The exercise:
Write about: pets.
The boys got the rest of their Christmas presents from myself and Kat this afternoon. On the big day they'd received their fish tanks, and today they got to pick out their fish.
Miles choose a veiltail betta fish that he immediately named Blueberry. Max selected a halfmoon betta that he is thinking about calling Midnight but hasn't fully settled on quite yet.
3 comments:
That sounds like a fun day! But... I am saddened that no-one picked a piranha.
I confess that I rather regard two of the people in today's chapter to behave a lot like poorly-trained pets, so there's no animals directly involved but I think you might see where I was going with this :)
Pets
When the knock came at his door the following afternoon Fabian, sat in the visitor's chair, checked the time on his tablet and a little bit of mental arithmetic told him that he'd had almost 24 hours without any serious interruptions or dramas. He made a mental note of the time and hoped that this visitor wasn't going to break the streak.
"Come in," he called, turning an Imperial Memorandum face down on his lap. It was written in near impenetrable bureaucratese and he was actually quite glad of a chance to set it aside and let his tired brain rest.
The door opened almost tentatively and Fabian immediately relaxed that it wasn't Cass being sneaky and bringing her rage inside before letting it loose. He was very surprised when the head that poked around the door, which was barely open enough to admit it, was the dark-haired, pointy-nosed one belonging to the mage who'd lent him a second copy of the Heart of the Umber Hulk.
"I'm, uh, what's the word? Sorry! I'm, uh, sorry to bother you," said Sebastian quietly. "Oh, can you hear me?" He spoke up a bit. "Ah, I think you returned the wrong copy of the book I lent you to me. Could you... uh, please? be so kind as to swap it with the right one?"
Fabian blinked. "You know the Maestro," he said. "You wrote the book together. Go ask him yourself."
"Ah well... ok." The door snicked shut and Fabian stared at it for a few moments wondering why on earth a Mage would come and ask him to be -- well, a PA, he supposed -- instead of just going to the Maestro himself.
"Must be some kind of dominance thing," he murmured to himself. "I'll ask Dread about it." He checked his watch, deciding that that didn't count as a drama or a disaster and realised he had to go back to the Imperial Memorandum. His sigh was heavy, heart-felt, and he didn't feel at all guilty about it escaping either.
His office door flew open so violently that it shuddered on its hinges in the frame after bouncing off the wall behind it and leaving a dent where the door-handle struck. Fabian's hand jerked reflexively, tearing page 37 of the Memorandum a third of the way down the page and straight across. His heart pounded in his chest and he had to fight an urge to duck under the desk -- rather pointless as the door was behind him and it wouldn't hide him at all -- and pretend he wasn't there.
"This... this... Illithid! is a basilisk lurking around these halls!"
"Maestro," said Fabian, proud that his voice didn't tremble. He turned around, wishing that the desk faced the other way so that it was between him and what sounded like a very angry Maestro. "Are they pets of some kind?
And what's an Illi--"
"This bone botherer won't return my book!"
"Ah, you," said Fabian who found he couldn't remember the Mage's name.
"It's my book you invertebrate imbecile! My name's on the bloody cover, you should get someone who's learned to read to show you!"
"Is thi--"
"I demand you return my personal and private property! I lent it to the Director, not his pet monkey."
"MONKEY?!!" The Maestro was turning puce, which didn't look like a healthy colour for a man of his age, whatever he claimed it might be and the Mage, whose name Fabian was groping for but was staying just out of reach, was blotchy red and white that didn't look much better.
"What is this noise?"
"Oh good, Cass," said Fabian fighting a desire to turn around again and squeeze through the window. He had no idea how far it was to the ground but the idea of trying to learn to wall-climb on the spot seemed much better than entertaining these three again.
The shouting diminished after five minutes, and after fifteen things were at a slightly elevated level but the insults were now veiled and mostly civil. Fabian, if pressed, would admit that Cass had de-escalated the situation well, but he was sure he had helped.
"Sort the books out yourselves," he said finally, hoping that the two men understood he meant it. "I'm not your father and I'm not having squabbles brought in here. Again, I mean. It's just a book, for pity's sake." As he finished the sentence he knew he'd gone wrong; the Maestro was starting to tense again like a cat facing an aggressor and the Mage -- Sebastian, was it? -- started clenching his hands into fists. "Cass, you came here to tell me something? Tell me, and then all of you can leave."
It was a gambit but it worked. She glared at the two men who subsided a little and then decided, without looking at each other, to leave before she did. As they were turning she said,
"I wanted just to remind you about the Fire Drill on Thursday. You need to be here for it. So keep, let's say, an hour free between 3 and 4, please?"
"Fire drill?" The Maestro didn't turn but Fabian caught the shrug. "I thought you were phasing those out."
"So did I," said Cass turning to shepherd the two men away from Fabian's office.
He checked his watch: two minutes before the full twenty-four hours.
Greg - I'm reasonably certain Max may have chosen a piranha had he be given the option...
Misbehaving pets, small children, something along those lines. And Cass continues to impress with her single-mindedness!
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