Snippet #2700601

"This is very unusual."

Anahita Mkhrtchyan was not used to arriving first. Or second, for that matter. With respect to most things that could be arrived at-- dates, parties, dorm rooms, conclusions, the like-- Anahita generally arrived last, without even the shame to don some pretense of guilt for her tardiness. It was simply a fact of life. The sun rises in the east. The sky that was blue yesterday and remains blue today will be blue tomorrow, too. Most things aren't worth doing and even fewer are worth doing well. And Anahita is almost never on time. A tautology of life, if you will, one that she'd have suspected would be the bane of her instructors' existences had she the consideration to care.

And yet here she was, standing in her allotted dorm room, quite alone. Maybe that person stopped through and then left before I got here. No, she dispensed of that possibility in short order; the room was barren but for what she assumed were the base furnishings, absent any sign of luggage, any embellishments which might imply her roommate had dropped their belongings off before heading out again.

Oh well. She'd considered and set aside one possibility and in doing so had exhausted her capacity (and patience) for detective work. Whoever she was going to be sharing a living space with for the foreseeable future, she'd find out eventually. Heck, maybe they'd died or something on the way to Marchand. She'd get the place to herself, in that case. It was a nice thought. She amused herself with that prospect as she dragged her one ratty old suitcase over to what she had concluded was going to be her bed, a decision based primarily on the number of steps she'd have to take to reach it versus the one that happened to be farther away.

She didn't have a whole lot to unpack. Some clothes, whatever had been within reach about five minutes before she'd left for Marchand, a couple of spare pairs of aviators-- backups for the pair she was wearing now-- a couple of notebooks, a toothbrush... At least she thought she'd brought a toothbrush. Maybe it was stuffed somewhere amongst the clothes, which she'd left on a heaping pile on her bed. She'd probably find out when and if she ever summoned up the will to undertake the arduous ordeal of moving those clothes. Realistically speaking, she probably wouldn't--

"Hope no one saw that."

Oh, she wasn't alone anymore. Anahita blinked, setting the last notebook down on her bed and turning her head towards the door into the dorm. There was a young woman standing there-- how long she'd been there was anybody's guess; as far as Anahita was concerned she might have marched right past her on her way into the dorm room without noticing. Must've been her roommate. Her distinctly not dead roommate. I guess I don't have the place to myself, she mused, not quite disappointed and not quite pleased. But hey, might as well say hello, no?

"For what it's worth," Anahita drawled as she kicked her suitcase off to the side and stepped towards the door where the other woman stood. "Whatever it was, I didn't see it." She leaned against the wall beside the door and added, "Also, I'm Anahita. You must be..." In the interests of courtesy, she allocated an entire tenth of a second to the tragically doomed task of attempting to remember the other woman's name before she gave up and settled for for, "... my roommate."