you're the fairy bomberman

Apparently Natalie had a new favourite place outside her apartment: the café near her building.

She'd meant to just visit for a little bit of fake Thanksgiving last week, but the pastries were good, the tea was great, and the place itself was cozy. And maybe she needed to get out of her apartment for reasons that weren't meetings elsewhere in the city. Of course, she'd come here on the way back from a meeting, but, still.

It was a good place to unwind before going home.

Even if Natalie's way of unwinding involved sorting through emails on her phone. Whatever, her unwinding time, her rules.

[ooc: NFB, open for texts and calls and stuff!]

What a difference a few years made. Natalie still didn't love a crowd of any kind, but she was much better at handling one these days without feeling like dropping all conversation and just walking away because she couldn't be bothered to care. It turned out small talk was much easier when you thought of it like it was PR. She was getting ever so good at playing roles like that.

She was also getting very good at mingling with a glass in her hand as if she was actually drinking from it. And as she excused herself from another mingly encounter with some charming parting words, a smile, and a little raise of her glass, she was more than a little tempted to ask Peter whether that counted as a life skill.

[ooc: NFB, and for Peter.]

Well, this was one way of recuperating from any work stress that may have been happening, as well as the stress of wondering whether some birthday gifts had been a good idea. How had Natalie not thought of this before?

Oh, right. It was because turning into an eight-year-old wasn't exactly within her usual abilities. And wasn't something she would've chosen, anyway. But here it was. She'd gone to bed a young woman in her late teens, and woken up a kid. She'd still gotten up at around the same time, but then she'd put on her fake glasses and started on a different kind of day. One that – as Peter would probably be thankful for – was unlikely to involve going outside the apartment much. Or at all. There was plenty to explore right here! And, there was Mr. Moxy. And Natalie knew you had to take good care of pets, and she'd never had one, and she was going to take advantage of a situation where she could care for one.

Mr. Moxy, of course, couldn't muster up being confused by this turn of events. He was a Fandom cat, these things happened. As long as he was getting fed, he was fine.

[ooc: NFB but open for all the usual stuff!]

Well. It had only been a matter of time, with all these changes in Natalie's life, both big and small. She wasn't entirely the same girl who'd left Montreal for school in the States two years ago, nor was she entirely the same girl who'd gone to school in Fandom. Transitions and rites of passage and email correspondence with semi-important people around the world could change a person.

So long story short, Natalie had gone to a hairdresser and had about half the length of her hair lopped off. It still hung down a little past her shoulders, but not all the way down to her lower back like it had before. Maybe it made her look more grown-up. She didn't know. That hadn't been her reason to do it. She wasn't sure she even had a concrete reason. It was a whim, an itch she'd had in the back of her mind for about a week. And now she'd done it. (And was not thinking about the last time she'd had hair this length. It was irrelevant.) She'd gotten her hair cut, and even styled a little bit. Not curls, but waves.

And now she was back at her apartment, looking at herself in the giant bathroom mirror.

So this was what she looked like now.

[ooc: NFB, open for all the usual stuff.]

It had been a work-filled two weeks. Distraction tactic after distraction tactic. In the last week, she'd even managed to acquire a guitar, because trying to learn to play that beyond what preliminary skills she already had was a good way to pass what little time she had where she couldn't even pretend she had work to do. And all this because of a confrontation with some guy.

(Except it wasn't 'some guy'. It was never just 'some guy' with her.)

It had been almost two weeks. Enough for things to cool down. Enough for a chance at rational discussion. And if she was right, the fall break crowd was returning to the island today. So actually reaching out – not that she wanted to be the first to do that – wouldn't actually disrupt anyone's vacation anymore.

So. It was time.

And Natalie refused to do anything as lame as taking a calming, steadying breath before selecting Jim's number and bringing the phone to her ear.

[ooc: NFB, but can open also for interaction with people not named in the post!]

Natalie had a busy day. Quelle surprise. There'd been a package waiting for her when she'd gotten back to her apartment from various appointments and meetings and things. She hadn't had time to check it out immediately. Emails had taken precedence, and as she'd hoped a package like that was likely to be something nice, she'd been fine to wait to open it.

But by now, she had. And the first thing she realized was that it was a care package, from her parents. She hand't thought she'd exhibited any glaring signs of homesickness in talking to them a couple of days ago, but... Guess they knew. Inside were a few general things they knew she couldn't get where she was, and those were nice, but they weren't what drew her attention.

That honour went to a stack of postcards.

They were old, a little worn out at the edges, a little less the exact colour they'd been when they'd been new. They were those touristy postcards, from various Canadian cities (and a few from abroad), sent by her parents to her from their various individual work-related travels over the years. Neither of her parents had ever been away from home for more than a few days, and they'd always beat the postcards home. It had almost been a game.

She'd had the cards on her bedroom wall when she'd been younger. They didn't make her cry right now, honest. But she definitely went to put them on her bedroom wall. Again.

[ooc: NFB, but open for all the usual stuff, you already know this.]

To her credit, Natalie had not actually stuck around Seattle forever (or even until Sam would wake up), although she'd had a long day of sitting by his door yesterday. He'd be fine. She'd check on him later. He had everyone else watching over him.

Although right now she was wishing she'd never left.

See, for some random reason, on her way back, she had had a layover in Fandom in the early morning. It would've been fine – she'd grabbed a coffee from the Perk and taken a brief walk around the park – but she was feeling the effects now. There'd been something in the air on the island again, and now it was in her system, making her twitchy in a way she was pretendng wasn't familiar.

Also, about equally randomly, someone at the Haiti end of her Portalocity trip had told her she looked like an old lady. So now she was both distracted as well as vaguely offended. But mostly just distracted. It wasn't very conducive to getting back to work, but she was trying.

And definitely not scrolling through any pictures on her phone.

[ooc: NFB, but open for texts/calls/visits. You can thank a random person on IMDb for that random insult to Nat's face, oh em gee.]

It had been a long week. Or maybe Natalie had just made it that way. She had an outstanding way with dedication to research and other such things, after all. And since she was way in the future and dealing with current events, she wasn't going to run out of things to research anytime soon. Really, she was probably studying more than she would have had she actually gone to college instead.

(Or possibly not. It was in her nature to overachieve.)

Yeah, it was the kind of week where her idea of a relaxing form of entertainment when curled up on her bed on a Saturday evening... was the first televised US presidential debate. Hey, there was some comedy in that. Mostly the time in which she was watching it.

Maybe later she'd finally realize she could also try and see movies that hadn't yet even been made in her time. Like the Batfleck flick. But until then? JFK and Nixon. Natalie was such a nerd sometimes.

[ooc: NFB, but open for texts and calls and whatever. Idek.]