Handwritten Letter from Chancellor Latham
Dear Penelope,
My apologies that I am unable to meet you at the Gate today. The young lady standing in front of you is my assistant Lara. She has the keys to your apartment, a cell phone, your staff ID, and a credit card for you.
The phone has the numbers of staff saved in it, as well as a few other contacts you will need while serving as a professor. It is the model most members of staff prefer. Please keep the Staff ID with you at all times. It acts as a key card for all buildings. The only actual key you will need is for your apartment. I can't stand the idea of someone hacking the system and getting into personal spaces. Make sure to ward your door after you settle in.
The credit card has a modest limit for you to set up your apartment as you see fit. If I remember correctly, you sold all of your furniture etc. when you became engaged. I assume you did not bring any with you from Draig. The easiest way to order things to the is website called Amazon. I'm told we get a small crate every day in the Gatehouse.
Your first class arrives on July 13th. There will be five witches from Avalon. Thier information, apartment keys, and your syllabus are all in your classroom. Make sure to go over everything to see if you need anything that isn't there. The last professor in your position left under a bit of a cloud and the assistant librarian had to cover the last week of the class.
I will be back at the Keep next week. Let's have dinner and catch up that Thursday evening.
Chancellor Latham
Text Messages Between Penelope and Betty around 3 pm
Penelope: Hello Earthling
Betty: Hello Space Traveler
Penelope: How did you know it was me?
Betty: The force is strong.
Penelope: Dork. This is my new number, on my new phone. I'm sitting in my new apartment on a camp chair. Eating dinner out of Styrofoam.
Penelope: How are people still using this stuff?
Betty: They aren't worried about what happens after they die?
Penelope: Probably.
Betty: Do you have time for a visit before your students arrive?
Penelope: Thought you would never ask.
Penelope: Pick me up at the Atlanta Gatehouse Wednesday. I'll let you know what time when I make an appt.
Betty: Sounds like a plan.
Betty: Glad you are back on the same planet.
Book Blessing
I bind this book for my eyes only.
If anyone is dumb enough to look,
they will only see the word idiot,
written over and over.
By my will it shall be.
8:30 pm Journal Entry:
Today has been exhausting. I want to curl up in my pile of pillows and read by the light of the moons but cannot. Because I'm sitting in a camp chair in my new boring apartment. As a consolation I decided to start the journal Lizzet gave me as a parting gift this morning. It took me an hour of petting the cover and flipping through the blank pages to get the courage to bless it, and another hour to start this entry. It isn't that the materials are rare, or anything dramatic, I hesitate to write in it because what if I don't have anything important enough to say now? What if all i can do is wake up, teach beings how to live on earth during the day, then sit and rot in this horrible chair in the evening?
I know my plan was to be as boring as possible when I got back to Earth. To fly under the radar and hope no one here (besides the Chancellor) finds out what happened over the last few months. I asked Lara today during her tour of the grounds if anyone from Draig was currently at the keep. I was relieved when she shook her head no. Then hit with a wave of anxiety when she tapped the side of her nose and winked. I have no idea if she knows and promised to keep it to herself, or if there is some one here and she couldn't tell me, or if she has facial spasms.
I can't worry about it. I didn't do anything wrong. I wasn't sent home in shame or anything. Screw him, his planet, and the Queen's advisor who thought 'everyone would be more comfortable' if I were let out of my contract a year early.
11 pm Journal Entry
Screw it. I'm going to fill every page of this book with the most trivial things I can think of doing. Scholars will read it in a thousand years and be able to tell what books I read, what I ate, etc. They will use it as a reference for the time, while also wondering how one thirty something woman can be so darn boring.
Tomorrow’s Todo List:
Find a hobby that I can do at night in the apartment, alone, in a pile of pillows.
Purchase pillows
Make appointment at Gatehouse for a trip to Atlanta on Wednesday
Find a current staff list and see if I know anyone