La Vie Boheme

It was a good night.

It was a good night. Did about another thousand words, and wrapped up the prelude with the aforementioned Maura. And our heroine made her first appearance:

The scent of lilacs drifted through the flimsy lace curtains that framed the dirty window of the tiny bedroom. There was only one window in the bedroom, just as there was only one window in the living room/dining room area, a large doorwall that opened onto a postage stamp of a balcony, a balcony reserved during this time of year for bike parking and Christmas tree storage. The apartment was tiny and crowded, with its sole human occupant currently snoring inelegantly in the narrow bed in the bedroom. The scent of lilacs did not wake the girl, nor did the quietly persistent burring of an alarm clock that began moments later.

The girl, A.J. to her friends and professors, was nothing more than a glimpse of wild mouse-brown hair beneath the pile of quilts as the alarm began to burr more insistently, growing more strident with each moment. Finally a fat orange tabby leapt onto the bed and started pacing at her mistress's head, yowling in hideous dissonance with the alarm. A round arm, complete with freckled hand, appeared from under the covers to swat at both alarm and cat. "Up," a voice murmured beneath the blankets. "M'up already." The tabby seemed to accept this as a coherent response, and strutted from the room, tail high in the air.