I had been reading research papers on reflectance last night.
Audrey was in a special class studying untold physics discoveries of the 19th and 20th century. The small class had access to large manuscript books and they spent months pouring over them. One day, Audrey drew tired of how the class had not discovered anything and it was a money drain to something that could have gone to her volcano project. She took the large manuscript she had been working on where the imaging system was not able to detect anything. Her hand held a medium stick of charcoal and begun outlining the pictures and larger numbers like 929.
There was a story about Janelle Ians, an orphan that was not able to know her mother the way she wanted to. Janelle spent much of her time by the Lomay shore and collected beach sundries. She made a business which turned a profit. With that money, with the help of her seafolk community, Janelle created a foundation for orphaned or forgotten children to spend time with mentors and let the waves take away their troubles.
This news story was old and yellowed by time, but increasingly relevant to Audrey. She wrote notes of charcoal in this chapter and others like it. As she continued to flip through the large palamcest, one of her classmates noticed the charcoal, “You can’t be doing that, we’ll all get in trouble and never be able to come back here,” Emilia whispered hastily. Audrey tuned Emilia out and continued to do her process as she was in a flow.
The girl of jet black hair found the passage for the class and did what she needed to do. This gave her ample knowledge to write a summary of this untold history. Emilia, still grumbling, found a seat next to Audrey. The film was placed in the projector with some trouble of Mr. Rambla and the feature did that old countdown from 3 to start the film.
Everything followed the summary that Audrey had written. Then they got to the discovery of reflectance. There was a heated back and forth with his mentor. His grey cap and suspenders were too distracting to most that they did not pay attention to what was occurring. Smendl, the lead researcher grew frustrated with his mentor and was trying to explain that the second object in their system was not another object, but light. How? Well, Smendl kept explaining it and his mentor continued reexplaining his way with a closed mind. Then Smendl let his frustration take him over and he spit in his mentor’s face. “It’s the salvia. That’s why it’s so reflective and the dogs have a ton of it.”
Stunned, Smendl’s mentor stood there and wiped the saliva off his face and shirt. In a deep tone, he shrugged his shoulders and said, “fine, I believe you. Now, can we go home?”
This was so off from what Audrey had found in the book, but all this entertainment of spitting in someone’s face drowned reason out of the class.
She looked at the time and realized she was late for Regan’s mother’s wedding…and she was part of the bridal party. She made it to the reception, but she had missed the ceremony. This caused her to sit at the tables for an hour and mope. One of Regan’s uncles made a joke about how Audrey always loved to eat even though she was such a small slender girl. She glared at him and he got the picture. “Alright, not a fan of jokes I see. You never were an easy going type either.” As he walked away, Audrey got up and roamed around the large event space that connected to a church. They were singing advent songs and some were having a dinner in the back of the room dressed in white and green. Audrey stood out in Maroon and realized she was in the wrong place. Yuri caught a glimpse of her as she left, but that was not her concern now.
She looked for Regan’s mom and found some of Regan’s aunt’s speaking about where the after party was and not to worry about missing the ceremony since it was recorded. No one was matching what Audrey was feeling until she reached Jay…
The next morning, Regan’s new dad tried to take both of them out to the stores by the shore before they went on the honeymoon. Everything there looked as if they were in a country with a large export of potatoes and beer. There was a store called Aright, “That store is kind of expensive, but it’s trending everywhere right now. I’ll take you girls in,” Donny announced.
The store was packed with a massive sale and Audrey went by many loud shirts that were not her style. One shirt was neutral enough, but it had Halloween colors and was a reasonable price of 5-15 dollars. Everything else looked like some dress you would wear on a golf course and Audrey was jealous of all the clothes Rela (change) would wear.
The store keeper with the singed eyebrows was working that day and pulled Audrey aside. “I know the clothes are loud to you, but think of how you could incorporate them as a statement piece.” Audrey had had it, “I DON’T WANT A STATEMENT PIECE!” she yelled. The store keeper stepped away and Donny came to see what was the matter. Audrey brushed it off and as she was about to leave she saw a shirt with recorded audio of Allyson Gust’s Bewitching Hour with her signature clock. She was interested, but knew she could sneak back when the sale was done. No one wanted an Allyson Gust shirt after her recent headlines.
Lots of Honey 