Of Spondees and Dactyls
Vince lay in his bed trying to sleep, but the light was distracting him. In fact, everything that Orwell did seemed to distract him. He wasn't sure how her twenty-four hour stay had turned into them living together, but he didn't want to kick her out. Even though she was a distraction.
Finally, he couldn't take it any longer; the light was just too bright. He got up, his bed making a creak, but she didn't turn around. Whatever she was doing, she was focused. At least he didn't distract her.
"What are you doing?" He asked, walking over to the table where she sat.
Her head slowly came up, a distracted look on her face. She really had been concentrating. "Reading Ovid." She answered, turning her head back to the book.
Vince stood behind her chair, and leaned in to look at the book. He was surprised she actually had a book, everything about her seemed so unreal, and computerized. The book was made of paper, like a real possession, something that could help him figure out who she was. She smelled good though, clean; again, she was distracting him.
When he got close she seemed to lean into him, but he thought he might have imagined it. Even so, her hair brushed his neck. The distraction kept him from looking at the book for a little bit.
"This is in Latin." He said surprised, when he finally turned his attention on it.
She looked up, her eyebrows scrunched together in a look of annoyance and disapproval. "Ovid was a Roman poet." She answered matter-of-factly.
"But how . . . what . . . why?" He said, his thoughts jumbled together, this was defiantly a clue to her past, maybe.
She looked up again, the annoyance more present now than the disapproval. "What?"
"Why are you reading it?" He asked.
"I was going to reference one of the stories in the Metamorphoses in a blog post I was writing, but . . . " She motioned to the book with her hand. "I got carried away."
"But why are you reading it in Latin?" He asked, still not understanding. "They print it in English don't they?"
She smirked, "Yes. I guess there's just something about the spondees and dactyls that make it seem more . . . authentic."
"The what?" Vince said, his voice flat.
"The spondees and dactyls." She said like it was obvious, but sighed when she saw the confused look on his face and continued. "They're part of the poetic meter."
Vince still looked confused. Orwell sighed again. "Vince, you don't really want me to explain Roman poetic meter to you, do you?" She asked. He shook his head slowly. It wasn't that he didn't appreciate poetry; he just didn't need to know how to write it.
"Good, then go back to bed." She said, shooing him away with her hand.
Vince did after a second. She had done it again, distracted him, but this time he didn't even know why he had cared about spondees and dactyls. Then he had a question.
"Dactyls?" He asked, causing Orwell to look over to him. "Like Pterodactyls?" He smiled.
"Go to bed, Vince." She rolled her eyes at him, but he thought he saw a hint of a smile on her lips.
Good, maybe he had managed to distract her too, at least once.