Roderick came looking for me in the Danu reading room this afternoon, only an hour before the end of my shift. I had gone there to return a book I was consulting, and then I went on to look around (and avoid the woman typing a pile of notes into her datapad). I'm familiar with most of that part of the collection, but there is always a book I haven't noticed before. I was distracted with the whisperecho voice inside my head, and I didn't know he was there until I turned around and saw him. He had his dreadlocks done up with tiny bell-clicking beads, and he wore iron-grey velvet trousers, and these boots.

I don't know how he does it. Gets away with it, I mean. And Andraste can wear that mauve silk dress that shows off her new raw-sore tattoo, and artfully overdone limon makeup, with her black lipstick and pierced lip.

D. hasn't said anything to me, but I can tell she doesn't approve of my blue hair. She has mentioned—in this forced teasing voice—the tiny diamond stud I have in my nose. There might not be an actual policy against it, but it isn't (oh dear, oh no) professional. But she doesn't so much as notice Roderick or Andraste.

But anyhow, Roderick brought up that time I had asked him if he had noticed anyone wandering about near my desk. I hadn't expected that—it wasn't that long ago, but I haven't mentioned it again, and I wouldn't have thought he would remember. He had been reminded of it only this morning when he was coming back from the tech center, and he overheard a man asking D. about me. Apparently, I was away on that one errand at the time.

D. has a policy of never giving our personal information, so I know he didn't learn anything (else, that is) about me. Roderick left before he heard what the man said next, but he did notice that he left through the main entrance within the minute.

He was also able to tell me that he had never seen this man before, but he looked well-off, perhaps (and he leaned in with a smirk I recognized and understood) enough to be an aristo. He had that glossy-smug, capitalist look. I don't know what to think about that—but it won't change that to worry and fret, and yes, fine, obsess over it.

Roderick and I were walking back through the archives by then, and that was when we saw that telbun who comes in on occasion. The lady who owns him is known for going about with her two Hapan guardmaids. I've seen them, though only (and thankfully) once. He has brought several children with him before, a little girl with ink-black hair and her matching brother—but today he was alone.

I know that telbun has used the archives since I started this journal, and I'm sure there was one time when I almost wrote about him. But it's difficult to see telbuns, and even harder to remember them when you do. I can't quite (even though I'm sitting on the smooth blonde-pale wooden floor in the telbun's room) remember him even now, only hours later.

Roderick looked over to the side, almost casually, before he could see the telbun. I don't think he had even realized he has gone that. All the men here do that. That telbun might have noticed, but he would be used it to—and perhaps he even prefers it.

He walked past in his usual meekly-careful shuffle in those wounded-red robes he wears, his hat pointed towards the floor. He has never asked me for assistance, but then, since telbuns are supposed to be stuffed full of education, he wouldn't need it. He was so close that, for a dragged slow second, I knew he smelled like velvetdust and warm sandalwood. It should have felt strange, and wrong, and I don't know why it didn't.

But I don't need to have an answer for that—or that aristo Roderick saw. I'm leaving to see my parents in two days, and that is a good thing. Oh, it might be a very good thing.