Monday May 9th, 2022

The exercise:

Write about someone or something that is: in high demand.

2 comments:

Greg said...

Are you in high demand? Or is Kat is high demand between you, the boys, and her job? :)

High demand
The doors of the Halls of Sunset stayed open behind them, which caused Fabian relief and Dread and Rystin to turn and frown at them.
"Doors don't normally close themselves," said Fabian, who was quite happy not to be trapped inside.
"Yes, but we don't want people knowing we're in here," said Dread. "And even if they didn't go in, seeing the doors open is going to attract attention and more people. Probably Auditors."
"You had to bring them up, didn't you?" Fabian sounded a touch more irritated than he liked, and when he thought about that for a moment he realised he was actually quite scared of the Auditors somehow catching them.
Rystin pushed the door and it swung closed easily. Then he tugged on the handle and it opened again.
"Seems ok," he said. "I think the Staff has unlocked the doors, and you'd want them to be openable and closable all day really. It's an office building after all, it would be in high demand if open to people."
"It's a Museum!" said Fabian, again catching himself by surprise by the intensity of his emotions. "Well, I suppose it's a bit office-like, but Imperial offices don't have to put up with the general public traipsing through and making a mess everywhere. With their children. High demand is an understatement!"
"I've never yet seen a crowd in your Museum," murmured Dread, but Fabian ignored him.
Rystin closed the doors again and the only light was the moonlight falling through the windows. Shadows loomed everywhere and every direction disappeared into darkness. "Might I have the Staff?" he asked.
Fabian handed it over feeling another sense of relief that he wasn't now the guardian of the most valuable thing he knew about and Rystin held it out at arm's length. A look of concentration emerged on his face making him look older and grimmer, and then the Staff started to glow; softly at first and then strong enough to push the shadows back and let them see that the hall they were in was bigger than the ten-metre radius that the Staff threw light at. Rystin handed the Staff back to Fabian who took it only slightly reluctantly.
"Let's see where we're going," said Rystin.
"Where are we going?" asked Fabian who felt the light from the Staff just made him more of a target now.
"We thought you'd know," said Dread. "This was part of the Museum once, after all."
"Which I've never been in," said Fabian. He looked around. "Well, Cass did keep talking about the place and she seemed to have studied it. This would be the entrance hall, so there should be stairs at the far end, some kind of cloakroom on either side of us, and... well, if this is anything like my Museum," and there was just a touch of pride there that he couldn't hide either, "then there's probably a small door near one of the cloakrooms that let's you into the administrative offices."
"Upstairs," said Dread. "Whatever the Auditors are after is probably on display. It's very hard to find out what was stored here and I doubt they've got much better access to the records than the Mages College. So I think it should be in plain sight."
"We just have to recognise it when we see it then," said Rystin.

Marc said...

Greg - I was thinking of my manager and how hard it is to find a time to talk to her some days. But yeah, Kat is certainly in high demand as well.

Oh boy. I'm with Fabian, I think. Feeling tense that the Auditors might show up at any time, no matter how unlikely that would actually be.