How Was My Accent?

Sally chuckled at his joke. She knew doctor’s handwriting very well. The man showed her his evidence, and she smiled a little wider. It was pretty messy, truly, but she could make out a few o’s, a few f’s. Give her some time, she could probably find a way to translate his annotations into something coherent.

She quietly glanced at the man once again, and then back down at the book pages, away from the notes on the margins and to the actual words printed down. Something about linguistics, by the look of it. She had little knowledge of it, but she had read a few essays on the subject when she had gotten a passion for classical literature during her teenage years. “I’ve seen much worse nonsense, don’t worry,” Sally snickered. “May I ask, what’s that book about? To merit so many notes on the margins, I’d have to guess... it’s either really engaging, or really worthy of criticism.” She always liked to check what other people were reading, whether on a bench at the park, or waiting in line at the grocery store, or peeking casually from a bag.

“It’s no bother,” she said with a small shrug. He seemed about to leave her to her work, when he stopped and asked one further question. One she had been expecting him to at the very least formulate in his own head. Sally took a deep breath as quietly as she could, and smiled. “Yes, I am,” she replied, silently wondering what gave that away. There was little to no family resemblance, or so she liked to believe. “I suppose you are a professor too?”

Milo couldn't tell if he had hit a nerve, but he felt a shift in the energy. He quickly tried to resolve the topic with a lie. "Yeah, I- I saw your picture once. In his office. I-I'm not much for remembering faces but I'm a big admirer of your father's and...well, what can I say, I suppose I just remembered it." He gave a fake little shrug in a vain attempt to be aloof.

Milo wasn't about to tell this woman that the real reason he'd remembered her face was because back in his college days, Milo had been only short of obsessed with her father. Of course he knew William had a daughter, but Milo hadn't really seen a photograph of her on his desk. He had in fact stumbled upon one while writing a paper on Finkelstein's theories and, when doing research, found one of the family from when Sally was still very young. He'd retained the knowledge of her existence for two reasons: one, she was only a handful of years younger than him, and Milo had always wondered what it must have been like to grow up under the tutelage of such a brilliant mind; and two, she looked nothing like William. He was beginning to sweat a little when, thankfully, the subject was changed.

He nodded and swallowed his rather evident panic. "Oh, yes. Linguist, cartographer, part-time plumber, and finally professor," he laughed a little and waved his shut book once more, "that's what this book is about, actually. Well, specifically deciphering ancient texts. I teach it in one of my classes, so hopefully it's engaging." Milo doubted it very much based on the ratio of sleeping students he had to non-sleeping ones. "And what about you? I assume you've developed a similar love for the sciences?"

The inevitable end of winter meant that a whole bunch of new activities and events would have to be prepared. It meant it was a busy time for the Events Committee, but Sally was quite used to it already. The hardest thing, really, was finding ways to keep it fresh and novel. That would often mean that the seamstress would need to stay up until late searching for ideas, assembling moodboards, arranging plans to be presented, critiqued and taken apart by the other members of the Committee. With that goal in mind, Sally had decided to go to a slightly quieter, smaller café than her usual place, where she could focus completely on her task.

She was precisely finishing the curly cursive lettering of one of the titles for the potential themes for one of her moodboards, when she was startled by a polite voice coming from behind her.

“Well... Thank you,” Sally said with a little nervous chuckle as she briefly turned around. “I was always taught the importance of being neat, so...” Not that her actual quick handwriting was anywhere near as legible and pleasant to look at. If it was something only herself would end up reading, she could afford to scribble something only understandable to herself. She quickly gave the man a glance: he seemed like a professor of some sort, if her experience with such types was anything to go by.

Milo's book, vaguely titled The Riddle of the Labyrinth was about philology and, of course, linguistics. The chapter he'd opened to was ironically about deciphering ancient writing systems. The urge to make a joke about the matter rose and fell like a passing wave in his subconscious. "See? Total nonsense." He flipped the book shut with his one hand and scratched the back of his head lightly with the other.

"Anyways, I, uh..I'm sorry to have disturbed you." this was Milo's cue to putter off and collect his cappuccino but he lingered a moment, having just noted something about the woman, "I'm sorry again but you-- you wouldn't happen to be the daughter of William Finkelstein, would you?"

Unfortunately for Mirage, in the time it had taken for her to get her coffee and a bite to eat, some names of interest had come up and she had to note them down. (The job never really stopped, did it?) With no technology on hand (and a particular interest in cybersecurity that meant she refused to log on to public Wi-Fi) Mirage had to make do with what she had; the back of her receipt and a bookkeeping pen borrowed from the waitress. (That receipt would be going straight to her employer for two reasons now.) It wasn’t ideal, of course. She would have preferred not to create a hard-copy of anything, in the off chance that it was misplaced or, rather, found by the wrong person, but alas. As far as she knew, Mirage had been subtle about her note-taking, blending in with the other patrons like it was second nature; there were students studying in one corner, a businessman glaring in confusion at a spreadsheet in one of the booths.

For once, she missed her mark. Milo Thatch, who she recognized from visits to the university (and Ms. Lemure’s office) spoke over her shoulder, remarking on her penmanship. That could only mean he had seen too much. Mirage laughed lightly, to distract attention from her panic, folding her list with little fuss. “And you must have wonderful eyesight, to have caught my handwriting at such a quick glance. Are you in the business of being nosey, Mr. Thatch?”

"I, ehm..." he took a step back, pretending to look at something on the wall for a moment, "not in the business for it, per se, just...have a knack for it, I'm afraid."

Milo looked back at the woman, feeling a sort of gut-wrenching embarrassment building up as he tried to pose the following question politely. "Forgive me, but I, uh...have we met before?" he laughed lightly and pushed his glasses back, "I meet so many people at the university. Perhaps you know me from there? It's sort of funny but I could swear--well, never mind I probably shouldn't say that. It's not important and anyways -- What I mean to say is: what's your name?"

“I’ll come back to you,” she said eventually, nodding to the two tubes of paint in her hand before placing them back in their rightful place. “Then I’ll know which one of you I’d like.” 

"A diplomatic conclusion," he noted with a smile, "though I'm partial to an aqua, myself."

Basil did not like when things got the better of him, especially when said thing was an inanimate object. He was currently in a tense battle with his umbrella, the rain not having abated while he had been in the library. Unfortunately, he also had a few books under his arm, one of which had several sheets of notes tucked into the pages, and the struggle with the umbrella led to that particular book falling and spilling the papers out onto the wet sidewalk.

“Oh, confound you, you infernal device!” he snapped, sighing and giving up on the umbrella for the moment to focus on the papers. Noticing that someone had seen the whole incident, Basil bristled a bit and huffed, “One would think, with all the modern conveniences, they would have invented an umbrella which actually works by now!”

Milo could hardly see the owner of the distressed voice through his rain-dropped glasses, but he hurriedly moved to help shield him from the merciless weather. "They need buyer's insurance!" He attempted to joke through the sound of the storm, poorly aiding in the picking up of the wet papers.

"I'm sorry about your luck with all of this," he said, pathetically handing him one of the balled up sodden scraps of whatever the paper used to be, "Y-you should come inside out of the rain and gather yourself a moment."