On Sturdy Legs

In Topeka

When the plane touched down in Topeka, I had to go to the cargo hold to pick up Tarq since apparently pets couldn't be picked up in a more direct location. My enjoyment of flying also came with the side effect of airport layout understanding. It was fairly easy for me to get to the right place. To no surprise, the man stuck with pet supervision had set up a small barricade of crates between himself and Tarq and was standing as far away from his crate as he possibly could but still give the appearance of being in charge of that operation.

"I'm here for him," I told the man and pointed to Tarq who confirmed that by instantly perking up at the sight of me.

I was smart enough to leaf through the paperwork while waiting to exit the plane so I had my form ready for the man to prove it. He didn't look at the paper for more than two second and had me scribble my signature on his own check out sheet. I knew for a fact that unaccompanied minors were not allowed to be the ones to pick up pets; however, this man really didn't seem to care about that. Either he didn't realize that I was a minor since most teenage girls were not this tall or he didn't want to further risk being eaten by Tarq by having him any longer. Either way, I was happy not to need my mother to pick him; I guess it could be assumed that she wouldn't be terribly happy that a huge dog was coming with me. I knelt down in front of his crate and stuck my fingers as far through the bars as I could; he instantly jumped to lick them, and I gave his head a brief pet.

"Come on, boy," I murmured to him and began pushing his crate back to baggage claim.

My boxes were the last thing on the carousal by the time I got there. I wasn't quite sure where my mother was picking me up, or what she looked like for that matter. It was no matter, there was no hurry to go with my real mom. Instead, I picked up a pack of beef jerky and a bottle of the exact energy drink that every coach I had ever had told me not to drink, and headed outside to the pick up lane. There weren't too many people and plenty of chairs so I took a seat on one of the benches and let Tarq out of his crate. To not give everyone else there an anxiety attack, I clipped his leash to his collar and threaded my ankle through the loop on the other end so he couldn't get too far even if he wanted to. The looks were less then, and since his crate was empty, I put my two boxes inside it, got him his food and water, and sat down with my own food to wait.

After about ten minutes with no announcement over the airport's intercom, I was starting to consider the possibility that my mother had offended Allison somehow so Allison was making it hard for her to get me into her custody; it wasn't a bad strategy. I am sure everyone involved still remembers the disastrous night of Allison's and dad's biggest fight and her revenge of misplacing all his favorite pairs of cargo pants, dirty T-shirts, and various combat boots in various places around the house; he was left to hunt them all down then do his own laundry. This assumption turned out to be wrong; I stood up to toss my empty bottle in the trash and caught sight of a tall, incredibly slim man who had a very close and less evil resemblance to Norman Osborn. He had been scanning the seats and when he caught me looking, ducked back inside the door and peeked out again. I took my seat again and rubbed Tarq's head as I pretended that I wasn't watching him out of the corner of my eye. He checked his hand that apparently had writing on it judging by the number of time he had to move it towards and away from his face while squinting. Finally it seemed he worked up his courage and fully exited the doorway to walk over to me and stood a exaggerated distance away from me with a nervous look.

"Are you--wait, I can say this--Arieo-aaaaa-nnnn-deii," he seemed to stop trying to say my name about halfway through attempting to say it and instead decided to resort to random vowels.

"Ariadne?" I offered with a small smile that grew by the second. "The Gallen one?"

"Yes!" he announce with some gusto, "I'm Tom Siteki. Molly, err, your mom sent me and by sent me. I mean we all fanned out to find you because Molly failed to get your cell phone number." He held out a hand and I shook it.