Paging Jack Frost [attn: Alexander]

[tithe]

This call happens not at the crack of dawn or the break of day when light is filtering behind stormclouds and the air is a diminished net of luminous potential, but let us say in the afternoon. The phone, the special phone (it is a special phone, isn't it, Alexander?), goes ring-ring or maybe straight to voice mail. Alexander. Leave a message.

"Hey Jack. Um. Hopefully this you. If it isn't, or I mean, if your name really is Jack and my voice doesn't sound familiar, you can stop listening now, because this message isn't for you. This is Delilah from the train. I wanted to call to touch base about, well! That stuff we spoke about. Fate and fortune and all that, well. All that knotty stuff, and the probabality of trying out, um! You know." Pause. Laughter. Not nervous laughter, but self-directed. Mildly abashed.

"I hate talking to machines because I'm really talking to you, but there's no guarantee, you know? Anyway, I want to get together. Hope you've been managing to avoid Hell and all its circles!" Pause. Did that hit all the points? Should she say over the phone that - ?

Yep and nope. Click.

[vesta]

The number he gave wasn’t so much as special phone as a different phone. His normal phone is a decent one, with a whole list of contacts and messages and photos and all of the other detritus a phone tends to collect. The other phone, the one with two contacts (one of which connects to a sex chat line) and nothing else on it is the one that passes the call straight to voicemail. There’s no personalisation in the recorded message – it’s simply the female computerised voice that was the default on the mailbox.

Maybe he was busy? Maybe it wasn’t turned on until he needed it? Either way, it’s a little while until the call is returned. And, as is the way of these things, they start the game of voicemail table tennis.

“Hi Sunshine, it is Jack. Sure, I’d like to carry on where we left off. Same place?” He suggests a time and day when he’s free too. He doesn’t go into any more detail. Not over the phone, anyway. You never know who’s listening.

[[And because I’ve just realised that I’m working earliy shifts all this week and you’re flying off soon, getting together to do this could be a pain. Although I can probably do an hour or two most (UK) evenings this week? Or the 14th, if Howl doesn’t snag it to finish off CSIenver.]]