Glissa plops down a laptop on a table and goes to rummage in the stacks for something, completely oblivious to the new security warnings.

Ling sits at the farther end of the table, absorbed mostly in her notes and laptop sprawled in front of her. A hand fingers the jade pendant with thought as the light strains of music sing out faintly from her earphones. Along with the notes are some lab reports, and a battered sketchbook which lies open to a page with crude drawings.

Glissa happens to glance down at the open sketchbook as she wanders past with a few venerable volumes.

Upon the sketchbook are some various drawings of carnivore teeth and claws and their measurements, as well as a few weird happy faces doodled from boredom perhaps. The most prominent of the doodles though, is a strange looking skull, done at various angles. Ling is a little too engrossed with her music and the laptop screen to see Glissa's glance.

Glissa gives a little start and wanders back to her laptop. She sets all but one of the books down by it, then heads over to the information desk to pick up some never-read flyers on the library layout, and, with some hunting, to snag a pen. The flyers are folded into quarters and tucked into the back of poor Tacitus, to serve as endpages. Tools of more primitive nature procured, she wanders back again, path leading her behind and a little to the side of the girl.

Ling gives a little tired sigh, hand lifting to rub at her eye a little. She's clearly been cooped up in a lab for most of the day. Hunting around for her CD player, she hunts through the trail of wire and finds it behind the sketchbook. Reaching over and picking up the porta-player, her arm rests atop the sketchbook briefly as she searches for a good song. A few seconds, and she is satisfied with the selection before setting the player down atop the sketchbook. Her laptop screen is open to a page from the La Brea Tar pits down in Los Angeles, and more specifically on the home page of the dire wolf. While she doesn't appear to be taking notes about it, her concentration is on the pictures.

Slowing her step slightly on approach, Glissa stops in mid-step behind Ling as if suddenly remembering something. The professor flips open Tacitus, and starts taking notes in the back on the paper she just filched. She flips from the middle of the book to the end to scribble on these blank pages, looking up thoughtfully as if pondering something. Of course, her gaze drops down and sideways to Ling's open sketchbook as she returns her attention to her notes.

As the song ends, Ling glances towards her CD player again. Pursing her lips, she glances at the time listed on the computer Start bar, and then at the website. With a small shake of her head, she runs a hand almost frustratedly through her hair. Her eyes glance up for a quick check of the security guards, and her eyes turn to glance up briefly at Glissa behind her before she turns back to her laptop and manuevers the cursor to close down one browser window. Behind it, a small fonted report with some tables, and she clicks the Save button on the screen.

Glissa deliberately fails to notice Ling's glance--why, after all, she's busy with this book here and isn't looking in the girl's direction, isn't she?-- and continues scribbling for a bit longer. That's all she'll risk. She heads back to he own computer, which, amazingly, no one's swiped yet, and settles down by it. She puts Mr. Tacitus into her laptop's carrybag, rummages for a moment so that the notes she just made fall into the pocket, then takes out the book and sets it on the table.

Looking at Glissa -----
This short, roundish woman in her mid-thirties peers at the world benignly from behind enormously thick glasses which are sliding down her faintly freckled nose. Her fox-colored below-shoulder length hair frazzles mischievously and gets in the way, as do her wavy bangs. She usually wears turtlenecks (rich earthy colors ,blues, burgundies and greens seem to be preferred), jeans, a miniature bronze Minoan goddess pendant, and hiking shoes. On the ring finger of her right hand is a simple gold band, set with a gleaming star emerald. In cold weather or evenings, she sports a green woollen cloak with a bronze clasp cast in the shape of two oak leaves connected to an acorn. Her accent is decidedly east coast, her smile rarer than it once was, and her manners rather more polite and guarded, although still affable. She is easily distracted and sometimes stares off into space to ponder, forgetting such minor matters as the rice boiling over. When she speaks, it is with great earnestness and enthusiasm. She also walks stiffly and with a badly-concealed limp which cannot however entirely account for her clumsiness.
Carrying:
Mike Jr.
-----
Ling bends down beside her chair to dive into her black shoulder/laptop bag. From there she draws out a small magazine, what appears to be bought recently with some slight crinkles and the cover picture of Jerry McQuire, holding up a large claw. For a minute or so, she studies the cover picture, moving off her CD player and lifting the sketchbook to compare. With a quiet mutter, she sets down the magazine and picks up her pencil. The sketch appears slowly, deliberately as she tries to imagine proportions of the cover image to her hand, and the images on her sketchbook. Then, with a quiet sniff, she sees the report finished saving, and the window, and laptop, is closed to be left on standby. She rises to begin packing up her things, with a quick glance to the watch adorning her left wrist.

Glissa continues the farce of bustling. She picks up two of the books she gathered earlier and starts heading back to the shelves with them, but stops a chair down from Ling and leans against it. "You're quite an artist, young lady," she says graciously.

Ling starts in surprise, looking up to see who spoke. Seeing the professor, she dips her head and gives as best a smile as she can manage in her tired state. "Thank you," comes the reply with mild accent. "I'm not an artist, though," she chuckles, slipping the sketchbook into her bag which she sets on the tabletop beside the UFO mag.

Glissa clicks her tongue. "Well, then, you've at least got draftsmanship. Good skill in physical anthropology." She winks. "I couldn't help noticing the bones when I went by a moment ago."

Ling smiles and nods in thanks to the compliment. "It comes in handy sometimes." Her brow arches at the mention of the bones, followed by a quick, barely visible tensing.

Glissa flaps a hand absently. "Can't wait to see what you folks come up with on that. I hear a little of the backwash from the archaeologists, since I'm over in Classics. Dr Nicholson." She taps at a book with some Latinish title: De Rerum Natura, or some such.

"Well with luck and some research, maybe we'll have a new species." Ling isn't all too concerned about the woman's chatter. "I'm Ling," she offers, setting down her bag and freeing up a hand. "Grad student under Professor Clark."

Glissa gives a little chuckle, evidently recognizing the name. "Right. Treasure this, Ling, because it's not every day a little backwoods university like this gets its paws on a major discovery. You're riding the edge!" Her eyes twinkle. "And I expect you have better things to do than gab with someone who's stuck reading dead white men. I'd love to pick your brains, but I'll leave that to Mark, eh? Go eat."

Ling laughs and shakes her head. With a glance around, she lowers her voice some. "Well reading dead white men is probably as interesting as reading about the evolution of animals." Her lips quirk up a little. "I had a snack some time ago, so I'm not really going anywhere. Just packing things so they wouldn't be stolen while I moved around the library."

Glissa winces and glances over at her own bookbag. "I really need to learn to be more careful. Whatever happened to the honor system?" She smiles and lowers her voice. "Mark said something about waiting for the carbon dating to come back from Washington. Any idea yet how old it is?"

Ling gives a slow nod and another wry grin. "The honor system disappeared since that old book was stolen. If it's what Professor Clark thinks it is, we're expecting around 10 to 15 thousand years old. In the meantime, we do other things. It's where we grad students come in and pick apart details." She smirks, then proceeds to unplug her laptop.

Glissa nods. "You get to do all the number crunching. But Mark at least should put your names on any paper that comes out of this." SHe blinks. "A book was -stolen-?"

Ling solemnly nods. "An old book, really rare from what I heard." She chews the inside of her lip, trying to think of the title. "De revolutionibus orbitum coelestium?" The title comes very slowly, with some pauses. "Not sure about the title, but that is why there are so many security guards around the library and campus. They don't have any clues how it was taken."

Glissa gives a little cry. "Oh! But I never got around to... Oh." She looks quite crestfallen. "Renaissance, was it, on astronomy? Don't tell me it was Kepler's." From afar, Jay dying to play a blonde.

"Err..." Ling leans against the tableside, gazing towards the bookshelves in thought. "I think the author was Copernicus. I didn't hear much from the news cast, mostly because I was paying more attention to my work." Her smile creeps over sheepishly.

Glissa looks genuinely angry, a sort of puckering around the eyes like a dismayed apple. "Copernicus. That's who I meant; Kepler wrote the next one after it, all about spheres and elliptical orbits or something. Well. They've just got to find that, now. What sort of idiots would want a musty old Latin manuscript? Besides me?" she asks with a helpless little laugh.

Shrugging, the grad student shakes her head. "I'm not sure, but must be someone who was intelligent enough to get past the video cameras without a trace." A worried look crosses her face. "Hope that doesn't happen with the skele--ton." Great Ling, just proclaim the fact you've seen it.

Glissa grimaces. "Well, that's under pretty tight security," she says, lowering her voice again cautiously. "Or was the book in the museum stores too?"

Ling shakes her head. "I don't know where they kept it... but the book is supposed to be very rare, and old. There were only a few copies printed in the whole world. Worth hundreds of thousands." She snorts quietly. "Probably gets better press than we do, if the specimen really does turn out to be just a bear or a big wolf." She sucks briefly on a tooth.

Glissa looks a little haunted. "Well, it -is- Copernicus. Gods. But I think you've got quite a story for this day and age. Don't worry about that."

Ling lets a short sigh go. "Not us," she replies softly. "Mr. McQuire does, though." She rummages around in her laptop bag and pulls out the UFO mag with the old hunter's mug plastered with a not-quite-millionaire's smile and holding up a giant claw. "He's caused some trouble now, but I think we've handled it pretty well so far."

Glissa looks down at it with a grimace. "Oh. Joy. I don't want to know, do I?" There's the faintest hint of tension in the woman's shoulders, a flinch as she looks at the picture, but it could of course just be disgust at the sensationalist picture.

Ling shrugs, and lays the magazine on table. Her gaze darkens slightly at the picture. "He's gone around casting all those rumors that he found BigFoot. Not very many people believe him, but the media has really been eating up the story." Her brows furrow. "It's heightening the tourists around the woods, crazy people thinking they could find BigFoot roaming the national park lands and things." She shakes her head, bothered by the news as she delivers it. Her gaze though, holds on the picture of the claw for a few more seconds than usual, and then her eyes go up to see Glissa's reaction.

Glissa keeps staring at it. "Who -is- this guy?" she asks with sudden anger. "I mean, I used to live out there, and we had enough goofballs in Kent Crossing already after those damned trick-or-treaters' pranks. Can't they leave well enough alone? What's his game?" She points at the picture.

"Well, he's a hunter who lives around there," Ling replies, gazing back down at the picture. "He was hunting when he found 'BigFoot'." Her soft snort is indicative that she doesn't like him all that much either, but that's because of the guy's personality and motives.

Glissa sighs. "Greaaat. He's probably just trying to cash in on -your- publicity." She purses her lips. "Maybe I can track him down and convince him there's little green men, witches, and Elvis' ghost out there too, and get him shown up as a fake." She winks.

Ling balks a little, not exactly wanting to cause any more trouble as there already is. "Well, er, he was just hunting and spotted the skull. Didn't look like anything he'd seen before, so he called Dr. Clark to tell him what he'd found." This thought puzzles her though, as the image of the old man calling up a university professor just to say he found some bones occurs to her. "Er, well I'm sure he has enough news reporters hounding him." Another pause. "Well, maybe he likes it anyway..." she shrugs, the puzzled look continued some more.

Glissa cocks her head. "Now I'm starting to wonder myself," she says, thoughtfully. "Does the article say where he lives? Like I said, I used to live out there. Maybe some of my ex-neighbors might know the nut."

Ling casts a quick look down at the magazine, then shakes her head. "I didn't remember anything said about his address. I'm pretty sure though, his address is probably somewhere findable." To the last question, she adds, "Not so much a nut, but a man who wants attention..." She leaves out the mention of 'and cash'. Glissa rolls her eyes. "Right."

"So, did you just hear about this whole thing, or did you know about it from watching TV already?" The student's head tilts curiously towards the anthro professor.

Glissa shakes her head. "Nah. Campus gossip. Some of my students were talking about 'Bigfoot' in my mythology class," she chuckles. "Asked me what I thought. Took me a while to sift through the rumors and figure out it wasn't just a hoax." She grins wanly. "I don't know why people have to make up wild stories. I love 'em, myself, but real scientific discoveries are just as interesting."

Ling gives the professor a smile. "True, the stories floating around can be very exaggerated. I'm not sure when Dr. Clark will let other people see the find. I'm still testing out some things on my own, and maybe come up with genetic proof of the doctor's short-faced bear theory."

Glissa nods. "Good. He might do well to schedule a press conference though, let people see the real thing. It's amazing what a perfectly interesting but ordinary-looking skeleton will do to defuse wild stories."

Ling shakes her head slowly, pretty much convicted by her professor's words that no one could see the bones without chaperone. "Well, all the flash photography might damage the bones, so he's kept it on high security. When the research is more definite, I think he can allow some people in."

Glissa makes a faint, "ah." She nods. "Guess that makes sense. I say... I think I've gotten fogged somewhere. You weren't saying the skeleton Mark's working on were supplied by this MaGuire fellow, were you? I mean, -that-" she points at the magazine again, "--those are whole new set of bones?"

Ling gives Glissa a puzzled glance as she parses the professor's question. "The bones were found by Mr. McQuire, yes." She follows her woman's finger to the picture. Again, that claw. "Well, no. There's only one set of bones that we know of." She bites the inside of her lip slightly. Darn that man, keeping a souvenir for himself.

Glissa sighs. "Oh, I see. He gave Mark most and then kept part to wow the press with. Great."

"Well.. we have most of the skeleton. About 70 percent or so, enough to make a decent guess it's some form of predator. I think from the picture of the claw, it can be figured out which part that came from." Her dark eyes blink thoughtfully. "Mr. McQuire might have something big, but it probably isn't BigFoot." An amused glint shines, as if she knows something that the older man doesn't. "And the DNA testing ought to prove it."

Glissa glances at Ling with a grin. "I see a doctorate in the making."

Ling blinks at the professor, and flushes a softly darker facial color. "Well, that's still far off," she manages softly through her embarrassed smile. "I'm still the lowly grad lemming, tunneling away at facts. With some luck though, I might have some results by the end of the week. Then the reporters might stop calling us." Her brow quirks oddly. "Then again, they might not, if there's something new." Her shoulders roll in a shrug. "We'll see." Her posture becomes more comfortable, as she lifts her wrist to glance at her watch and she blinks more at the time. "Whoa."

Glissa covers her mouth with her hand. "I'm so sorry. I seem to have that effect on people. I'm never on time myself." She waves hurriedly. "Shoo, shoo. It was good talking to you, Ling."

Ling laughs softly and nods, sweeping up the magazine and slipping it back into the shoulder bag. "It was a pleasure to meet you too, Dr. Nicholson. Maybe Dr. Clark will let you in on our secret, if you ask him." She smiles at the professor, and unplugs the laptop to wrap up the cords and puter.

Glissa smiles. "No, that's all right. Don't spoil your big secret." She winks. "I'll hear about it in the journals soon enough. Goodnight!"

Ling gives the professor a departing dip of her head and places the laptop into her bag to secure it before heading out of the library with a wave to the woman. "Have a pleasant evening," she says before opening up the door to the library and exiting.