Paradise Threatened - Chasing Normal, Arc 2

Scene 9: Breathing Room

It had been a day, and Travis wasn't even to her workstation yet.

"You know you're supposed to drink that...," Will's voice trailed off in a question as he fell in step beside Travis in the lobby.

"Coffee. And yes. I know." She swiped her tattoo across the scanner and stomped through the door. Will waved his wrist in front of the scanner and slipped ahead of Travis. "I overslept and didn't have time to change."

"That would also explain why your hair looks like actual straw."

Travis subconsciously tugged at her hair. "I didn't have time to do anything with it. I will never hear the end of it when Mom gets here."

"Oh, that's right. They're coming in today, aren't they?" He chuckled as she nodded.

"Go away," she grumbled as she hit the button to call the elevator.

##

Most of the animators were working on backgrounds, props, and character design, so Brice had Travis shadowing one of them. The woman was quiet and fast, and without a running commentary Travis found it difficult to follow everything she was doing. She finally gave up and just started spinning in her chair, watching other animators working nearby.

"Could you stop that?" The woman barked. "It's very distracting."

"Sorry." Travis planted her toes on the ground and lightly swung the chair back and forth. The animator glared at her, and she stopped.

They continued to sit there in silence. Travis tried asking questions about what she was doing, but the woman would shush her.

It was nearly an hour before Brice realized what was going on and retrieved Travis. "There's some more cleanup work available. Why don't you go take care of that for a bit?"

"Thank you!" Travis tried not to skip on her way back to her workstation. The first file she opened, though, was the first file from the animator she had been shadowing. Travis had been working with animation tools since she was in primary school, and on animation projects since she was in secondary school. She had never seen anything like what was going on in the file.

Great. What do I do? If I ask Brice for help, he'll think I don't know what I'm doing, and he already doesn't like me.

She stared helplessly at the screen for several moments, watching the animation loop. And then she closed the file and opened the next one in the list.

##

Travis had taken to eating lunch in the cafeteria with Will. He had grown up in New Glory and couldn't wrap his mind around Travis' nomadic lifestyle. "Have you ever been across the river?"

"The river?"

"Yeah, the one that separates us from Shinlajin."

"Oh! Yeah, we lived over there for several months when I was in primary school. It's pretty nice. My governess took me to the parks a lot."

"What's a governess?" Will shoveled an oversized bite of pasta into his mouth.

Travis tore a bit of crust off her sandwich. "It's like a private teacher. I had a lot of them growing up." Her phone chimed, and she pulled it out. And then she grinned.

"What? Is that your governess?"

"No! It's my mom!" She scrolled, reading the rest of the message.

"No way. You're far too happy."

"Sorry," she blushed and set aside the phone. "Things aren't going smoothly and they're stuck at the estate."

"Ahhhh," Will inhaled a noodle, "so you still get to be Normal Girl."

"Yeah. I do!" She inhaled a bit of onion. "I should probably let Mr. Shiratori know."

"After lunch." Will reached across and stole a couple of her strawberries. "Sorry. Were you going to eat those?"

She threw the last one at him.

##

She'd known telling the president wouldn't go smoothly. The current production was already behind schedule because of her mother.

What she wasn't expecting was how fast news traveled through the building. In the time it took her to get from Mr. Shiratori's office to the animator workspace, news of her parents' delay had reached Brice.

He met her at the entrance. "Why are you working on scenes out of order?"

"What?" She was so excited about her mother's message she had forgotten about the morning. "Oh. Sorry about that."

"Never mind. I've finished your work for you. Apparently, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree."

Travis was stunned, but she slipped into her workstation and tried to finish the rest of the files.