! * BORN / AGAIN

- THE BASICS.

full name: cordelia daphne winchester date of birth: june 20th, 1997 age: twenty five star sign: gemini profession: part-time burlesque dancer, part-time waitress at ellen’s stardust diner, full-time deluded  alignment: chaotic good mbti: esfj pets: none

- HERE’S WHAT YOU MISSED.

- THE BASICS. 

full name: astoria rose lockwood date of birth: december 24th, 1995 age: twenty seven star sign: capricorn profession: receptionist at an art gallery alignment: chaotic neutral mbti: intj pets: a miniature goldendoodle called lady

- HERE’S WHAT YOU MISSED.

          “ if they’ve chosen to study literature, they can’t all be that bright. ” perhaps a comment that would have her college-mates clutching their pearls, but zaira stood by it. the economy was ruthless. but at this point, she decides it’s unfair to rag on the students. they were idiots, but it was their right and duty to be. it was the last time you got the chance. 

          “ you insult me and my first year latin modules. though i suppose you were in the french batch ? ” it was hard to forget that she and poppy were alma mater of the same school, missing each other by exactly the duration of a degree. she flicks through the first essay on her desk. not half-bad, certainly a lot farther than a wikipedia page. that alone deserved some credit. but the citations were a mess — minus one.

           she’s just halfway through the third when poppy speaks again, much to her delight. the third one had been written keeping the spirit of oscar wilde — meaning that there were around ten extra words in every sentence. “ twenty six, total. batch one. i figure i need some mental strength before i attempt the other half. ”

           zaira chuckles, a little too relieved for the break. “ hit me. ”

she’s sure she hears a sharp intake of breath approximately ten metres down the hall, in the rough location of the english staff room. a minor exclamation of blasphemy! “society needs note takers too.” the faux admonishment rolls easily off her tongue, aiming a smirk zaira’s way. besides, she could say that. poppy was still humanities adjacent, and amongst all the bryant’s they must have amassed every creative degree between them.

“i figured if i’d be spending years of my life picking up useless bits of latin, french seemed a safer addition.” she snorts, before drawing another thick red cross through an entire paragraph. “not that any of it stuck, mind you.” just the important parts. ( quelles sont vos suggestions pour le vin? )

poppy is already pushing the rest of her essays into a semi-pile, pre-empting the others acceptance before she even agrees. either way, she’s abandoning ship. “never mind the coffee, we’re skipping straight to dinner and martinis.” it’s barely four o’clock, but it’s almost ten in paris, and therefore acceptable at the french bistro around the corner. it’s just simple mathematics. 

           her brows rise. egyptology was certainly one of the more interesting fields of study she’d encountered. the fact that it’s underfunded doesn’t surprise her, however, for the career prospects of any field of study seemed inversely related to how engaging it was. “ that’s pretty impressive. i mean, i’m not really an academic, so this whole thing is pretty new to me. ” an odd bit of honesty out of her, zaira notices. professor jones had an effect.

           “ oh, gosh. you’d think they’d make something uniform by now. ” at least she wasn’t a complete moron for not being able to adapt, and so asking for help sat a little easier with her. 

           “ well, columbia used the very humble columbia classification. but it was basically just the dewey. so yes. perhaps smarter. you ? ” pretty much everyone’s credentials at riverbank were absurdly impressive, so zaira had several answers in mind. “ ah, thank you. i owe you. maybe a coffee ? ” 

“then you may have come to the wrong place.” she notes with a playful grin. even in her own short tenure, kamala had quickly figured out that riverbank university was the place academics came to die. heck, most of the faculty didn’t seem to know any other place but this campus. those that had come from industry, didn’t seem to have ended up here by choice. no, this place was a glorified group home for adults who had long gone out to pasture.

kamala nods, more passionate about academic systems than any supposedly sane person had any right to be. “and admit that their own is inferior?” she snorts, raising both brows. “unlikely, professor.”

columbia. not bad. not bad at all. “berkeley, but my phd is from harvard.” there’s no mistaking the pride in her tone, even after all this time she can’t help being insufferably smug about her education. she’d worked extremely hard for it, thank you very much. and at least that couldn’t be taken off her or credit stolen. “coffee would be fantastic! there’s a cafe just off campus that does a special on the most amazing blueberry scones. i’d be an awful tour guide if i didn’t show you that at least.”

          it does take some strength out of him to not roll his eyes. this pattern was hardly something he hadn’t seen in her before, and he was happy to be at the receiving end of it when it was in jest. not quite anymore. “ i don’t think that gives me the right to waste their time, but — doesn’t matter, ” he offers mildly. though, she has a point. he’d cared perhaps too much about humouring his students in the past few weeks. 

         he thought he noticed her glance back at him, but controlled himself to the point of avoiding even a peripheral look. once again, noah would fall into a spiral of wondering what the hell happened between kamala and callum that led her to such an odd place, a set of moods totally at odds with everything he’d known her to be. he only hoped she hadn’t turned self-destructive — he knew those consequences rather well. 

        the footnote occupies his immediate focus then. “ right, ” he said simply. and a paper on greek myth, particularly on the use of ritual altars in greece seemed a bit suspect coming from gardner. possibly best to ignore it — but he’d be passing off academic malpractice as acceptable, wouldn’t he ? he needed coffee before he mustered the willpower to ask her a followup. 

       “ do you want anything from the snack bar ? ” it slipped out of him as a decade-old instinct. hours and days had been spent working on theses together in similar rooms. fuck. no turning back now. 

kamala isn’t completely heartless when it comes to noah. not that she’d admit it, to herself or aloud, but years of travelling round the world with someone ensured they left a permanent mark. callum and noah would always mean something, even if it had been tainted in recent years. but that still meant that she could read the other like a book ( one with massive font and very clear diagrams ),  and knew his urge to be polite overruled every base instinct he had. that clearly extended to his classroom, too.

“noah, you’re allowed to lay down the law in your own classroom. most of the kids here are prissy little legacies anyway.” fingers deftly fly through her long hair, twisting and twisting into a practiced bun that she secures with a chewed up pencil. kamala was clearly bunkering in for the long haul. “they could do with being taken down a peg.”

she turns to the computer once more, lets the quiet settle in and does her best not to fidget to distract herself from how loud silence can really be. busies herself, instead, with unplugging and re-plugging various wires.