bunneekula
"Don't you ever take a break?"
He watched her raise the heat of a burner, pausing briefly to glance at her watch and note the time. After, she looked up and gave him a half-smile and half-shrug before turning back to her desk and revisiting the oversized text laying open at her station.
From the neck down, her body possessed a control and stillness derived from years of discipline and concentration. Her hands never shook, her arms never dipped, and her hair was always twisted into a neat bun at the base of her neck to avoid falling into her face as she bent to scribble notes. She could precisely measure beakers in mere moments and stir at a quick pace without tapping out a litany of tones that come from touching glass to glass. Her work space was organized and codified with an efficiency that surpassed the neighboring lab stations, which would have engineered a resentment among her peers if not for how she looked from the neck up.
The beauty or lack thereof in her face was perfectly obscured by the standard issue protective goggles required whenever working in the lab. It was her mannerisms that gave her away. Her lips were disciplined enough to remain shut tight whenever her hands were at work but would go to war with her teeth whenever she observed a subject from a distance. Her tongue produced a cacophony of information and speculation if anyone relevant penetrated the 4 foot perimeter that roughly outlined her lab station. Her nose could detect the faintest nuances in chemical changes, a skill garnered from endless hands-on experiments, and tended to wrinkle whenever something went awry. Most revealing were her eyes. They seemed electrified each time she worked, every time she measured and observed and drew conclusions. For this evidence of passion rather than competition, her peers could not resent her skills.
He continued, "You can't live in the lab. Professor sets up the textbooks so no one can ever finish the entire set. You'll never run out of experiments, there's so much more in that book to learn than there is time in the semester."
She glanced at her watch again, spun the beaker away from the flame and extinguished it with a flick of the switch. The contents had changed from clear to bright pink, which she noted near the time before quickly tipping the contents into another solution.
Finally, after long moments scribbling in small, sharp script, she looked at him and nodded as though in agreement though he had been silent for a while, content with observing her at work. He was thoroughly aware that she had a knack for pinning information away in her head to address when she was ready. He thought back, and couldn't help but smile as she gave him a full shrug and turned the page in her text. She said, "Exactly."
"There used to be a house here."
"What happened?"
"I don't know. I left."
"Does that scare you?"
"Does what scare me?"
"Does it scare you how much happens when you aren't looking? How much you've missed?"
"When you put it that way, it does. But between me and the house, only one of us is left standing."
writing since 2009 · 4 entries · 3 days shown up
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