Cedric Olsen|male|25|heterosexual|tag(s): Chloe|
I
Cedric walked out of the grand double doors that read 'Daybreak Architects' in his usual, hurried manner.
"Cedric. Olsen. Look, I'm here all the time; you should remember me."
He grumbled to the receptionist that had asked for his name and ID before his exiting the building.
Another day, another one of the world's cycles... apparently, you didn't work a day in your life if you loved what you did.
That had to be the most inane statement ever uttered - Cedric loved his job, the
architecture and designing aspect as well as the solving and building.
Yet, he most enjoyed the parts
of his job that he couldn't figure out. A challenge that presented itself to him would
always take priority over his other jobs. Cedric loved the unknown - the hard
questions that required even harder answers,
and the work involved in finding them. Work was what he loved, and not to
work a day in his life would be taking away what he found bearable in the industry.
His elder mentor, Monsieur Hart, was a man with a very narrow mind.
He would throw riddles and puzzles, challenges and tasks at Cedric in the hope that
his student would overcome them as well as previously perceived by the greying man.
Cedric quite liked these jobs, such as finding a mistake in an expertly drawn floor plan or elevation.
It was the feeling that he was being challenged that the man could not bear.
"Unnskyld meg-" He started to say in Norwegian.
Damn all of these languages, he thought. He probably should have repeated 'excuse me' in French
first, for he now found himself having bumped into a fragile old lady.
"Je suis... désolé, Madame" He figured out how to apologise as quickly as he could.
So many people, but he was just a despondent stranger to each of them.
II
Even as he walked past groups of people chatting amongst themselves, he was alone with his thoughts.
One of those was of this above feeling: how could one be (or even feel) alone while surrounded?
It reminded him of a poem his father had read to him once...something about people being compared to snails...
ah, yes. He could remember it now;
'Like snails I see the people go
Along the pavement, row on row;
And each one on his shoulder bears
His coiling shell of petty cares –
The spiral of his own affairsI
Some peer about, some creep on blind,
But not one leaves his shell behind.
And I, who think I see so well,
Peer at the rest, but cannot tell
How much is cut off by my shell.'
"Now, was that Eleanor Hammond?" He asked himself under his breath.
"Was what Eleanor Hammond?" A female voice questioned him, and
Cedric turned around to see his position was that of outside a cafe, and the
nearest person was a young woman, with amazing blue eyes and blonde hair that hung just above
her collarbone. She was looking at a book, but he could see by her expression that her
focus was elsewhere.
"Was what Eleanor Hammond?" She asked him again, although he saw her
eyes had not lifted off of the page she was reading. Cedric squinted at the cover of the book.
Below the title, and printed small, was the same name. A coincidence, it would be.
III
He eyed her up as she sat, unresponsive, drinking a liquid that looked and smelled like a freshly brewed
coffee. She was, without a doubt, quite beautiful, but Cedric was not one to comment on such things.
"A poem. When I asked myself that question, I did not know the answer, but in
the time it has taken you to interrupt me, twice, I might add, I have come to a conclusion that the peice
is, in fact, by Eleanor Hammond. I am also aware that she authored the book you are
holding right now, did she not?"