The analog clock that sits under Jill’s television set clicks over to 0900 hours. She’s been watching it for the past five minutes, fingers drumming on the arm of her couch. The calendar on the wall marks three days since she arrived back in California for her annual leave, but it feels like three years. Jill lifts her ankle and rests it on her knee, eyes flicking from the clock back to the television, upon which a famous chef starts to insist that he can still make a healthy meal of all natural earthborn ingredients with no artificial enhancements. Jill can’t remember his name, but he’s grown more wrinkles by his eyes and mouth since last she watched.
Feet brace the impact of her sudden rise from the couch, and Jill turns her back on the set. The sliding door of her closet is flung aside haphazardly and the creak of protest the wood gives reminds her she’s not aboard the C-9170, where her cabin is all metal and electronics, and the bar she fits in place now with clips and previously installed hooks fits in place with super powered magnets. Jill clicks her tongue, finger tracing where the paintwork on the doorframe has given way to the strain of the bar.
There’s white powder on her palms and her hoodie is on the floor at her feet when the knock comes at the door before she’s had a chance to start the exercise. Her frown is deep -- she isn’t expecting anyone, and very few people even know she’s here. Maman always calls ahead and Pa wouldn’t come alone. It’s an insistent knock too, rapping again when she hasn’t answered within half a minute. Jill jogs through from the sitting room and into the hall, leaving a white hand print on the control pad. The lock clicks open.
Jill’s mother used to tell her that she looked like she’d slept under an elcor when she woke up, and Jill had never really understood the phrase until now. Miranda looks, to put it honestly and not at all kindly, a mess. Gone is the usual perfect frame around her face, hair disheveled as though she ran all the way from the Citadel to California, zeroG and all. Her clothes seem out of place, and the casual air of superiority has dissipated into nervous friction, like the charge from rubbing a balloon on cotton personified. Jill isn’t exactly suspicious, but she doesn’t move to invite her in immediately.
(She’s never needed to in the past, Miranda usually invites herself.)
“Randa? What are you doing here?”