Welcome to Gaia! ::

Kally sighed when she tried the side door to Bibliophile and found it unlocked. It wasn't that she was tired, or anything; she felt fairly awake. She did need to stash her cash tips from her day's work, though, and she'd taken to doing that in a place where she was fairly confident no one was going to take it. It was certainly more secure than rolling up the crumpled ones and fives into thick cylinders and hoping no one wanted to look in her bag.

Having stashed her well-earned dollars, she went downstairs again. If the door was unlocked, she could get some cleaning done, maybe even some minor repair work. One of the bookshelves needed staining to hide someone's graffiti'd carving of a rather rude cuss word, and she'd picked some up on the way over to take care of later. Instead, she found herself sidetracked by Violetta and her box. "Hey sweetie," she said, leaning down to gather Violetta up into her arms. As she straightened, she spotted Algie and paused. "Sir, you're floating," she said. "Do you mean to be?"

Kally blinked like she'd just been faked out, convulsive and autonomous. A punch to the face probably would have surprised her less than the blatant lie. "Yes, sir," she said, because she never called adult men on their lies, even if she could probably kick their a**. "Of course. Sir." She scratched Violetta gently under her chin, carrying the big fluffy cat with her to the offensive bookshelf. "I'll be over here if you need me."

Putty. Wood stain. An old toothbrush. These she dropped even as she shifted Violetta to sit across her shoulders like a fluffy, living stole. "Don't see why people have to be rude," she said, a commentary on the graffiti artist rather than Algernon's very slow jump. "D'you, Vee?"

"No, sir," said Kally. "I didn't see a floating professor, I saw one jumping. Very slowly." Sarcasm, Kally? Watch your tongue! "And Vee just likes moss, I always thought."

She finished filling in the obscene carving with putty and cracked open the jar of wood stain. "I do see strange things sometimes, though. I thought left work at 2am once and got to my next job at 1:45am. Anyway, I saw a little creature made of shadows. He's turned out to be pretty nice actually, calls himself Gloom." Did time just run backwards sometimes? Maybe. She didn't know too well.

Kally frowned. "I..." To lie or not to lie? If she told the truth, she had no way of being sure she wouldn't get in trouble for it. Same if she lied. The only thing to do, then, was ask a clarifying question: "How do you mean? Everyone has weird dreams sometimes."

Kally shook her head, relieved. "No, sir, nothing like that. Just, you know, normal things. Sometimes the high school gets besieged by giant spiders and I have to choose between my mom and a baby, you know, stuff like that." She always picked the baby, but...

Man, dreaming sucked.

She turned her head to give Violetta a kiss on her furry ruff. This had the added effect of hiding her expression. "The otherworld's just a story, Professor," she said. "Ashdown's weird, but it's just... good weird, not crazy weird."

"The baby," said Kally firmly, without thinking about it.

She smiled at the mention of the upstairs apartment. "So well," she gushed, "I have somewhere to put all my stuff that isn't Cid's basement, and I can carry around a smaller backpack, and I don't have to worry about my bike getting stolen, and--and I'm keeping it clean, sir, I promise I am!"

Kelly's eyes widened for a moment and she fumbled the brush in her hands. "I don't-- I mean, yes, I could, I work really hard, just, are you sure? You would want to do that? For me?"