#iangus

Sama was exhausted, but restless. She’d been awake far too long and she’d done far too little. Sama didn’t take days off, even when she didn’t go into the office she was always working, but this day, the wake, hadn’t been any kind of work. So now she was wandering around the first floor, one shoe in each hand and swinging them slightly as she walked. And possibly shedding hair pins along the way. She’d taken her hair out of its french twist somewhere around the sunroom, putting the pins in the toes of her shoes since her dress didn’t have pockets.

Sama wasn’t sure what she was looking for. A task that needed doing? A distraction from the memory of her conversation with Alison? Maybe just someone who wanted her here? Or maybe she wasn’t looking for anything, just trying to burn off her leftover energy. If she were still a teenager, or even in her twenties, she might’ve slipped down to the home gym in the basement and the barre Richard bought for her, but her 32 year old knees protested at just the thought. 

So Sama wandered, until she saw Angus out on the terrace. She swung off the door a little as she pulled it open, then jumped when it closed behind her with more force than she’d anticipated. “Who’re you hiding from out here?” She carefully set her shoes on the stone railing, then boosted herself up beside them, swinging her feet slightly as she sat.

Sama’s impromptu shopping trip with Naomi had been the respite she needed it to be, but it wasn’t enough. As soon as they’d pulled back into the long, gravel drive she’d wanted to leave again. Instead, she’d parked the car, gathered her purchases, and made her way inside, like an adult. She’d hung her dress for the gala up in her room and strode down the hall to the art room, like an adult. She’d laid out her supplies—a broad-edge nib for the old calligraphy pen she hadn’t realized she left behind when she moved out, fresh ink, and two pads of paper, one for practice and one for the final product—like an adult. 

Things fell apart after that. Since she’d started working for the UN, any trip anywhere in the Middle East had to include a stop to get a new qalam. These days, that was all she used for calligraphy in Arabic. Now, she was paying the price for her indulgence as she struggled to smoothly form the fluid characters with a metal nib. She’d even moved to the floor, sitting with one leg tucked beneath her and the other pulled up to support her paper, in the traditional posture for a novice calligrapher. When the pen caught and spat ink yet again, ruining the last clean corner of her third sheet of practice paper, she threw it down and cursed, loudly. 

It wasn’t until she rolled her shoulders and looked up in an attempt to stretch her spine that she caught sight of Angus seemingly lingering in the doorway. She welcomed the distraction, shifting slightly and letting her legs fall into a more natural, cross-legged pose. “Are you lost?” She raised her eyebrows as a half-smile flirted with the corners of her mouth, almost overtaking her earlier frustration. As she remembered it, he’d always been more of a connoisseur of the visual arts than an active contributor.