Italics signal telepathic, sent thoughts.
Cara closed the apartment door, hung up her coat, and threw her purse on the couch. Jareth caught it neatly and Cara turned at the unexpected movement.
"What are you doing here?"
"I've been talking to Alia."
"And?"
"And now she is in her room changing clothes."
"And you're out here? Your Listians will never believe it. You'd better get your feet off the couch – Alia hates it when people do that." Cara continued to the kitchen and got herself a soda from the refrigerator.
Jareth humored her and took his boots off the arm of the couch. "I don't always behave as they write me. Things have been... exaggerated."
"Right." She set the drink on the table in front of the couch and flopped in a chair. "So you're here waiting to talk to Alia. Bored again? Don't you have a kingdom to run or something?"
"Yes. I thought I would drop in and hear the latest developments in finding you a mate."
"You wouldn't believe," she groaned.
"Try me."
"I'm going to the library if you need me for anything," Alia said as she hurried from her room to the front door with her usual load of books. "See you later."
"Yeah, all right. Don't stay too late," Cara called after her as the door opened and closed behind her roommate. "That's about all I've seen of her in a while. You probably talked to her more earlier than I have all week. Did she say anything about Tieran?"
"I didn't ask."
"You're no help. Where's your curiosity about her?"
"Her love-life is fait accompli. Yours is so much more interesting right now," he prompted as he made himself comfortable on the couch again.
Cara glared at him and started her story. "Well, when I got to work in the morning after I talked to you, I had a whole stack of work orders waiting for me. You know, requests for me to fix a computer or something?"
Jareth nodded. "I understand."
"Turns out the second one was for that new guy I told you about."
"Really? Did you learn anything?"
"Some. His name is Hadrian O'Keefe. Weird, huh? Never mind, I forgot I was talking to someone named Jareth."
"Are you implying that my name is odd?" he asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Now that you mention it, it's not common around here, but what I meant was that a name that would be odd to me wouldn't necessarily be any different from any of our names to you. They would all be equally odd or common to you."
"Not really. I'm familiar with what goes on in your world. The name is not currently common, but has been used in the past."
"Really? I've never heard it."
"Ask Alia. I'm sure she'll know. Now what else did you learn?"
"I don't think he's American. He hasn't got an accent, but he's different somehow. He dresses well – looks really expensive."
"Well, that is your difference there," Jareth commented acerbically as he thumbed through the fashion magazine.
"No, it's not that. That's the style and that's an old magazine. Besides half those designers are European, so you can't blame the look on Americans."
"Is he a moron?"
"What? Oh. No. He seems intelligent."
"Anything else?"
"Well, the day after that he showed up in the break room and invited us out to lunch. Maddie, of course, accepted for us. I could have killed her."
"Come, come, now. How bad could it be?"
"Lunching with Maddie and an eligible male? Take a guess."
"When is this lunch?"
"Today. We went out today."
"And what happened?"
"Well, he wasn't too bad, but Maddie was awful. She did everything she could to throw me at him. I suppose you want to hear all about it?" Cara asked grudgingly.
"Please."
"First she came to get me early. We were supposed to meet him at noon and she showed up at my desk fifteen minutes early, I guess to make sure that I passed inspection and didn't skip out. She spends so much time keeping tabs on me that I wonder how she gets any work done.
"Then once we met him, there was this whole thing about whose car we would take. His was too small for all three of us, I didn't trust my car, and Maddie's was conveniently a mess so that I had to ride with him. Smooth, isn't she?"
"It's a start. Did you enjoy the ride?"
"Whose side are you on here?"
"I never take others' sides, only my own."
"Figures. Then when we got to the restaurant luckily we got a table with chairs instead of a booth. I'm sure she would have figured some way to stick me on the same side with him, if we had."
"Now that would have been bad manners."
"As it was she spent the whole time talking about me. Volunteering information about where I'm from and my family history. I had to kick her under the table to make her shut up. Unfortunately it was in mid-sentence, which of course was almost as bad as if I'd let her say it."
"Say what?"
"That my parents had already gone back to India and left me here. That they wanted me to go back and marry someone there, but that I didn't want to. That they won't talk to me now because I didn't."
"Are you sure that was what she was going to say?"
"Not all at once, but it would have come out eventually and I don't want it broadcast to the whole world."
"Why did you just tell me?"
"I don't know. You asked." She paused a moment, a little confused, then changed the subject. "Anyway, then she starts bragging on me about putting myself through college, which everyone does, and finding a job, and being in the hospital and making a 'miraculous recovery' as she put it. Like any of that's something to brag to the world about."
"Especially since you had nothing to do with it," Jareth agreed. "If anyone deserves the credit for your recovery, I do."
"You do?"
"The healing peach came from my tree."
"What about Alia?"
"A minor detail." He waved it off.
"You!" Cara grabbed a throw pillow from the end of the couch and threw it at Jareth. "I was almost believing you."
Jareth merely tucked the pillow behind his head. "Then what happened?"
"Then Hadrian let the cat out of the bag. He's being consulted about improving the company's computer system. He wants Maddie and me to give him our opinions on what we have and what we need. On a weekly basis. At lunch. Maddie was thrilled. So now I have to do this every week."
"You could get out of it if you really wanted to, you know. I'm sure he would let you."
"But Maddie wouldn't."
Jareth laughed.
.….
Alia buried herself in a remote corner of the library to work on her research paper. She preferred to work alone, without the distractions of passersby or studying companions. Today, she had chosen to haunt the mathematics section of the stacks. She had tried various sections to study in over the years and found only a few areas that suited her needs. First and foremost, she found that she had to avoid subjects that interested her at all costs.
Fiction was completely out of the question and the alcove of children's books the education majors used, although cozy and out of the way, was also to be avoided if she had serious studying to do, otherwise she would find herself lost in memories of childhood, rereading an old friend to see if it remained as good as she remembered. Even the unintelligible sections of old Greek and Latin texts piqued her curiosity and she had wandered through them more than once as an alternative to studying. She found herself restricted to sitting in the mathematics and political science areas if she hoped to make any progress when she studied.
So, it was in the midst of calculus and differential equations that Tieran found her when he came looking. Another advantage of studying in an out of the way area – Tieran came and went as he pleased with no one the wiser.
"What is it this time?" he asked, running a light hand over her head.
"Research paper. History," Alia answered as she continued taking notes. She had found the pendant, which Tieran had given her to enable her to communicate with him telepathically when questing for Cara's cure, handy for silent conversations in the library, much better hissing at each other ineffectually.
"When?"
"Ancient Britain, induced by an infatuation with Camelot and King Arthur." Alia sat back in her chair with an attitude of frustration and looked at Tieran as he sat across from her. "I should have known better. Those stories with their knights in shining armor are all out of context and their proper historical setting. Takes all the romance and roses out of the mists."
"Which stories have you read?"
"I don't know. I've read so many of them it's hard to keep track."
"Which time periods are you researching?"
"The traditional middle ages ones, I guess. Not the ones set before then, in Roman or post-Roman Britain. At least that's not the time period I'm studying now."
Tieran smiled in recognition. "Ah, they do have more than their share of romance and roses, as you put it. And Merlin has some interesting ideas."
"I hadn't noticed his ideas really. Too caught up in the romance, I guess."
"The stories concentrate on the romances, not his theories. The theories are not mentioned much."
"Then what are you talking about? Oh, of course, they're another fairy tale and you've visited them, right?"
He nodded with a smile and offered, "Would you like to?"
"Yes, but not now. I don't need any odd details to confuse me. They'll think I'm making it all up and lost all historical perspective. Maybe after I'm done with the paper."
"As you say. Remind me if I forget."
"Did you come here for a reason or just to distract me?" Alia half-teased.
"A little of both. I came to see you, what you are doing, and if you will be available later tonight."
"Just more paper to work on, why?"
"Dinner. We have not seen much of each other in the past week."
"That would be nice."
"Wonderful. Call me when you are ready," he answered and leaned across the table to kiss her on the cheek.
Alia leaned ever so slightly into his hand's caress as he pulled it away from her other cheek and disappeared.
.….
"We should do this more often," Alia said as she gazed into the fire. Snow fell outside the windows again, but this time the weather would be cold enough for the snow to last.
"What? Dinner?" Tieran asked as he looked down at Alia's head resting against his chest.
"No, just sitting here. It's comfortable."
"Shall I find some yarn?"
"Yarn?" Alia frowned. "What for?"
"Do you not remember the comment you made about us sitting around a fire knitting?" Tieran asked her.
"Oh, that. And you said as long as we were happy doing that it wouldn't matter if that's what we did."
"Are you?"
"Right now, yes. I really don't want to go back to writing that paper."
"Too much work?"
"That and the fairy tale kind of pales in comparison to the real thing." Alia snuggled closer and held his arm tightly around her.
"Just as long as you do not decide to try playing Guinevere."
"And who would be Lancelot? Jareth? No, don't worry about that. I really don't empathize with her, at least not as she's been written in the versions I've read. My sympathies are with Arthur."
"That is reassuring."
"What would you do if I did pull a Guinevere?" Alia asked out of idle curiosity.
"I have no idea. And I do not care to find out."
