Originally Posted by Antarctica!

Risu sat down heavily in his comfortable chair. "I don't think I have had a nap since being two years old, Miss Jones," he said off-handedly, lifting papers to locate a spare bit of parchment and a quill. "Er, hold on, you'll get your permission slip..."

Locating those two items proved a bit more difficult than Risu had thought. Not that it bothered him that the girl had to wait a few seconds until her Observatory admittance was ready, but he felt himself getting rather irritated (something that was happening frequently to the "new" Risu, much to his dismay) at his inability to find what he was looking for.

A stack of old editions of the Astrophysical Journal yielded a rather ruffled-looking quill, and in the end, Risu just picked up a piece of paper and, after glancing at it quickly (it was a list of speakers at a conference he had attended more than six months ago), turned it over and scribbled down the note. "Here you are, Miss Jones," he said, signing it with a bit of an ironic flourish and handing it to her. "Don't worry about the, er, state of that paper," he added with a little grin, "I'm sure Professor Lafay wouldn't expect anything else from me."