Welcome to Gaia! ::

It had been a LONG day, and Seren was exhausted. She had been up an hour earlier then usual because ONE of her tutoring students was ridiculous and demanded, last minute, an hour long session before their BIG test. She had tried to point out all the evidence of burnout caused by over cramming, that doing study RIGHT before a test could cause panic attack related problems like forgetting things at the last minute, and so on. The overly insistent student had, in fact, INSISTED. Seren had demanded double her normal hourly fee, AND made him sign a contract stating he had been warned about the fact that last minute cramming was a bad idea, and given the reasons why and that he would not try to blame HER if it caused him problems.

So she had gone to school, with all of a muffin and one cup of coffee as her main meal, and a single sandwich for lunch because she did not have time for more. She had done her day's classes. She had done her normal tutoring. She had been yelled at by the idiot that afternoon, until she pointed out that he was violating the contract and she would go to his coach and warn them she wouldn't work with anymore of the team if he kept this up. She had ridden the bus home. She was now exhausted as hell, and barely on her own two feet.

She noticed the package sitting on the porch, and picked it up to bring inside and put into whoever it was for's mail basket. She didn't bother to look at the address, yet, as she was unlocking the door. Once she was inside, she hung her coat up on her hook in the hall, then went to the mail baskets. She glanced in hers, grabbed out the small stack of mostly junk mail, before she glanced at the package's address. When she saw her own name on the little box, she stared in disbelief. Why was there a package for her? Did Nate send her a surprise present? Was it a mistake? She was very confused by the box, and finally, after trying to figure out what the hell was going on for several minutes, she gave up and carried it, along with the rest of her things, up to her bedroom.

She unlocked her door, and set the package on her little side table she kept next to the door, before divesting herself of her purse, her shoes, and other things she did not need in her room, while staring at the box the entire time she was doing so. She reviewed all of her other mail, putting the junk into the recycling, and tucking the two bills into her bill-folder, for when she did her payments day, and read the postcard from her brother. She finally pinned that to a cork board that had a small collection of them, and only THEN did she let herself turn back to the small box.

She took a deep breath, still eyeing it suspiciously. The lack of an actual return address bothered her... Had one of... them decided to hunt out where she lived these days and decided to try to connect, AGAIN, despite her reaction the last time they tried this? She picked it up slowly, and moved over to her couch, and settled down. She had a small pair of scissors on her cheap little coffee table, so she picked them up, and used them to carefully open the package, eyes suspicious as she did. Nothing seemed to leak out, and there was no strange scents, so she opened it all the way, and peered inside.

A hint of orange, and a twist of brown, all with the gloss of porcelain, were what she spotted inside. She studied it slowly, and grabbed a small napkin, so that she could carefully tilt the object inside out and into her hand... Just in case. This was far too weird for her to just trust it in her hand. What fell into her palm was a small ceramic pumpkin, and a business card. She eyed the pumpkin, then picked up the card to examine with care. "Perniciousa"? She might have seen a shop like that, as she rode through downtown on the bus, but she'd never been there. Was this some sort of Halloween promotional thing to get people interested?

She studied the pumpkin again, this time more relaxed, and after a long time, she picked it up, and smiled. It was cute, and it wasn't like she got free decorative objects every day. She stood up and carried it over to the window near her bed, and set it on the sill. "There. I like you, little guy!" With that, she turned to go lay down, so she could take a nap after her long day.