Breaking Point

Unsettling In

Piper shivered in cold relief as air conditioning cradled her hunched body in its welcoming embrace. It felt absolutely incredible against the California heat outside, but she knew the journey wasn't over yet. She braced for Kyle's next movements, expecting him to swing the cage around as he had on their trip up to this point, but was pleasantly surprised to notice an added steadiness to his motions that was much easier on her stomach. Despite wanting to keep this newly gained peace, Piper also knew that she had to get her bearings. The sooner she could find a phone, the sooner she could get back to base.

Raising her head up, she thankfully found that Kyle's gait had smoothed out enough for her to see without getting too disoriented. With this newfound perception, Piper could immediately discern a small, open-concept living room and kitchen to her right (the ladder of which being further ahead of them), and a door beneath some upward stairs that followed along the hallway they were in to her left. Curtains draped every window including the sliding glass door directly in front of them, coating the dark atmosphere of the house in lazy, dim sunlight. The only active artificial light that Piper could see came into view as the wall beneath the stairs ended at a left turn, the full room around that corner coming into view when the cage was set down on an island countertop in the kitchen. From this vantage point, a full lab decked out with all sorts of chemistry and electrical equipment could be seen messily organized atop three connected rows of wall-mounted bar tables, with larger equipment being placed on a big metal work table in the room's center.

But, most importantly, Piper spotted a landline phone sitting on an upright charger near a knife block over the chasm between the island she was on and the kitchen countertop. Great news, were it not for the aforementioned deadly-drop chasm. Piper continued closely examining her new environment for any possible means of reaching the phone, totally unaware of the eyes that'd been plastered onto her in silence since the cage had been placed down.

"Em," Kyle quietly mumbled, causing Piper's head to snap to his face. "..Do you get motion sick? You seemed squirrelly on the way to the door."

The tiny woman regained a portion of her nasty scowl and crossed her arms, though her tone shifted to sound more worn out than annoyed. "Wouldn't you? Sorry to disappoint, but I'm not some new bug-sized humanoid rodent. Wasn't built to resist getting lifted into the air at seventy miles per hour."

Kyle kept staring for a moment, then pushed up his glasses. "..Ah, right. We'll talk about your exact circumstances a little later. For now, I'd guess that your metabolic rate is rather high to compensate for such a small body. So, is there anything in particular that I can feed you?"

Piper furrowed her brow and prepared to speak, but caught her tongue. As pissed off as she was, her hurling insults will get nothing done. He hadn't done anything objectively wrong to her thus far either, other than have some lack of empathy, and even that outlook was beginning to look like an issue on Piper's end for being so difficult. She wasn't even sure where this combativeness came from, all she knew was that it wanted her out of this ginormous man's sight.

Piper stood with her thumb and index finger on her chin as if mulling over Kyle's question, which was apparently deep enough to make her think about it for an entire minute and a half. He fell into a slight crouch to try and make eye contact to no avail.

"Hello?" Kyle waved his hand in front of Piper, but got no reaction. Rather than grabbing the cage as he'd done before, he snapped his fingers, successfully breaking her train of thought.

"Do you have dietary restrictions or something? I'm just going to get something for myself and split off a few crumbs if you don't say."

Piper softened her countenance and took on a lighter tone despite continuing to seeth. "No, no that's ok. Actually, if you just have any berries on hand that would be great. I probably wouldn't be able to finish much else anyways," she finished dejectedly.