#bradamant

Bradamant: Theft.

Silver: disturbing the peace.

Kai: Aggravated assault.

Catherine: Arson.

“Thank you for driving me.”

“No problem”, Alberich said.

From the corner of his eye he could see Irene sinking deeper into the passenger seat, fiddling with the clasp of her weirdly adult leather bag. The only indicator it belonged to a 21-year-old girl and not a burn-out-approaching teacher was a heart-shaped sticker adorning the brown leather in stripes of blue and purple. Alberich had noticed the bag in his lecture hall before, only then he hadn’t known the calloused hands clasping it were his daughter's. Now he knew, and like surviving a car crash, everything was different. Bizarre, and fragile.

“I wouldn’t have bothered you if I knew anyone else with a car”, Irene explained sheepishly.

“I don’t mind driving you.”

“Thanks.”

The past months her and Alberich had met for wide-eyed coffees, short walks and an awkward steak dinner where he’d found out she was a vegetarian. He’d also learned that her adoptive parents lived in Oxford, that she’d gone to some fancy international school in Switzerland, and that she’d moved to London for her studies a few terms ago. He knew her major, of course, had always known it.

The big facts had blown his mind at first, but after the initial shock it started to be the smaller things that really uprooted him: the plethora of dictionaries on her shelf, her hurried handwriting, the slightly odd shape of her fingernails … He wanted to stare at her and be struck by divine lighting to find out how much of this was his, how much of her had been built using his DNA as blueprints. It was earth-shifting and tide-changing that she existed, and at the same time it was weird to realize that she was, in a way, just a normal person. Just a broke student, without a car to get to a date way out of town.  

“So who’s the guy?”, Alberich asked after a couple minutes of quiet driving.

“It’s, uh, more of a girl.”

“Oh.” He blinked. “Well, uh… good.” That probably lowered the odds of her being murdered at this mystery lake he was driving her to.

“She was my tutor for a while, and… She’s kind of difficult, but really fascinating.”

“A tutor in our department? I might know her.”

“Her name’s Bradamant.”

“You’re going out with Bradamant?”

“We’re not going out, we’re… meeting.”

“Well, date her. She’s very bright.”

“Brightness is not the main criteria I’m looking for.”

“Then what is?”

Irene considered for a second, staring into space. She was wearing purple nail polish on her Alberich-shaped fingernails.

“I don’t know. A passionate mind, maybe? Someone who gets me.”

“She’s a skilled researcher.”

“Again, that’s not the selling point you seem to think it is. I like that she’s…fierce.”

Alberich thought of Margaret, and imagined for a few fun seconds what it’d be like to run her over with the car. Yet he had fifty percent of her genes sitting in the seat next to him, and no matter how much respect he’d lost for the provider of those fifty percent, he did kind of like what had come of them. Irene crossed her arms, forcing herself to stop with the nervous clasp-fiddling.

“We’ll just see how it goes. And it isn’t even a date.”

The engine hummed as Alberich shifted into the next gear, the countryside highway stretching out ahead of them.

“Well have fun.”

“Thank you.”

-

Then Alberich was in Moscow for two months, and when he got back they met for a wintery walk along the dull grey Thames. Irene had gotten a coffee and wasn’t wearing purple nail polish anymore.

“How’d it go with Bradamant?”, Alberich remembered to ask after a while. Irene all but flinched, then blushed slightly, looking equal parts embarrassed and enraged.

“Not good. Not good at all.”

“Oh?”

“She's… Let’s talk about something else, please.”

“Want me to get her kicked off the assistant staff?”

Irene snapped her head around, looking at him in disgust.

“God, no! I hope you’re not serious!”

Alberich gave an honest shrug.

“No”, Irene said, “She didn’t do anything wrong. It was probably my fault for being too… clingy, or… I just misunderstood the things she said.”

“You think?” Having met Irene and having read some of her papers, Alberich doubted she was able to severely misinterpret something.

“Yes. She was pretty clear about it. I was just dumb and naïve or a second, so it’s my fault.”

“Hm, okay. Happens.”

“Just promise me you won’t abuse your position because of it. That’d be the last thing I want.”

“Fine. I promise.”

Once again Alberich wondered about the upbringing that had instilled such sound morals in the woman, and what she’d be like if he had raised her. If vengefulness were hereditary, they’d be buying gasoline right now. Irene took a long sip from her coffee instead, cupping her hands around the paper cup.

“So how are you? How was Moscow?”

“Good. It was my first time teaching there; I’m usually in Petersburg.”

“Sounds great. I’ve never been to Russia.”

“Where have you been to?”

“When I was little my parents used to take me on all their business trips, so technically I’ve been all kinds of places. I just can’t remember any of it.”

“Why’d they stop?”

“Taking me? Eh, I was in boarding school. Plus, they wanted me to grow up normally, with friends and routine and all that. That’s hardly possible when you swap countries every couple weeks.”

“You should make use of your semester break, go someplace nice.”

“Yeah, maybe. But a student job at the university library doesn’t pay my bills and a trip someplace nice.”

“There’re student grants for that. That’s what I did when I was young and broke.”

“Tell me about that”, Irene requested. Alberich glanced at her and thought she looked distinctly sad, but he had no idea how to fix it if he wasn’t supposed to hurt Bradamant. So he pretended to not notice and did as Irene asked, taking her on a strongly censored stroll down memory lane.

---

Kai Strongrock

the invisible library

Bradamant: we all have a lot of laughs

*five seconds later*

Bradamant : What do you mean?