It was the day before Ann was to leave for Washington. She had pulled out her dresser drawers and set them out on her bed after deciding that it would be easier than going back and forth to her dresser to pack.
Her hands were shaking as she packed; she was scared to death that something would go wrong. Zoc had made her a headband that had a rose on it that would rest just above her ear. Zoc would be able to stay inside of the rose, fold one of the inner petals in and magically seal it so he wouldn't be able to fall out. But that didn't stop her from worrying she had had nightmares where the headband had been knocked off of her at the airport and been stepped on before she could get to it; there were also ones where she left Zoc at the hotel and he had shrunk to his normal size and when the maid came in, she saw him and killed him.
Luckily, working out the hotel arrangements had been fairly easy: there where only five women in her class, and she had made sure she was the first to offer to be the one who would have to pay full price for the room instead of splitting the cost with one of the others. The hardest part had been coming up with an excuse for why she wanted a room with two beds. She'd told her teacher that her best friend from high school went to college in Washington and she wanted to invite her over for a night, because they hadn't gotten to see each other for over a year. Only part of it was a lie: her best friend really was there and she did plan on visiting her; she just wasn't going to have her come to the hotel.
Ann kept running everything through her head that could possibly go wrong and how to avoid it. She was so absorbed in her thoughts that she jumped when someone knocked on her bedroom door.
"Come in," she called, taking a deep breath in an attempt to calm her nerves.
"Are you sure I should? Zoc's not in there with you, is he?" Lucas asked from the other side of the door.
Ann groaned. The longest Lucas had gone with out harassing her about finding her and Zoc in bed together was three solid days. Every time she thought he had gotten tired of harassing her, he would start up again. After the first week, he had stopped doing it when Zoc was around, strictly because Zoc had actually threatened to feed him to a frog. When Zoc had told her, they could tell him that, Ann had thought he had been joking, but it had worked. At least as long as Zoc was around. She had tried to ignore Lucas's comments, but that did little (if anything) to stop him. Hope hadn't been much better: every time she saw Hope, and Zoc wasn't around, she would try to convince her to tell Zoc about how she felt. It was driving her crazy. She knew she had to try something different from how she normally reacted to Lucas's harassing. Maybe she could… Ann was struck with a brilliant idea that she had to test.
"It's okay, you can come in—we're just in here kissing," Ann announced nonchalantly.
"What?!" Lucas exclaimed as he pushed open the door, a look of shock on his face.
Ann burst out laughing when she saw his face. After her laughter had died down enough for her to speak, she said, "You actually believed me? I'm getting sick of your constant harassing, but the look on your face almost makes it worth putting up with."
Lucas glared at her for a second, then asked, "What are you doing?"
"Packing," Ann replied. "I have to be ready to leave first thing tomorrow morning."
Lucas walked over to her bed and started to dig through one of her drawers.
"What do you think you're doing?" Ann demanded, just as shocked as Lucas had been a few minutes ago.
He pulled a few of her nightgowns out of the drawer and said, "Even your nightgowns look like there a few hundred years out of date. Do you ever wear anything from this century?"
"Only if I have to," Ann shot back sarcastically. "Now, again: what do you think you're doing going through my drawers?"
Lucas smiled and pulled out a sleeveless satin forest green nightgown. The neckline was slightly lower than what Ann normally wore, but still modest, and the bottom would come to just below her knees when she put it on. "I just thought I would help you decide what to take with you," Lucas said, grinning almost evilly.
"Why on earth would I want to take that?" Ann asked, raising an eyebrow. "It's fall—that's a summer nightgown and it will be a lot cooler in Washington than it is here."
"Don't you want to take something sexy along to wear while you and Zoc are in that hotel room together? Alone?" Lucas asked mischievously. "I'll bet he would—" Lucas stopped short, looking like he had been caught doing something that he clearly shouldn't. There was a sudden flash of light and he disappeared. Ann quickly turned around and saw Zoc standing in the doorway.
"Still harassing you?" Zoc asked as opposed to saying "hello."
"Constantly," Ann replied, understanding Zoc's unspoken greeting. "Where is he?"
Zoc calmly walked over to the side of the bed where Lucas had been and knelt. "He's right there," he said, pointing to the floor.
Ann knelt next to Zoc. She could see Lucas walking around and looking very annoyed. It looked like he was saying something, but she couldn't hear him. "Well, at least we can't hear what he's saying," Ann sighed.
"You can't hear him?" Zoc asked, almost disbelieving.
"No," Ann answered. "You can?"
"This close I can," Zoc explained. "I guess antennae must pick up sound better than—" Zoc stopped suddenly, turning his attention back to Lucas. "You wouldn't dare," he said very, very seriously to Lucas, who just crossed his arms and stared up at Zoc.
Ann was about to ask what he had said when Zoc stood up. She quickly stepped back as Zoc aimed his staff at Lucas and returned him to his normal size.
"What did you say to him?" Ann asked Lucas.
Lucas grinned and said, "Nothing, really. I just told him that if he didn't turn me back, I would tell my friends about you two being in bed together and they would probably tell their parents, and that by the time you two got back from Washington the whole colony would probably know, so you two had better be nice to me."
"Or we could just find a frog and shrink you again," Zoc observed coolly. "Then we wouldn't have to worry about you harassing us or telling anyone."
"You wouldn't really do that would you?" Lucas asked taking a few steps towards the door.
"Keep harassing Ann and you'll find out," Zoc half-said, half-threatened.
"All right, all right I'll stop-- I promise," Lucas said before running out of the room.
Zoc smiled as he watched Lucas run off, then said, "Well, hopefully that'll keep him from harassing you until we leave."
Ann sighed, "Good, I don't need anymore stress right now."
"What has you so stressed?" Zoc asked, sounding concerned.
"It's just this whole trip; I keep worrying that something will go wrong," Ann said. She considered telling him about her nightmares, but she wasn't sure she was comfortable telling him that she had been dreaming about him.
"And what are you worrying about that you're not telling me?" Zoc asked.
"Why would you think I wasn't telling you something?" Ann sputtered, color rushing into her face.
Zoc smiled and said, "Because you looked like you were going to say something else, but decided not to."
Giving in, Ann told him about her nightmares. When she had finished, Zoc assured, "Don't worry, I'll be fine. Should anyone come into the hotel room, I'll stay out of sight until I'm sure they're gone. As for your other nightmare, it can be avoided easily enough, even though it wasn't something I had thought of." He looked around the room and, spying a vase, took it off of a shelf and shrunk it to about half an inch in size and put it inside of the rose on the headband. His staff glowed for a second, sealing the vase inside the rose, then he dropped the headband on the floor and ordered, "Step on it. Hard."
"But that's my great-great-grandmother's vase," Ann weakly protested
"Trust me," Zoc replied.
Ann hesitated a moment, then, wincing, brought her foot down on top of it. As she moved her foot off of the headband, Zoc picked it up, opened the rose, and took out the vase. Quickly, he returned it to its proper size and handed it to Ann.
"I can make the petals around where I'll be hard enough that, unless you run over it with the plane, I should be fine," Zoc explained.
"Great—now I'm going to have nightmares about you being run over by a 747," Ann groaned as she put the vase back.
Zoc gently laid his hand on Ann's shoulder, saying, "You've got to stop worrying so much."
"But Zoc, what if something happens to you? What would the colony do if anything happened to you…what would I do? If it hadn't been for you and Hope and being able to keep busy helping in the nursery, I don't know how I would have survived those first couple of months after my family died. You and Hope are the closest thing to family I have—I don't know what I would do if I lost you and could never see Hope again."
"Would it help to admit that I'm nervous about this trip too?" Zoc gently asked.
"But you've seemed so confident that everything would be fine, that nothing will go wrong," Ann said with a note of disbelief.
"That was all an act," Zoc explained, waving the words away. "I had assumed that if you thought I wasn't worried about it, then you wouldn't worry as much. Obviously, that didn't work, so we'll have to try plan 'B.'"
"What's plan 'B?'" Ann asked.
"I will admit that, although the thought of seeing what's beyond this house and the front yard is more exiting than anything I ever imagined I would get to do," Zoc began, "I'm worried about everything that might go wrong, too. Therefore, we will go over every possible thing that could go wrong and find ways to make sure we avoid letting any of those thing happen."
Ann smiled a little and said, "That sounds like a really good idea."
They spent the next hour going over everything they could think of that could go wrong. Some of it, all they could really do was be extremely careful; with others, Zoc could use his magic to help avoid. Once they had run out of things to worry about, Ann finished packing and went back to the nest with Zoc to say goodbye to Hope and her friends.
They left early the next morning. When they got to the hotel that evening, Ann carefully took off the headband and set it on the dresser, telling Zoc he could come out. Zoc came out and Ann held her hand down so he could step on to it, she then knelt down letting him off onto the floor and stepped back as he made himself bigger.
"Are you alright?" Ann asked.
"I'm fine," Zoc replied.
"Good. Listen-- I have to go down to the meeting room in an hour to find out what assignments I'll have for this week," Ann said, pulling a notebook and pencil out of her backpack to take with her. "Is there anything you'll need before I leave?"
"No, I'll be fine," Zoc answered. "I have a book that I started reading on the plane to finish, so I should be fine until you get back. Although I do have a question."
"What's that?" Ann asked, setting her backpack on the desk chair.
"What is this thing?" Zoc said, looking at his reflection in the TV screen.
"It's called a television," Ann explained, "and I've kept the one I have at home hidden so you wouldn't ask about it. I knew you'd want to know how it works, and I had no idea how I would explain it to you. I honestly don't know exactly how it works-- it's something that I've just never learned that much about. But I did bring you these." Ann picked up a second backpack she had brought with her and pulled out a couple of books about TV's. "I figured with you being stuck in the room while I'm working on my assignments, it would be a great time to tell you about it, anyways. I'll show you how to use it and then you can read the books if you want to know how it works."
"Okay," Zoc agreed. He glanced at the TV again. "It's really that complicated?"
"It's just something I haven't learned enough about to explain it to you,' Ann clarified. "I guess I just accept that it works and have never really taken the time to learn more. Now, this is how you work it…"
By the time Ann had finished showing Zoc how to use the TV and telling him a little more about it, it was time for her to go to her class. "Are you sure you'll be alright here, alone?" Ann asked as if Zoc were her son she was leaving home alone for the first time..
"I'll be fine," Zoc assured. "Now go on, before you're late."
"Alright," Ann said as she started out the door. Suddenly she came back, saying, "Oh, and you can open the curtains if you want to-- we're on the seventh floor, so no one should see you. But don't have the lights on when you have the curtains open, because it makes it really easy to see in." Ann said her goodbyes, grabbed her books and left.
When Ann got back that evening, she almost started laughing when she saw Zoc. He was sitting by the window in what had been a chair-- it looked like he had forced the back of it down until it was even with the seat so he could sit on it. She was about to say something when she realized that he hadn't noticed she had come in. Ann instantly started to worry-- she knew it was almost impossible to sneak up on him, unless he was completely distracted by a book he was reading or he was upset about something.
Suspecting the latter, as the book's she'd given Zoc earlier sat on the far left bed, she quietly started to walk towards him, not wanting to startle him but unsure how to let him know she was there. His antennae twitched slightly; he didn't turn around, but Ann knew that he was aware of her presence. "What's wrong?" Ann gently asked as she sat down on the end of the bed nearest him.
"Nothing," Zoc answered vaguely, still looking out the window.
Ann sat there, shocked for a moment, before she finally said, "You know I think that's the first time you've ever lied to me. Zoc, I came in and was within a few feet of you before you realized I was in the room. The only way anyone can get that close to you without you knowing it is if something is bothering you badly enough to completely distract you. Why won't you tell me what's bothering you?"
Zoc hesitated a minute; finally, he whispered, "Because you're human."
Ann was shocked, and what little hope she had had that he might feel the same way about her that she felt about him was shattered along with her heart. She took a couple of deep breaths, trying to fight back tears, then softly asked, "Why does that matter?"
"Because I don't want to upset you," Zoc answered.
"Zoc, aside from telling me you hate me and will never take me back to visit with Hope, I don't think there's anything you could say that would upset me more than refusing to tell me what's bothering you, just because I'm human," Ann told him, feeling a few unwanted tears well up in her eyes.
Zoc turned to face her; his eyes widened slightly when he saw how upset she was. Sighing, he looked back out the window and asked, "Even if I said that I thought humans are the most evil, violent, uncaring, disgusting creatures on Earth?"
Ann sighed with pure relief, saying, "As long as you're not including me in that, it doesn't bother me at all. What were you doing while I was gone? Watching the news?"
Zoc was a little confused by her reaction, and finally said, "Yes, that's what I was watching, and of course I wasn't including you! You really aren't bothered by what I just said?"
"No," Ann answered, bringing her legs up onto the bed to sit Indian style. "There are good and bad humans. The good ones out number the bad, but a lot of the ones mentioned on the news are the bad ones."
"But how can humans kill other humans?" Zoc asked. "How can they have so little respect for life that they could do something like that? I can understand your books about people killing others in wars to protect their family's and homes-- my colony was at war with the wasps since before I was hatched-- but how can humans kill people they don't even know?"
"I don't know," Ann admitted. "It's something most humans don't understand."
"What about the ones who steal from others?" Zoc went on. "They had to have mentioned three or four different people who had been robbed last night alone. Why would they do that?"
"That's a little more complicated to answer," Ann calmly explained. "There are two main possibilities: either the person is just selfish and is stealing because they want more stuff or the money they could get from selling it, or sometimes it's someone that doesn't have a job and they think they have to steal to survive."
"Isn't there anyone who could help them so they wouldn't have to steal?" Zoc asked.
"There are shelters where people can stay and places where they can get food," Ann told him, "but a lot of times the shelters run out of food and the rooms are filled and then the people have nowhere to go. If you're lucky, you have a car to sleep in." As Ann said this, she considered what her own family had been through.
"It sounds like you've experienced that," Zoc said softly.
"Yeah," Ann admitted. "I think I was about seven, my sister was just a baby. My dad had been offered a job in another town, and we packed all our stuff, but when we got there, they had hired someone else. We didn't have the money to go back home and Dad couldn't find work, so we ended up staying at a couple of shelters and spent a few nights in the car until he was able to find a job."
"That must have been hard on you, being so young and having no home," Zoc murmured.
"Yeah, it probably was. I don't really remember that much about it, except for the night we slept in the car," Ann replied. "I remember having the hardest time getting comfortable-- I was sleeping in the back seat, my sister was in her car seat next to me and I eventually fell asleep sitting on the floor with my head on the seat. Other than that, it's just bits and pieces. I don't remember ever being frightened or worried, though; I guess as young as I was, I never thought anything could go wrong as long as my parents were there. I certainly never would have thought I would lose my whole family." Ann said fighting back tears, but losing.
Zoc moved over onto the bed next to Ann and pulled her into a comforting hug. Ann wrapped her arms around him, carefully avoiding the spikes on his back, and laid her head on his shoulder.
After a few minutes, Ann murmured into Zoc's shoulder, "What would I have done if I hadn't met you? I don't think I could have survived losing my family without you."
"You're strong-- you would have done just fine without me," Zoc said as he broke the embrace.
Ann reluctantly let go. "Maybe, but having you around to keep me from thinking about them to much has made it a lot easier," she said, yawning.
"It's been a long day, you should get some sleep," Zoc told her.
"Why, are you afraid I'll make you yawn even though ants don't yawn?" Ann asked grinning as she stood up.
"Lucas told you about that?" Zoc asked, watching Ann pop her suitcase open.
"Yeah," Ann answered. "He said he had the hardest time not laughing at you when you yawned after telling him ants don't yawn." Ann started to pull her clothes out of her suitcase and put it all into the dresser.
"It wasn't my fault," Zoc weakly defended. "We normally don't-- it's like some type of contagious disease. I couldn't help it."
Ann couldn't help but grin. "I wonder how many times I could get you to yawn before we go home?" she said, yawning again as pulled her pile of nightgowns out of the suitcase. She suddenly groaned, "Ugh-- that little brat."
"What is it?" Zoc asked, concerned.
Ann held up the green nightgown Lucas had "suggested" she bring, "Lucas must have snuck this in while I wasn't looking." Ann said as she tossed it into the drawer, which she promptly pushed shut.
"So what's your assignment for this week? Will you have time to look for the lab records?" Zoc asked as the drawer clunked shut.
"I'll have plenty of time-- all I have to do for the assignment is find the officer's reports from a battle and make up a map of the most likely places to find artifacts that should still be at the battle site," Ann explained, grabbing her toothbrush and a tube of Crest. "That shouldn't take too long and then I can concentrate on finding the lab records."
"Just make sure you take me with you when you're looking for them," Zoc told her.
"Don't worry-- I won't do anything dangerous unless you're with me," Ann said with a smile as she headed into the bathroom to get ready for bed.
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