was practically floored by the woman's reaction. "... I'm sorry, it won't happen again." With a dismayed sigh, she stared at the mess on the ground, still lost and confused. Where was she going to start again? Oh right, the book on that woman's desk. She picked it up cautiously, flashing a sheepish smile and hoping the girl wouldn't verbally gun her down."Um, I'm so sorry about this... Oh, where are my manners? I'm Sirsce Xanthis." She realized she should extend a friendly handshake, but she hadn't a hand to spare since both were holding the history book, and she couldn't put it on the nearest shelf since it's mostly mathematics, and history had no place in mathematics, or maybe it did, since math has a history...
With one final decisive huff, she firmly set the book down on the corner of the desk and extended her hand toward the other girl proudly. A decision was made.
Oh wait, she forgot to ask the girl's name... Sigh.
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Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2012 7:24 pm
Literary gangbanging was forgiven in the elder teen's mind. Hell, if books could mate and produce other books, she would have died and gone to heaven. Or before that, tried to patent the process and regulate it in some manner and thus become a goddess among anyone who dared love the written word. Ah, progress.
But back to business.
If Christa could have gotten but a glimpse into the inner workings of the girl now known as Sirsce Xanthis, she would have been beaming. Confused heaped on indecision mated with extreme anxiety and self-defeating mannerisms. There was something decidedly adorable and Not Quite Right about this girl, which endeared her to her rather stern counterpart. Christa took up the extended hand and returned a firm shake. Her hair was nice too, she noticed. Something of a blaze of two different colors, as if Sirsce couldn't decide which one she liked better - so she picked both.
"Christa Calloway." came the returned greeting. Brown eyes peaked around the form of the other girl and noted that the Literary Troll had shuffled away for now. "What year are you, Sirsce? I don't believe I've seen you around much this year. Are you new?" The girl wore the uniform well enough. If she was new, perhaps she came from another school in uniform? One could tell the newbies to the system as they wore their not-so-designer duds like a potato sack that itched like the Dickens.
The gray haired teen would definitely have remembered someone as, well, unique as this girl, hair aside. She gave a gesture to encompass the explosion of papers in its entirety. "It's fine. Things... happen. It won't take long to clean up. Here, I'll help." Maybe bad luck just follows her. She probably opened an umbrella indoors, tripped over a black cat, fell under a ladder and knocked into about... twenty-seven full length mirrors. ...carry the two... that sounds about right.
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