Etude 1 (The Big O, G, Gen)
Title: Etude 1
Author: Lachesis
Fandom: The Big O
Type: gen
Pairing/Characters(for gen): None to speak of, Dorothy, Norman, & Roger appear
Rating: G
Summary: Dorothy tests the limits of human emotions.
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters and am not using them for profit.
Notes: The title is referring to a basic exercise in music - a simple piece testing skills known as an Etude. So, if you see any professional classical music group playing an etude, feel free to laugh.
Challenge: Virgin Series, posted to the Temps-mort LJ community
Time: 27 minutes+ typing time (which i have to do while i'm doing other things so it always takes longer.)

Once upon a time in a far away kingdom, lived a king and his beautiful wife. They had been blessed with a child. As the queen approached her time, the kingdom gathered at the castle to await the child's birth. She was born, and they named her Aurora, after the sun. She was blessed many times that ... R. Dorothy Wainwright sat the book down on the table. She looked across the room at her piano.

Please do not touch the piano before noon tomorrow. Roger had told her after he returned home late.

As inclined as she was to want to sit at the piano, her inclination to mind Roger's request was stronger. She was still trying to puzzle out her exact feelings for Roger. Of course, it was a challenge as she had no emotions to base feelings on.

"Miss Dorothy," came Norman's voice from the doorway, breaking into her processing of thoughts. She regulated them back to their compartments, and tilted her head in acknowledgment.

"Yes, Norman," she responded in a carefully modulated voice, intending it to be neither a greeting or a question.

"What are you looking at?" He stepped into the room.

The calling of her name, then, was to see if she was occupied. A greeting of sorts. With that process, Dorothy took on a more conversational tone. "I was reading a book," she replied. Her words and the slight pause was timed to allow Norman to guide the next part of the conversation.

"I would have expected you to be playing piano, Miss Dorothy," he replied, with a faint uplifting of pitch at the end, indicating a question.

Dorothy stood from her seat at the table and turned to face Norman. She allowed her words to become clipped, intending to indicate annoyance or anger. "Roger Smith arrived home late last night, and requested I do not touch the piano until noon."

At this statement, Norman took longer than a second to look around the room. His eye arched at the dresser that was left open with linens and blank pages lying out in ordered stacks around it. His mustache twitched slightly at all the books pulled from the shelves around the room and piled into ordered stacks. None of them were on or around the piano. "Miss Dorothy," he started, and she heard the lift of each word, indicating amusement. "Mister Roger will surely appreciate the attempt to follow his request to the letter."

"Are you mocking me, Norman?" The clipped words she had used when talking about Roger still on in her speech.

"Not at all, Miss Dorothy," Norman said, returning again to the plain voice he had used at the beginning. "Merely observing."

Dorothy could pick up the sounds of Roger getting out of bed and putting on his dressing gown. She allowed her voice to lighten at the end of each word. "We will soon find out how appreciative he is."

Norman changed his gaze to see Roger coming down the steps as predicted.

"R. Dorothy Wainwright! What have you done to my sitting room!" Roger's voice growled in the tone she associated with frustration.

In her mind, she felt a pleasant buzz of satisfaction at the reaction, as her processes recognized her goal had been achieved.

Now, she just had to trace the pathways back to what process had set the goal. Then analyze that process's coding. Feelings were a lot easier than human beings let on.