in a dress that feels entirely too stuffy, her hand finds another, sweatier than the one just three minutes prior, and she wrestles with the smile on her face lest the real percentage of her social battery peek through. standard introductions follow: bakhti, yes, so nice to meet you. oh, tomorrow morning, i'm up second — the politics of preservation: preserving memory through adaptive reuse in post-colonial cities. yeah, no, that one, i do hope to explore it more in the future — yours ? oh, i was just reading an article about it — that sounds so interesting — i'm so very much looking forward to it tomorrow. another colleague, another tray of hors d'ouerves that passes by, another conversation that goes by without any real indelibility; she can't tell how many people she's met tonight, nor how many hours have passed since the socials began ( has it been hours ? time doesn't make sense to her now, and it hasn't since — the barren feeling of her wrist when her hand falls upon it is no longer unfamiliar, but barren all the same. ) the slight ache of her heel-strapped ankles tell her that it has, maybe, been long enough. emma turns from this circle of newfound acquaintances, in search of another meaningless introduction; she thinks one more will be sufficient before calling it a night, excusing herself with promises of preparation for tomorrow. and then, as she turns her head, he stands there, like clockwork, across the room. if she had felt out of sync before, now she's unmoored entirely; a dissonant chord in a song with a time signature she no longer recognizes. their eyes meet, she thinks, and almost immediately emma decides this is not the hill she wants to die on, looking away with such intention that she hopes she can mask as indifference. one more introduction, she steels herself, walking over to her professor and his cohort. she's not seen nor heard from mason in two months; five more minutes surely won't kill her, not when he's stolen the concept of time from her already.
