---

Dani sucked on the end of her pen as she browsed the newspaper, ignoring the chatter of her housemates. She had mixed feelings on leaving the co op where she had spent her first two years of college, but it was time to make room for new folks and she was ready to move on. It had been a good experience and a great way to live...but sometimes the other kids really seemed so...young.

They all thought they were pretty great. Living on their own, many for the first time, surviving the day to day trials of money and food and a world that seemed pitted against the young hippies who called this place home. It was sort of self important, really, though Dani didn't really fault them for it, any more than she faulted herself. She had loved it here; the dinners around the table when they played at being a family, the meals on the counter when they wanted to act like college kids. The messy rooms, the noise...she honest to goodness loved the noise. Heated arguments and music and laughter, clatter and chatter she called it when put together, and the house was always filled with it, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.

She would miss the people, too. She actually preferred them once they had all gotten passed the initial phase of proving they were intelligent, politically correct, aware, creative, when they had started going about just living their lives and leaving so many dishes in the sink that there were house meetings to deal with the problem.

But...heck, she liked her nice shoes and her clean rooms. She liked her nail polish and her barrettes and she didn't see why one had to wear clothing made entirely of home grown hemp in order to change the world. She was also getting pretty tired of living like a pig.

Maybe, when she got her own apartment, she could even get a dog.

First, though, she needed a job. Probably an internship of some sort, for now. Something that might grow into a better position.

Hmm. Meridian.

She made a big circle around the want ad.

---

Dani knew that watching the towers collapse over and over was of no help to anyone. The news showed the disaster from every angle and any distance they could manage. So close you could see the people that jumped out the windows when they realized there was no escape. Far enough away to see the dust that would cloud the city for days rise up from the ground.

Going to the bathroom to have a good cry was also not in the least productive. She’d been at work for twenty hours so far and could probably blame most of her emotional outburst on exhaustion mixed in with grief, but knowing the problem hardly solved it.

Dani took a deep breath, pulled herself together, and stepped out of the ladies room. She probably should have bothered with making sure she could see straight before she started walking; it would have avoided an embarrassing incident. That incident being walking smack into a six foot five wall that turned out to be Arin Bjorn.

As if the poor man hadn’t seen quite enough from her. She had cc’ed him on a dozen emails today for Meridian’s part in the 9-11 relief effort and whether he knew it or not she had written a lot of the business side of the flying emails as well. It was hard to think of what this meant for the American dollar and plan a blood drive, which was pretty complicated considering where she worked, at the same time, but she had thrown herself into everything at once.

In short, Dani had worked her butt off today when only a few hours away people were running into burning buildings. She did what she could with a keyboard and knew it couldn’t possibly be enough. She was vocal, she was insensitive, she had pushed aside everything but getting that next phone call made, that next letter written, and she was probably the last person Mr. Bjorn wanted to see right now.

All she had wanted was a good cry in peace before she wrote the next proposal.

She muttered her apologies and walked through the nearest door.

She was back in the ladies room.

She grabbed some toilet paper, blew her nose, and splashed some water on her face. Then she told herself to stop wasting time, and went back to her desk.

When she returned, there was an email waiting in her inbox.

Arin Bjorn wanted to speak with her at her earliest convenience.

---

Dani turned off her electric tooth brush and gave the mirror a foamy smile before rinsing out her mouth and setting the bathroom to rights. She gave the light bruise on her neck a brush with her fingers, still somewhat amazed at just how quickly a puncture wound could heal, and headed to her bedroom, slipping between the covers with a sleepy sigh.

So this was day three.

Arin, sweetheart that he was, had given her the rest of the day off, though she had insisted it really wasn’t necessary. She was, however, tired enough not to argue after the fact and had meekly gone to her room.

She was going to have to start carrying around cookies or something.

Of course, she was quite healthy enough to be someone’s familiar. She was small but that was okay, Arin didn’t need all that much blood and he was responsible enough to be careful. That kind of trust was really what it was all about, in her mind.

A loud snore interrupted her musings and she groaned.

“Faaaatty! Out!”

Apparently ‘out’ was, in dog speak, synonymous with ‘jump on the bed, please.’

Life was good. Crazy and different than she had ever expected, for certain. But good. Funny how little her outlook had changed when everything else had; Dani supposed that people were basically people after all.

Now all she had to do was help the rest of the world see things that way.

“We’re gonna change the world, Fatty.” She looked over and regarded her puppy, grinning. “Don’t worry; you just gotta look cute, I’ll take care of the details.”