meeting luna
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"You don't look like a Tailor to me. You look more like a Seymour or a Roger." She paused. "I think Seymour suits you best."

"Pardon?" he questioned, not sure if he had heard correctly.

"I think that you're more of a Seymour than a Tailor in life," the petite girl restated. She had been dubbed Eliza because he couldn't remember her real name and couldn't come up with a better fictitious one.

He averted his eyes to the ugly green carpet on the floor, unsure. Unsure, unsure, unsure.

He had been introduced to her half an hour ago as his charge and been informed of the procedure that he should follow whenever coming to St. Medley's. He would sign in, ask for Eliza, be directed to her, and would be a companion and caretaker to her (more of the former, thank goodness, because he doubted that he would be of much help if the girl had an episode of any kind) for the duration of his visit.

Much to his disappointment, his ward was a normal looking (code for "average" and "uninteresting") adolescent female instead of a terminally ill patient in need of guidance. The only thing that was was remotely of any interest about her was her choice in earrings. Orange colored carrots dangled from her earlobes.

He wondered if he would get no credit for his hours because of the girl's normalcy.

For half an hour, the girl hadn't said a word.

For half an hour, he had babbled on and on about details about his life because he had figured out that she probably wouldn't be doing too much talking. By now, the girl knew snippets of his life like how his mother preferred peach cobbler over ice cream and how he once had a pet fish (named Fish due to his overflowing creativity) that he had accidentally killed because he didn't know how to read at the time and 'lucas candy' looked a lot like 'fish food' to his four year-old eyes.

For half an hour, she literally hadn't said a word.

And now that her internal timer was up, she had decided that he had been misnamed at birth.

His mind wondered what it should do with this new complication.

Well, so much for being remembered.

He furrowed his brow and cleared his throat. "What makes you say that?" he asked, overly polite and nice, even though a part of him felt like letting out a groan and burying his head in his arms.

That was the part of him that wanted to go home, make the most of his three-day weekend and finish his calculus homework. But he remained where he was and waited for an answer.

She made no sound for a moment, thinking.

"Tailor's a very boring name," she finally said, accompanying her words with a simple shrug.

His eyelids stuttered. Blink, blink, blink.

"And Seymour's just so interesting," came his sarcastic reply a moment later, slipping out past his line of defense, also known as courtesy. Mentally, he winced.

His mind's gears went to work.

Shoot, what if the girl had an avoidant personality disorder and didn't react well to criticism? What if she reported him to a superior and said that he was a horrible person who shouldn't be allowed to do community service. What if they listened to her advice? How would anyone, let alone colleges, be able to recognize him for his well-rounded personality then?

So, to make amends (and calm his neurotic mind), he stuttered in a graceful fashion, "Your earrings are nice."

Tick, tick, tick went the clock.

His mind went into overdrive again, hitting speedbumps like how he needed to work on transitioning from subject to subject and whether the girl would recognize his compliment for what it really was - a partial apology.

"Thank you." Apparently, this girl, this Eliza, didn't appreciate his compliments (in full) any more than the girl that sat across from him in math.

Tock, tock, tock.

"And you're forgiven for your earlier outburst."

Secretly, his heart missed a beat, surpirsed by her insight. But he breathed normally, determined to show no outward signal.

She just smiled and watched him with her enlarged eyes, fingering the psychedelic colored fur that protruded from the bean bag that she was sitting on. After a moment, she cocked her head to the side and asked him if he remembered her name.

Tailor wanted to ask if she could read minds.

He flashed her what he hoped was a charming smile and offered, "Eliza?" His voice went up a pitch at the end there.

"Eliza it is then."

And just like that, she silently forgave him for his lame story about his lame fish and in another instant, she began telling him about her earrings, about how she had made them herself and how she had spilled bright orange paint all over the white blouse that she had just bought that day.

At the end of her story, Tailor smiled weakly, not sure of what to make of the girl before him. Did earrings give any indication as to what sort of a person someone was?

"Well, that's lovely. What was your inspiration?" he asked, feeling like he was interviewing the girl.

Vaguely, he wondered if future, prospective employers would ever ask him that question in an interview. Did creating assorted jewelry matter in life? He liked to think not, because if it did, then he would most certainly be jobless for a very, very long time.

That was when her question came.

"Have you read Harry Potter?"

His response was a slow, drawn out yes. Afraid, because whenever that imaginary boy wizard was mentioned, a headache soon began to form in the recesses of Tailor's mind.

"Do you know Luna Lovegood?" she asked politely, her voice smooth and soft.

A prolonged, careful no. He was on a precipice, waiting for the pounding sensation to begin.

"She's a great character." He confirmed Eliza's opinion, not knowing what else to do except lie blatantly, and tried not to grimace as the impending headache began to increase in momentum.

"Yes, well, she wore carrot earrings once and I felt that I could really relate to her." A single sentence. Eliza beamed at him.

"That's lovely," he commented, wondering what he had gotten himself into and why in the world had he just used the word 'lovely' twice in the past minute?

Dear Ivy League, his mind muttered.

And with that, the girl prattled on and prodded on, telling him little details about herself and asking him little details about himself. The latter made him uncomfortable; he hated listening to people divulge information and he hated divulging information even more.

Eventually, however, he continued with his concession of trivial facts (opinions would've been more accurate of a word choice, though) like gold was better than bronze, but bronze was better than silver. Recycling had no purpose (why were garbage dumps still utilized then?) and honestly, peach cobbler tasted horrible.

All the while, Eliza smiled the same smile, the same content little curve.

He was beginning to feel something akin to dislike towards that upside down frown and decided to stare at her, hoping to convey the message that she should drop that facial expression of hers. But she only stared back, her mind apparently set at a different frequency than his.

"So, what do you think of the color blue?" she asked. Another question, another curve ball.

He swallowed, careful. Smiling brightly, he answered, "It's a nice color."

She arched a brow, a dubious look coming over her features. "Just nice?" she questioned. "You're wearing the color, but you don't have too many thoughts on it. Why not?"

He looked down at himself. She was right (about the shirt color at least). He floundered around a bit, until he finally decided that telling the truth couldn't possibly damage Eliza's mental state, and spilled forth how he didn't understand the purpose of thinking about what color to wear.

She furrowed her brows at this and squished her thin lips into a small, slanted little square. After a moment, she began slowly, slowly, building momentum like a ball of snow rolling down a hill. She told him how she didn't understand why people didn't understand. "I mean, why wear clothes then? Why do anything?"

Her voice was steadily growing louder.

Eliza continued for minutes, rambling here and there and verging off topic occasionally, venting her frustration at how little humans felt and cared for life. She told him that life was a blessing and he agreed. She told him that people like him, people that didn't care for little details like putting thought into their shirt color, people that didnt' care about life, were just dumb. He waited, wondering if he should agree to this statement as well.

She exhaled, letting air rush past her lips and nose. Big brown eyes then turned to him, glimmering with something that looked a lot like Tailor's own indirect apology from before.

So he smiled at her, hoping that it was the right thing to do (because honestly, his head was beginning to spin a little from the onslaught of words). "And you're forgiven for your earlier outburst." His words mirrored her previous ones.

She smiled. A soft, supple, "Thank you," was uttered as she got up from her psychedelic colored furball bean bag and walked over to him. She bent at the waist and leaned in, planting a light kiss on his cheek. A peck, a sign of affection, something meant for someone close.

With that, she left, a more than confused Tailor still sitting in his deflated leather (faux leather, he amended) bean bag, wondering.

He stared at the sienna colored ceramic pot situated in the corner only a few feet away from him. Ants crawled around its edges, avoiding the fake fern that was dug into the pseudo-dirt. He wondered how the ants had gotten into a hospital. He wondered if it was sanitary. He wondered what he had done to inspire such an expressive thank you.

More importantly, he wondered if Luna Lovegood would've acted the same way that Eliza just had.

--

a.n
Luna Lovegood belongs to Mrs. Rowling, not me. But do tell me what you think of Tailor (sorry for those of you used to 'Taylor'), Eliza, and this 1800 word chapter. Is the writing bad? Is it too short? Too long? Boring? Confusing? All feedback is appreciated, since I went through about four different drafts of this in order to reach something close to 'perfection' and still feel like I have some work to do.

And thanks to dot cubed, ramenluver, english summer rain, madmas22, my atomic garden, kyllorac, beauvisage, lone-wolf 234, & love.is.free. I hope this chapter meets your guys' expectations. (: