18 Spring, 514 AV
She didn’t look much like the Svefra, he thought. People had so many little features. The skin alone—dots and hills and valleys, hairs, shading that his hands couldn’t capture in a drawing. He’d tried. Many times. She wasn’t supposed to look like the Svefra—like him, like Deneb and the rest. She was supposed to look as she did, human and paler and nuanced as she had to be. And right now, she was moving. Standing, stepping over with a smile that Gian didn’t like. It looked like a predator. “Please, come in,” he heard, feeling her will usher him into the brightly furnished place—office. Her office. “Giansar? I remember all my appointments.” The shading of her voice was confident. The ease of her words, her gestures—Gian shifted, finding himself in a seat that he didn’t remember choosing. “Yes,” he said, blinking. Responding to the last thing she’d said, about the appointment. The voice stopped, and he looked up. Sharp eyes were fixed on his face. “Excuse me?” she said, pausing. She had a clipboard now and a pen. Gian blushed. “I am sorry,” he mumbled. So far, he thought, he was not doing very well.
But the young woman smiled at him again, settling into a cushioned chair. “Let’s start over,” she said, kindly. “You are Giansar, correct?” He nodded, pleased to have his bearings again. “An unusual name,” she commented, raising a single eyebrow. “How did you come to have it?”
“I found it on a star,” the young man replied anxious. Wait. That didn’t sound right. “I didn’t have one,” he tried. “So I looked through a telescope and chose a star. It’s an old name,” he explained. “A tradition in the pod that found me.” Gian’s sharp blue eyes sought hers, some sign, but she was occupied. A quill scratched busily across the paper. He wondered what it meant. She seemed to finish, pausing, and looking up again. “Ah. I recall, now. I read your history,” she explained briskly. “Standard procedure before this meeting. Yours was rather short.” The statement sounded to Gian’s ears like a question. “If I find the rest, I’ll be sure to tell you,” he muttered, frustration peeking through his amiable persona. But Bethany laughed, and Gian shrugged. “Shall we start your interview?” she asked, meeting his gaze with her own.
Funny. He had thought that it already started. “Yes.” |
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