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[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

Date: May 19, 2001
Status: Private (The Child; International Express Deliveryman) (Complete)
Setting: Cairo, Egypt
Summary: The International Express Deliveryman delivers a package to the Child. 

The slight, bespectacled man in the blue uniform and peaked cap on looked this way and that in the central hub of Cairo, Egypt. He adjusted his glasses and looked again. A Miss Talia Diaz was the recipient of this large manilla envelope. She should be around here somewhere, a young girl of about 16 with dark black hair and blue eyes the color of dew should not be all that hard to find in a sea of dark eyed people. There she was.

"A package for you miss." He said walking up to the child, holding it out to her. "Just sign here on the receipt pad."

 

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[notmeant2b.livejournal.com]

She stared at the small man and his package, uncomprehending at first. She'd never received any mail. And she didn't live in Cairo. How had this person found her?

Glancing at the package, though, she caught sight of the return address and nodded, accepting the envelope and, more hesitantly, the pen.

She still didn't write very well, but more to the point, she didn't have a name. Asmodeus had taken to calling her "Talia," which didn't feel right--it was too close to the unknown word she'd been wondering about for as long as she could remember--but it was the name on the package, so she supposed she'd better sign using that, if she was going to sign at all. The thought did occur that she could probably just will the deliveryman to forget all about it and go on his way, but he hadn't done anything threatening, and there seemed no harm in signing a false name for a package delivered to someone who (as far as the human world was concerned) didn't exist.

Frowning slightly with concentration, she carefully scrawled an untidy but legible signature on the form the man presented to her.

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

The small man tipped his peaked cap politely at her then turned and as unobtrusively as he entered her life he left.

[notmeant2b.livejournal.com]

She watched him go, slightly bemused, and then turned her attention to the envelope.

After struggling for a moment to figure out how to get it undone without tearing the paper, she soon gave up and impatiently ripped it open, nearly sending the contents flying. These proved to be a number of documents, some of whose purpose were a mystery to her. But several of them had her picture on them (these fascinated her, for she'd seen her own reflection before, but never a photograph, even a false one miracled from memory as these must be; her image looked subtly wrong in some way, but she couldn't quite place how.*) One said Passport, another Certificate of Birth and yet another, Driver's License, all printed in Arabic. Apparently, she was now a citizen of Egypt. There were also some colorful slips of paper which she recognized as money--she'd never bothered with it before; perhaps she'd keep the bills, they were rather pretty--and a small plastic card with the same name on it as the documents.

On top of everything else there was a letter, written in a sharp, angular hand in a language she recognized as French. This presented a bit of a problem, as she'd picked up only bits and pieces of their written language when she'd passed through that country. She solved that problem (for the most part) by rifling through the thoughts of passers-by until she found someone who read the language well, and though Asmodeus' use of it seemed a bit odd and she wasn't able to decipher all the words, she did piece together the meaning: her "father, Amos" (which she found amusing once she worked out why he was referring to himself that way) wanted her to meet him at a hotel called the Four Seasons, where he would arrive on 26 May--about a week hence.

Very well; she had passed that building numerous times since she'd arrived, and understood a "hotel" to be a place for people to stay when they were in a place not their home. Though she had no need of a bed or other such human comforts, it would be a new experience.

She wished he wouldn't take such a long time, though. It had already been three weeks since Tibet, and Ellie and her angel friend hadn't arrived yet either, or hadn't made themselves known at least; she was starting to wonder whether they were going to come at all.

If anyone else came after her in the meantime, she wouldn't be waiting around, that was certain.

---

*It was, of course, the reverse of what she was used to seeing in mirrors.