Isabelle - Part III.

“You fools! How long have we waited for this? How calm does she have to be? Why can’t we use stronger doses of the elixir to speed this up? I did not spend years planning this to see it fail. There has to be…” she waved her hand impatiently above her shoulder. A metallic voice cut her off.
“…something we can do. I’ve been saying so all week, Madam. These…fools, your highness, have not a single shred of evidence our young friend has the ability to locate the item. We have collected enough data, however, to return to the previous location, and perhaps we should start from there!”
The wispy voice had emerged from the speaker on the wall. Esmé shrugged cynically and turned her gaze back to the window, her fists clenched.
“Your highness, if I may, what are we to do, then?”
A short man emerged from the antechamber and made his way towards the table, fingering his leather pouch. His voice sounded oddly the same through the speaker and in person.
“What? Humphrey, you dimwit! You are the cause of this! You are the one we should be looking to for a plan right now! There is a reason I had this facility built, and you certainly proved you couldn’t handle it properly! And that is precisely the reason you are now navigating this wreck! You can’t handle things!”

Isabelle - Part II

Everything swung into focus. A chair in the corner. The cedar wood shelving. The portrait of her father. Her small feet covered by the blanket. She sighed. The light seeping from under the door was soft and yellow, and she knew at once they were all there, waiting anxiously for her to emerge from the room.

“Adjust the intake levels, this is mad!” one man said, pointing angrily at the door. “There is no way she could have located this fast. There has to be something we can do.”

Another man hissed curses under his breath, clutching the leather pouch hanging from his belt. The tiny lights illuminating the floorboards hesitated. Someone flicked a switch twice and they steadied, resuming their cold lighting along the edges of the oval room they were in. Isabelle unwound the threads around her fingers, straightened her back and lit a cigarette.

“I’ve located!” she screamed breathlessly. She exhaled. The scanner on her left had gone off the charts once again and she knew her captors would not be pleased. She allowed herself a half-grin, satisfied she had frustrated them. Another drag. A pause. Exhale.

“In light of the current progress, madam, we cannot take her there. She has exceeded our expectations and we simply cannot keep up with her. We have to postpone the location.”
The tall, slender, satin-clad figure standing at the window turned and faced them.

Isabelle - Part I

There was no room on the table. There was scarcely any room to breathe. It was ten past five in the morning and they had been working for what felt like eternity. In the silent, opaque night, the buzzing and whirling noises had stopped and she was wide awake, moved by the sudden stillness of her surroundings. She gathered her thoughts and took a deep breath.

Cool air drifted in through the opening in the tent. The signal. Isabelle rose to her feet, picked up her knapsack and went outside in the fresh breeze of the desert night. She walked for a while before letting herself fall to her knees in the rusty orange sand. It was close to sunrise – but the stillness of her surroundings, however immense and exotic they were, made her uneasy and a chill ran up her spine, making the short brown hair on the nape of her neck stand on end. She had no idea what to look for in the Sahara desert and tried hard to figure it out. The camels were all perched on their folded legs and were moaning in their sleep. The sand seemed to swirl and dance around her, even though the wind had died down, and called her to her knees once again. Her hands ran on either side of her legs, fingers digging in the sand and raking it ever so gently. Breathe. Her face was now very close to her knees, she had folded onto her own lap and was studying little craters in the sand. Little footsteps, it seemed, left by critters in the night. She followed one path, until it intersected with another. She followed that one. Soon, she found herself staring at the traces left by hundreds of insects, short and long, sinuous and of military precision – a whole other world had left its mark and was now hiding from the rising sun.
“Tunisia,” she mouthed, smiling.

Clearly.

That's it! That's enough! No more procrastinating!
I must now present you, Horde of Readers, with.....

Drum roll, please, Sergio! (Sergio is my imaginary drummer. He lives with Little Person Living Inside My Head. His uncle is Sergio Mendes, Brazilian musician extraordinaire.)

...True Fact About Me Number Two:

I Am In Denial.

True fact - surprising, I know, but true.

On Obliques and Squares of Light.

So I stuck with the gym thing. Which is good.
It makes me feel good. I even feel a little...firmer.

Mmmm, fiiirm. Oh - sorry.

I actually found my triceps last week. I didn't even know I had them. They were there, but in a lame, outta-the-way fashion. So there they are. I'm beginning to see the shadows of side-abs. They're technically called obliques, but I call them side abs because they are the abs on the side. So. That's why. Enough about the gym. All you need to know is I love it and plan to continue going. I still don't understand how I've developed this urge, suddenly, to hop on the machines and sweat, but I get that urge now.

It's Monday morning and I am at home because I worked almost all of Saturday to have peace and quiet. I wondered why I didn't get much done at work - I still do - so I am currently trying to find ways to improve my concentration. I think I have a very short attention span. If I'm in the middle of doing something and someones walks over to my desk, I'm fucked.

These days, I am puzzled because I sometimes find myself wishing I was mean. I sometimes wish I could say "shut up and let me work" to people but I can't. Probably because it isn't a very civilized or nice way to deal with other people and my nice personality is stronger than my bitch personality.

I know you're in there, bitch personality! Come on! Come out - it's spring! Come give the finger to annoying assholes! Come invade my brain just long enough for me to walk up to someone and say: "Please keep your stupid, incomprehensible mumbling and off-key, crappy singing to yourself or leave this room." Okay, okay, that's the polite version. I think I am probably already dealing with this the right way and I'm being polite all the time, or so my colleagues tell me. I confuse the little voice in my head and what really happens, sometimes. Maybe I have a split personality problem! Oh, no!

...that would explain the blood on my shirtsleeve, Friday night...just kidding. Haha.

On the Boo front, this little naughty monkey is driving me nuts. I took him outside on Sunday, harness and leash and all, as per the rules. He was completely freaked in the beginning. He would not even stand, he was lying on his side looking at me like I had slapped him. So I checked that I had not done up the straps too tight, scooped him up in my arms and took him outside to the balcony. After two minutes of no movement, I scooped him up again and put him in the stairs leading to the yard. Nothing. Then picked him up and gently lowered him into the grass. Click! Some sort of primal instinct kicked in and he started roaming around, me in tow, nose to the ground, into the bushes and under the stairs. He was pretty scared by the neighbors' kids with their whirring, spinning toys and their screams. So I took him inside and since then, he won't stop meowing in from of the patio door. He is practically pointing at it, going (in his James Mason voice) : "Open this door now, I say! Can't you see I'm supposed to be outside? What are you doing, staring at the square of light? Open it!" And so on, with various levels of insults and debilitating meowing. I swear, the meowing sounds like someone is ripping at his insides.

Enough. I gotta go outside with the cat.