Bitsy ducked back behind the fern.
What good is this going to do me? Gigory's already seen me, and Cord hasn't!
But having retreated, she didn't want to poke out again. So she tried peering between the fern fronds. Eight or ten meters away, Cord slid his phone into his pocket and looked around for her. She decided, instead of leaning past them, to push the fronds up and out of her way with one hand so she could wave with the other.
It worked!
Cord saw, smiled, and walked in her direction. But ...
Instead of the plastic foliage continuing to weigh her arm down, she felt it lifting up and away. In a panic, she turned and saw the whole potted plant teetering back from her. Oh fritz! Desperately, she grabbed at the thick central cluster of frond stems. For a moment, she thought she'd managed to at least pause its fall, but a squawk from the far side made her refocus and see that the fern had simply landed across the back of an android at the next table. She opened her mouth to blurt an apology ...
But then two hands appeared next to hers on the green plastic thicket, and suddenly it was lifting back up into place. She saw wrists attached to the hands, jutting from a pair of sky-blue sleeves that she realized (because she'd seen the shirt in line just a moment ago) belonged to Gigory.
"Are you all right?" she heard him asking the android who'd been fernally assaulted. They grumbled in reply, then turned their grumble into a "Thank you," because it was clear Gigory had swooped in to stop the plant falling, and they didn't seem to connect Bitsy to the incident at all.
Stabilizing the fern, he pivoted to look at her and transferred his concern in the process. "What about you, Bitsy? Is --"
"Is everything all right?"
Naturally, it was Cord.
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