SOTF Archive/SOTF Classic

Hm, being friendly, and asking about people's lives. Was that normal? Of course it was, people start conversations with "How are you?" all the time. Still, in that case, the answer was always the same. "I'm good, you?" or some variation of that. This was Socializing 101, for chrissakes. I guess that's where Myles' question differed. He was clearly expecting an actual answer, not some stock response.

Perhaps she was acting off? Well, he didn't know her, so Myles would have no way of telling if that was the case. Though, people have a surprising aptitude for discerning the emotions of others- perhaps she was acting 'sad', you could say. Though, once again, they'd never talked before now.

Camilla kept tapping her fingers together as she tried to think of an adequate response. Once she thought of something workable, the tapping stopped.

"Right, right, friendly..."

She had to continue that. She trailed off, it made it sound sarcastic. She should clarify that.

"I mean, I appreciate that-"

No, no, you don't thank someone for that- too late to backspace, just ignore that. She continued.

"It's not weird- I mean, I'm not the judge of that-"

Oh, that might have come across as a passive-aggressive way of saying "Yeah you're weird". Or could it? Oh, never mind. She went on anyway.

"No really, it's fine!"

She finished off her rambling with a small smile. Keep it friendly.

At this rate, lunch was going to end before Myles could get anything interesting out of Camilla. Not that watching her flail around the simplest of social interactions wasn't a little bit entertaining, but the novelty of that sort of thing wore off quickly.

Time to wrap this self-contained disaster up and move on with his life.

"Ah, well- it's no big deal if you don't want to talk about it, you know? Maybe next time." Myles flashed her a smile as he started packing everything back into his lunch bag. "Cheri probably had the right idea, anyway. I got held up on the way here, who knows what'll be going on in front of my locker before class starts up again."

Camilla quickly nodded, and picked up her own bag. She gave it a cursory check-over to make sure everything was in there, before getting out of her seat. She slung the bag over her shoulder, and paused, thinking of a way to end the conversation. It should be short, and to the point, but polite. The faster they get over this train-wreck, the faster they can forget it ever happened.

"Right. Well, see you around, I guess." she said curtly, before turning away from the table and walking out of the cafeteria. On the way, she resisted the urge to bang her head against a wall and go over every little thing in that happened in that period. That would take too much time.

If memory served, up next was English class.

[Camilla continued Miss Bell's Home for Spiders]

"Bless your heart," Myles said to Camilla's retreating back. He didn't think that she heard him, but that didn't matter.

By the time he got his things in order and made it to his next class, he had practically forgotten about her already.

((Myles Roux continued in Animal Magnetism))