AN: Feel free to tell me I'm being too vague, too useless or just plain annoying by withholding the whole 'what's going on' part of the story. I'm sure I won't mind, heh. Any comments about grammar and spelling are, since I'm not native English myself, appreciated as well. I think I do a fair job, but there are things I don't know, of course. (Such as fizz, hee. But never mind that holiday anecdote..)
Enjoy the first chapter!
Geared - Chapter 1
The morning sun peered in through the window, the curtains doing little more than dampen the light. It didn´t stop the small thin shaft of sunlight that managed to slip in between the slit, though.
As his shoulder warmed up, the man, who had either lost consciousness due to a shortage of breath or just fell asleep again due to exhaustion - he never could tell which - frowned a bit at the sensation, even though it wasn't entirely unpleasant.
He groaned as he opened his eyes and blinked, taking a moment to jumpstart his brain.
That was another thing the Englishman despised about nights like these. He was usually immediately alert and aware of everything around him the moment he woke up, but on mornings like this - after nights like that - his programming failed him.
It took him another moment to get to his feet, swaying a little.
Lord, but he needed some tea…
His morning routine kicked in and he allowed himself another minute to doze as he automatically grabbed everything required for a quick morning shower and disappeared into the small bathroom adjacent to his rather sparsely furnished hotel-room.
Five minutes later found Mal in the kitchen, all freshened up and dressed in a pair of easy jeans and a dark blue clingy turtleneck, boiling some water to set the tea.
As he waited for the click on the water-boiler, Mal sat down on the chair at the kitchen-table and stared at the horribly outdated green blue lines that indicated it was hip back in the latter part of the fifties.
While the tea-water started to simmer, Mal recalibrated his eye-sight. There was something off with his right lens, for some reason, and it kept flashing and readjusting so that one tenth of a second it would be brighter, a black flash of inactivity followed, only for it to stubbornly set on a darker shade than his left lens.
He finished just as the water-boiler beeped and, smiling slightly at the timing, Mal stood and poured the water into a tea-pot, dunking a teabag in it with practiced ease.
While the tea took its time getting ready, Mal produced a smart and slim looking padd from out of seemingly nowhere. That wasn't technically true, of course, but the technology that was used to store it was probably a bit more advanced than could properly be explained unless one had a firm basics in several subdivisions of science.
It worked, and the how of it made sense to Mal, and that was really all that mattered when you were a Mage.
He sighed deeply for a moment, then pulled out a small and thin cylindric pointer, which he used to tap at the screen. Practice makes perfect and repetition made easy, so while to anyone watching, Mal's hand moved unbelievably fast, he couldn't say he received any special upgrades for speed beyond the normal ones custom to anyone being sent to outer space in his capacity.
Finished in no time, Mal put the padd down again, to pour himself a cuppa. As he reached into one of the cabinets for a clean glass, his padd let out a polite and quiet beep. As if it were the most normal thing in the world, Mal spoke, his English accent accompanying his slightly curt tone.
"Yes, another one."
The padd made no sound after that, and Mal sat down, having added a clump of sugar which he was now dispersing into the tea-water by use of a spoon, which clinked happily against the inside of the cup whenever it hit.
The pen was picked up again, and to the casual observer it appeared that the man was making minor notations, pushing buttons, and dragging things from here to there on the small screen of the padd. The pen was put aside, put down carefully so that it lay in an exactly straight line next to the padd at a distance of 1 cm.
Mal placed his palm on the padd, took a very long and much-needed sip of his tea and sighed as he closed his eyes to enjoy the taste completely for a moment.
Tea had always done wonders to help him relax.
Now then. He sat a little straighter, but his eyes did not re-open and as he placed the cup on the table, his fingers curled lightly against the small source of warmth and comfort, he spoke again, briefly, to instructing his padd.
"Commence Search."
And so Mal remained, with the tea slowly turning cold in the cup as he stayed in that exact position, his eyes unmoving behind their lids and his breathing so even and relaxed that it was unnoticable.
He'd be back later.
tbc