xp_logs | Haroun, Meggan, Amanda, Thursday afternoon

Waiting for Manda to finish her day's magical study, Meggan tries to stay amused in the library. Haroun is in there too, and not amused by the determined tinking of Meggan's toy piano. Immune to Meggan's cutest looks, he nevertheless tries to keep her amused - and quiet. Which backfires somewhat.

Meggan glanced again at the closed door, behind which Manda was studying her magic things. She didn't mind so much not being allowed to go in, but she was getting a little bored. She'd played with her ball, and looked at some pictures in some of the children's books Manda had gotten out for her, and she didn't quite dare touch any of the other books.

Her eye fell on her toy piano, and she brightened. She would play with that, she decided, picking it up and setting it on her lap. Marie-Ange had been singing this morning. Meggan would try to play the song.

Haroun treasured the peace and quiet of the library. He could concentrate here, focus in ways he never could back in the room he shared with Alison. A short mid-morning nap served to put the bounce back in his step, and the extremely large and complicated series of CAD files gave his mind as much of a workout as his body got earlier in the morning. Every once in a while he'd mutter to himself in Arabic as he examined a component, thought about ways of streamlining, reconfiguring, improving.

Or, at least, until he heard some sort of tinny tinking noise coming from somewhere in the Library.

Meggan hummed quietly. She was getting it now... the tune was pretty, even if eight notes weren't quite enough. She kept wanting to go lower or higher, and there was nowhere to go. She wondered if music-toys came in bigger sizes. "Good," she said quietly, beaming as she started to play the tune again, faster this time.

Haroun was _just_ getting the beginning of an idea for the fuel pumps when the blasted tinking noises started up again. Sighing, he rubbed his forehead as if to massage out the low-grade burn settling in behind his eyeballs. He stood up slowly, and then walked towards the source of the tinking noise. He had to know what was causing it, so that he could punt it into low Earth orbit without a 'chute.

Meggan looked up as a Person she didn't know - although she recognized him from seeing him at a distance - came around the bookshelves. "Hi!" she chirped brightly. Since it was usually the first question asked, she pointed at the closed door. "Manda there."

Well, so much for the punting. Haroun smiled falsely for the child's benefit, and waggled his fingers at her by way of a hello. "Do you think you could stop making that noise? I'm trying to work, and you are distracting me." he said. He'd try sweet reason first as a matter of course before he went to go pull Amanda out of whatever foul sorcery she was enraptured with this week.

Meggan tilted her head. He felt... funny. Nervous. Of her? Maybe he was like Jake, and children made him nervous. "Not noise," she told him seriously, setting the toy aside reluctantly. She would play more later. "Moo-sic!"

"Music. Right." he said, exhaling deeply. Humor the girl, Haroun. She's too young to know any better. "Libraries are not the place to play music." he pointed out. "Libraries are quiet places."

She pouted. "Bored," she explained, getting up and going over to him. She patted his hand cautiously. Yes, definitely nervous. She patted his hand again, hoping it would reassure him.

Great. Now he was her personal petting zoo. "I have work to do. I'm sorry that you're bored. Can you read?" he asked her somewhat callously. Give her a book, that should shut her up. Something, _anything_!

Meggan shook her head. "No read," she said a little sadly. Then she brightened. "Learn soon!" Manda had said she would, when she got better at talking. She sniffed him cautiously. He smelled weird. Kind of like Forge, but not.

"Great." he said, looking around for something to amuse the child with. Aha! Children liked pictures! "Wait right here." he said, and walked quickly back to his laptop. A few tapped commands, and the library's network printer started spitting paper. Once he had a decent-sized stack of it, plus some of his colored pens, he dropped them in front of the girl. "Do you like to color?"

"Yes!" Meggan bounced. She patted his hand again, smiling up at him. "Good," she told him. It was nice of him to find colouring-pictures for her. "Name Meggan," she added, pointing to herself, and then to him. "Name?"

"I know what your name is. Mine is Haroun al-Rashid." he said, waiting for her to inevitably butcher the pronounciation. To his ear, she sounded Germanic. Germans never could wrap their blocky tongues around a language as elegant and beautiful as Arabic.

"Ha-roon al-Rashid," Meggan repeated, trying to make it sound right. It didn't, quite, and she made a face. "Haroun al-Rashid," she repeated, making it sound as close to the way he'd said it as she could. Then she giggled - the deep voice tickled.

Haroun blinked. That was ... his voice? Coming out of this little girl? Wait - he thought he remembered seeing something on a briefing sheet - ah, that was it! She was a shapeshifter! "Don't do that." He cautioned. "You could get stuck that way."

"Yes," Meggan agreed, still giggling. "Tickle," she added, poking her chest. She stood on tiptoe to pat his chest. "You tickle?" A voice that deep surely had to... it had felt funny coming out when she did it.

"Nope. Not for a long, long time." he said uncomfortably. He was NOT going to explain puberty to this girl. Not going to happen. Not his department, not his responsibility. Amanda really needed to finish up whatever she was doing and get her scrawny English ass out there, he thought despondently.

"Sad?" she asked, cocking her head. He felt like he wasn't happy, so she gave him a hug around the waist. That usually made people feel better.

Then she frowned. Something about him felt weird. She looked at him properly, and blinked. Half of him wasn't there! He had not-bits-of-him-bits, like Forge. She poked his hip thoughtfully. "Notreal?"

"It's real, but it isn't flesh." he said with more than a hint of sadness. "Machine."

Meggan nodded, and gave him another hug. "Realnotreal," she agreed, meaning that it was real but not a grown part of him. "Good." It was much better to have realnotreal legs than to not have any after all.

"Realnotreal." he said in agreement. This was _insane_, he had work to do! "I have to go back to work, Meggan. Sit here and color in the nice intake manifold schematics and wait for Amanda to finish."

She tugged hopefully on his hand. "Stay play?" she asked hopefully. She had toys... her pink ball, and her bear, and the toy piano. They could play with those. Or maybe he could read to her.

Oh, now this was _too much_. "No." he said. "I have to get back to my work. It's very important. It could save lives." he said, exaggerating his words for effect.

Meggan drooped, giving him her best sad-reproachful look. Like her pleading-for-food look, she'd learned it from Joyita. "Yes," she said sadly, sitting down and picking up the coloured pens. She'd only coloured with crayons before, but she'd seen Marie-Ange use pens, and they weren't too different.

Haroun was, however, Immune to the pleading look. In his culture, children were Seen and not Heard, and he was quite clearly OK With This Notion. "OK, back to work. Stop messing with the kid, al-Rashid, you have real work to do." he told himself as he walked back to his laptop and his schematics.

Meggan coloured in two of the incomprehensible pictures, staying carefully inside the lines. There. Lots of pretty colours. She would show Haroun-al-Rashid how good she was at colouring! She picked the pictures up, and went looking for him. He was sitting looking at one of the computer-things, and she trotted over, holding up the pictures. "Coloured!" she said proudly.

Haroun was _just about_ to begin compiling his revision to his drawing when Meggan decided to show him the results of her artistic endeavors. "That's nice." he said, glancing at her picture before returning his attention to his schematic. Maybe he could shave a few milimeters off from the ring collar, reinforce the housing assembly...

He'd hardly looked. Meggan sighed. Getting this one's attention was HARD. "Doing what?" she asked, leaning around to peek at the screen. More weird pictures. Still, pictures, however strange, were better than the little boxy word-things that Manda was usually looking at.

Haroun gritted his teeth. "I'm working on streamlining the fuel intakes of the Blackbird's primary engines." He said unhelpfully. "It is hard work, and demands a lot of thought. Will you _please_ go back to where you were and colour?" he asked her firmly.

"En-jin. Vrooooom." Meggan looked, then sighed and nodded. "Go colour," she agreed. Manda would be more impressed with her colouring than silly Haroun-al-Rashid. Maybe she'd be done studying soon.

"Vroom" he said with a shake of his head. Yes, this was all about the vrooms. Big, thundering vrooms, high up in the sky. Just thinking about it made Haroun feel a little better inside. But only a little, as his thoughts took a very familiar depressive dive. That first flight, what came later ... and then what he wasn't there for.

Meggan sat back down to her colouring. She'd done nearly two more pictures when she accidentally went over onto her finger. To her surprise and delight, the colour stayed. Crayons didn't work on skin, but pens seemed to.

And on fur, too, she discovered. And even on clothes! This was more fun than colouring on silly pictures of engines.

Haroun was, quite frankly, ignoring Meggan. He was deep in the throes of inspiration, testing out new ideas as fast as the program would let him make the changes.

"Sorry, Meg, didn't mean t' take so long..." Amanda began as she came out of her study. Bloody Strange - the homework he'd set had involved some translation, and of course all her resources were down here, and then there'd been the one obscure Sumerian word she'd had to search for ages to find... Then she took in the small furry girl, the pile of paper, and the permanent makers with which she was engrossed in turning herself as many different colours as possible. After the initial strangled noise (because hell, that stuff wouldn't come off, even with McCoy's special furry people shampoo), she went over to Meggan and plucked the pen out of her hand. "Meg? Where did you get these? An' what on earth are you doin' colourin' yerself?" she asked, keeping her tone mostly even. No point scaring Meggan with loud voices, and besides, it wasn't entirely her fault. Some dope had given her the markers in the first place.

"Haroun-al-Rashid give," Meggan explained, holding up the engine-pictures she'd coloured in. "Coloured!" She pointed to her fur and beamed. "Pretty colours me!" She could change her fur's colour, sometimes, but only one colour at at time and it wouldnt' stay. Now it would!

Haroun? What was he doing... "Meg, love, there's ways t' make yer hair change colours that doesn't involve colouring yerself with markers," she sighed. "And this won't come out. Come on, let's give back the markers an' we'll go find something else for you t' do." She blamed herself - if she hadn't been so busy, she wouldn't have left Meggan for so long... Collecting the markers, she headed over to Haroun. "Here," she said without preamble. "Sorry if Meg was botherin' you, but next time you give a kid markers? Make sure they know not t' use 'em on themselves?"

"That's your job, not mine." he said, taking his markers back. "I've got work to do." he added, and then walked back to his laptop and the schematic that was starting to take shape there. Fluid dynamics, that was the ticket. Neat, clean, understandable.

Amanda tried hard not to growl. Besides, it was her job. "Well, I'm tryin' hard, but I would've thought anyone with some sense would've thought t' check on her if you were gunna give her somethin' like that," she retorted. With a sigh, she took Meggan's hand. "Say 'thank you' for the colourin', Meg."

"Thank you," Meggan said obediently. She smiled at Haroun, and solemnly handed him one of the coloured in engine-pictures. "You," she said, graciously granting him ownership. Mostly she gave her pictures to Manda, but sometimes she shared them with other people too.

Haroun accepted the picture from Meggan and put it on the desk next to his laptop. He barely glanced at it - enough to know that it was typical kid-art, nothing special. "Thank you." he told the little girl, and then once again returned his attention to the schematic.

"Git," Amanda muttered her breath, turning to leave and scooping up Meggan's toy piano on the way. "C'mon Meg, let's see what gets marker out of fur an' clothes, yeah?"

"Yes," Meggan agreed, tucking her paw into Manda's hand. Secretly she hoped that Manda wouldn't be able to wash her colours off.... they were pretty! She waved to Haroun-al-Rashid with her free paw. "Bye!"

Haroun didn't respond to that more than a distracted wave of his hand.