A Tempestuous Truce

The fluorescent lights of the library hummed a low, incessant drone, a soundtrack to their shared misery. Bret, usually the picture of composed indifference, found himself staring at a particularly stubborn knot in the spine of a history tome, his knuckles white where he gripped its worn cover. Across the table, Holly was a whirlwind of restless energy, her pen tapping a frantic rhythm against a blank notebook, her brow furrowed in a way that spoke of a battle lost before it was even begun. They were marooned, two ships forced into an unwilling harbor by the capricious tides of Professor Albright’s notoriously obscure research paper assignment.

“This is ridiculous,” Holly finally declared, her voice a low growl that vibrated with frustration. “He wants us to find primary sources on the socio-economic impact of the Great Famine, and all I’m getting are secondary analyses that read like they were written by someone who only learned about it from a Wikipedia summary.”

Bret scoffed, not bothering to look up from his book. “Perhaps if you’d spent less time sketching constellations in your margins and more time actually reading the syllabus, you wouldn’t be in this predicament.”