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Chapter 3: Startling Bright Blue

He winces at the conversation overheard on the other side of the stacks, tries to ignore it, brush it off as just teenaged girls, but his shoulders still stay tense until they walk to far away for him to hear.

Milo lets out a breath of air then and shakes his head – he is being silly after all. But the intense popularity of "Twilight" feels like an almost personal affront to his academic senses. Especially given his particular field of interest.

Vampires.

His Mythologies Professor had always sighed and looked almost disappointed, with this continued singular obsession of his – clear through to when he turned in his very well researched Doctorate thesis. And although Milo had left Oxford years ago, age had yet to bring him the esteem he had hoped for - speeding through school so quickly, graduating so young, he had always thought part of the reason they scoffed was the age disparity. It seemed though, that actually the older he got the less people respected his interest in vampires as anything other than a silly juvenile pastime only fit to be played out on television and movie screens.

Now people looked at it as if it must be a creepy (almost sexual) thing and that made Milo squirm because for him it most definitely wasn't.

Because to him, vampires - the whole idea of them - had always been more than that – so much more than the caricatures in books and on tv. They always had been since he was very young. Milo does not know why it was vampires that he latched onto and not, say, superheroes or something more appropriate for a little boy.

Perhaps, back then, in a twisted way, it was hopeful: his parents were dead, killed in a car crash, and it made him feel just a bit better to lock himself away and read about these beings that would never die.

(He used to have dreams about his Mom and Dad rising from their graves and it wasn't a scary thing, he always ran to them gladly. And was bitterly disappointed to wake up again in a world where that would never happen, a world where they would stay in their coffins forever, a world that told him that vampires weren't real.)

He always took things personally though. His thesis paper had been on the psychology of immortality, of living that long – possibly so many more lifespans than humans are used to. There was too much conflicting mythologies for Milo to be entirely sympathetic of vampires (some were they are painted as bloodthirsty animals that lived only to feed and destroy) but he could hypothesize how it might be for someone like a human to live so very long, how it might be for him to. And so that is how he had written it, pulling in historical depictions from various cultures that supported his views as well as those that opposed them.

After college (which had included getting his Masters and Doctorate) Milo had not quite known what to do with his life. He knows he is intelligent - he graduated High School at eleven and got full scholarship to Oxford after all - but he has always felt such unease, such a need to wander. Mr. Whitmore (who he has called Grandad his entire life - the older man's relationship with Milo's Grandfather after Grandma died, had always been a rather open secret, even back when those sorts of things weren't exactly openly acknowledged completley outside of the family. And since the death of Thaddeus Thatch and both his parents, the older man was really the only person on Earth that Milo had that he considered family.) had offered Milo a fully paid expedition wherever he wished. But the still inense and eccentric man, didn't seemed surprised when he had turned it down in favor of this aimless wandering - it seems it's in the Thatch blood to want to search, but to also have a need to do it their own way (at least that's what he is told).

Lately though it feells more lonely than anything else, he has only staying in a town for a year or so, never putting down solid roots. He got an apartment here in Montana a month ago and, although he was way over qualified - and not necessarily in the right fields, the librarian had taken him on.

He reaches blindly to pick up another book to re-shelve and is surprised when his fingers run into a warm hand instead of the familiar feeling of plastic covered bindings.

Milo looks up and the most beautiful woman he has ever seen smiles at him. He blushes instantly, feeling intensely foolish, knowing he is going to do or say something stupid. He has never had any luck with pretty women near his own age, never seemed to do anything but blunder around them. And she is far more than just pretty.

Her eyes are a startling bright blue that offsets her dark skin – a lock of white, not blonde, but white hair has escaped the purple embroidered scarf that the rest is tucked under and matches her plain sundress. The fingers of his other hand actually twitch with the urge to reach up and gently push that fallen lock of hair behind her ear.

He lets out a whoosh of breath, only then realizing that he had been holding it and feels embarrassment shoot through him acutely. Milo would blush again if he had ever stopped in the first place (it feels almost like a sunburn on his face). But the woman just laughs and somehow it's not a mocking sound, but laced with real joy.

He smiles tentatively at her, reaching out his hand to shake. "Hello," he says, still lowly – they are in a library after all, "I'm Milo Thatch."

Her hand slides into his and he can almost swear he feels a wave of energy roll through him, leaving him short of breath but energized. "Hello, Milo Thatch," she responds (are her eyes faintly glowing?). "I am Kida. And I feel we shall be getting to know each other very well."

That should be an odd statement – should make him uneasy since they have only just met. But instead it feels like truth, it feels like an end to his search. Because although Milo has often wished he could be scientific in nature, see things coldly and precisely, it simply isn't his way. He is a romantic through and through, believes in fate, and happenstance. He is the type that holds back until the last minute than jumps in with both feet. And looking at her open, sure, face - with that single lock of hair falling forward - there has never been anyone Milo has wanted to get to know more.

So, he decided to be brave. "I get off work at four. Would you-," he clears his throat, nervously, "would you like to get some coffee?"

"Yes, Milo Thatch," she says reaching up to lay a hand on his arm (their other hands are still clasped and he feels almost dizzy from the contact and then bereft when she lets go). "I shall be at the chair, near the windows, reading," she reached into the trolley grabbing the book they were both reaching for originally when their hands brushed, "this." Her grin is infectious when she shows him the cover of the rather large collection of fairy tales by Hans Christian Anderson and he finds himself grinning in return.

He watches her go, until her path brings another woman into his eye line who raises an unimpressed blonde eyebrow at him that instantly makes his eyes dart away quickly. Milo, rubs the arm she touched one last time, before getting back to work (it tingled – but that was probably just his imagination). There was still two hours until his shift was over, two hours until Kida, until….

He shakes his head, unable to tamp down his smile, and grabs another book.