Page 69 of Gryphon

“I’m so glad you returned safely, Miranda. Michael does not come with you?” Klara Dahlberg looked about. She’d been sitting in the lobby bar with several other safety investigators though it was eleven at night here in Reykjavik. “Is he here for tomorrow’s sessions?”

Miranda shook her head. “He and the others had something else to research. They are interested in the cause of the multiple incidents Sweden has recently experienced.”

Klara turned to look down at her. Miranda kept her attention on the uneven ends of Klara’s Nordic-blonde hair. Was the choppiness of the ends lapping a hand’s length over each shoulder intentional? She kept her own hair trimmed as straight as possible, cut precisely to the lowest point of her jawline so that it tucked behind her ears without any stray ends tickling her neck. Andi had suggested she grow it out several times but now that she had gone, Miranda didn’t see the purpose of such an experiment.

“And you do not go with them?”

“Jeremy and I were only concerned with the cause of the crashes themselves. Those have been resolved.”

“So quickly?” Klara’s voice sounded…

Miranda turned to Jeremy, “…aghast?”

He nodded.

She repeated the word a few times to herself. It was a nice word, but the sound didn’t particularly fit the emotion. Anger had an edge. Joy sounded short and fun. Aghast sounded as if it should be a boat design: a dory, a sloop, a ghast.

“Sabotage twice and unfriendly fire a third time,” Jeremy told her. “Not hard once we found the right thing to look at.”

Klara gasped again. Yes, unlike ghast, gasp did fit the sound of surprise, yet it wasn’t an emotion but rather a word representing a physical sound. She pulled out her notebook to compare the other emotion sounds with their correlative feelings on her emojis page, but was interrupted by others who’d stayed late in the bar. People. Gathering close.

Other attendees stood and joined them in ones and twos until eleven additional people had gathered around Klara. As the crowd grew about her, Miranda edged back. She scooped up Meg so that the terrier wouldn’t get trampled by the unthinking herd.

A herd of people? All led by the ringing cowbell of Klara Dahlberg. That was her first double use of a metaphor. Miranda would have patted her own back as Andi had taught her, if her arms weren’t full of terrier. And if it didn’t make her so sad to think about Andi. And if she wasn’t so very tired.

Or perhaps the gathering was Jeremy’s doing. The various air-safety investigators were all listening to him discuss the three separate investigations they’d performed in the last thirty hours including transit time. They appeared more interested by the procedures than the events themselves.

A tall clean-shaven man with a chin as sharp as his Germanic accent—An analogy? How was she supposed to tell?—approached her. “Ms. Chase, if I might have a moment of your time?”

She looked at Jeremy still talking happily in the midst of the crowd / herd.

She looked at Meg, or tried to, but the dog had laid her head on Miranda’s shoulder much the way Andi used to. Meg’s back blocked Miranda’s chin from traveling sufficiently to look down at the dog, though her soft fur and warmth were a comfort.

Holding Meg close, she allowed herself to be escorted to a deep chair by a low table well away from anyone else. He offered wine, she requested tea with milk from the waitress.

“You have been freshly returned from Sweden.”

“Yes.”

“Where you’ve been investigating crashes.”

It wasn’t a question, but she felt another yes was appropriate.

“What are your conclusions?”

Miranda lost interest. Jeremy had already stated their conclusions. She would leave, but then the waitress delivered her tea. She didn’t wish to be rude and leave without drinking it. But it was still too hot, and the waitress was gone. Her mother used to put a small ice cube in her hot tea to cool it for her. She’d forgotten about that and how much she’d enjoyed hearing the sharp pops and studying the fracture patterns as they formed within the core of the ice.

But the waitress had moved on. Perhaps it didn’t matter. By the thinness of the porcelain, the cup would have released sufficient thermal energy to become drinkable by the time the waitress was summoned and an ice cube brought.

“Allow me to rephrase,” the man said.

She watched the formation of gentle thermal currents in the milk as the tea’s surface cooled and subsided along the edges, exposing warmer liquid to the surface to, in turn, cool and subside.

“What are your general conclusions?”

“I’m…” She looked for his name tag. But in this environment, most of the conference attendees had removed their name badges for the night. They’d also had the advantage of thirty additional hours of knowing each other while she’d been traveling to Sweden and back. “…not skilled at general conclusions. You want to speak to Mike. But he isn’t here.”

“Indulge me,” he sipped his wine but she felt that his eyes remained focused on her.

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