[x] the fall of the greek

The Fall of the Greek
In the winter of eternal life, there was never promise of eternal youth.

Lind frowned at the little pot sitting on her windowsill. Sticking out a finger, she prodded its contents, then drew in a sharp breath and sucked her fingertip into her mouth. Tithonus was prickly as ever. Dead, but still prickly.

She looked around the room, gaze resting briefly on the wastebasket before flickering on by. She wouldn’t relegate her pet cactus to such a dishonorable disposal. She’d raised him for the better part of two years, after all, ever since she’d received him as a graduation present.

Besides, it would start smelling bad. Lind only emptied the trash once every two weeks. Not much usually accumulated; with her busy schedule, she was rarely in the dorm, puttering about and generating trash. Unlike, she thought unkindly, someone else she could mention.

She determinedly didn’t look at Jennifer’s half of the room, decidedly less neat than Lind’s, with clothes strewn haphazardly all over the place and books and papers stacked in messy piles on the floor. The hazards of the lottery system, Lind often thought, mouth twisting. Next year she’d have to be sure to request someone she knew to be an organized, sane person. No, next year she’d make sure to live off campus and drag Pan with her. Only a ridiculous amount of money—or some other near unattainable form of persuasion—could induce her to stay.

Leaving the window, Lind crossed the room to her desk and began gathering her textbooks. She didn’t have time right now to deal with her cactus’s tragic demise: Tithonus could wait two hours, but Global Econ couldn’t. She picked up her coat from where she’d laid it over the back of her chair earlier and put it on, wrapping her fuzzy blue scarf around her neck and swinging one end over her shoulder. Gloves and hat followed. Pennsylvania winters were bitter as a norm and she couldn’t afford losing fingers when she had two papers due next week. At last Lind collected her books in one arm, checked that her bag was replete with writing utensils, and let herself out.

She cast one last, vaguely nostalgic look in the direction of the windowsill before pulling the door shut behind her and locking it.

A vain death in room five-fifty-one and no one to mourn, she thought ruefully.