The Glass Scientists micro-fanfictions

Rushing

Emma Carew was tired. Really and truly tired, and not the sort that wore down on the body with all the weariness of the world, but rather the sort that exhausted the mind. This was the worst way to be tired, as far as she was concerned because even if she did choose to nap, she had no real way of saying if she'd feel any better off than she was presently. In an attempt to try and shake off a little of the hazy edge of her mind, she meandered her way to the window. The heavy clouds that were promising - or perhaps threatening - rain were all that were deterring her from visiting the park. Even the chance of getting caught out in a thunderstorm was only just a little worse than not being able to shake off her current state.

The window she had chosen looked out into the streets below, a familiar site that she had gazed upon on many an occasion in the past, but watching the world below buzzing about with the strange industrial quality that she would more readily liken to a honeybee hive. There was nothing in particular that the young lady was looking out for, curling herself comfortably up on the windowsill ledge - the sort that was designed as a makeshift chair, though it was rarely given the chance to practice this function - and wondering briefly if it would be unseemly if she were to rest her cheek against the cool glass. She didn't, in the end, rest her hair against anything at all, but instead busied herself with the task of plaiting her blonde hair into something slightly more acceptable. On the off chance that somebody would happen to look up and see her sitting there, she she most certainly would not have wanted to seem improper with her hair hanging loose, even if she really did much prefer to have her hair out when she had the opportunity to.  Not that the opportunity showed itself all that often. 

The woman's thoughts were wandering about in the more underwhelming, dull and tragically mundane areas until they were cut off all at once.
There! Out the window, skulking about in the shadows before striding about with all the confidence that Emma herself could never recall a time that she had ever felt in herself. 
It was the woman! The woman that she had seen once before, but had seemed more like a dream than a very real moment. Presently, the woman - Emma never did catch her name despite her best efforts - donned a far more simple olive green day dress, and set she seemed to wear it like a queen in the most noble of robes. There were a few other people with her, having assumedly followed her through the alleyway she had emerged from, but with all the mesmerised amazement of an owl with glittering lights, Emma could not drag her eyes away from the taller woman.

Before she had fully registered what she was doing, Emma was off. She had flung herself off the window ledge with precisely none of the elegance that was ordinarily expected of her, and took off running, skirts swishing as if they had a life of their own, the heels of her thankfully sensible shoes clicking and clacking as loudly as it seemed they were capable of. 
Down down down the stairs she ran, running as if all the devils of the books she had so foolishly read late at night had manifested and were at her heels.
If she missed the mysterious woman, if she managed to get away, Emma was quite sure that she'd never get the chance to see her again and, as the fog she had seemingly been walking through all day was being chased away, there was nothing that she feared more in that moment. The coming storm had been altogether forgotten as she flung herself out into the street, not caring that she hardly looked respectable in that moment. They'd find something to gossip about anyway, so she might as well be the object of today's gossip, they'd forget all about it when something new caught their prying attention anyway.

She looked, she was sure, like a madwoman. The hair escaping her haphazardly made, incomplete plait formed a wispy mess but as she flew down the familiar streets, unaccompanied, she felt it was almost fitting. At a distance, she could see the outline of the woman and her companions - their close proximity seemed as though they were a little more than just mere companions - and so she set her resolve. Emma was not the most athletically inclined individual, never having all that much of a need for it in the past, but she refused to let her pace return to something a little more comfortable. If she wanted to admit it, she was almost a little proud of herself for it. But there was no time to be thinking about pride, not when the woman she was trying so desperately to meet had veered around a corner and momentarily vanished from sight. 

But she was, and this came as almost a surprise to her, was beginning to reduce the space between the two of them by a notable degree. Even with her disadvantageous starting position, she had been running and the woefully familiar stranger had been sauntering about at a leisurely pace.

"Ma'am!" she had dared to call out as she skidded around the corner, freeing one hand from its task of gripping at her skirts so she could keep her balance.
Now, Emma was quite certain that the corner she had just turned was the same as the woman had, she knew this for certain as she had been watching far too closely to miss something as significant as this, but as she glanced about, amber eyes wide, there was nobody at all in the side street aside from herself, and nothing but the faintest fading scent of perfume to suggest there had ever been another person in there.