You’re snacking on In Different Color, a fairy tale.
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“Mr. Grey, you look as haggard as I feel,” said Ms. Maysey. She chuckled weakly, chewing on the end of her pipe. Her hair mice gave an emphatic sniffle.
Had Mr. Grey actually looked as bad as Ms. Maysey felt, he’d have been better off. On top of the many five-line scratches covering his face and hands from the bat attack, Mr. Grey had acquired a cold. His skin took on troll-spit gauntness, making the claw cuts stand out with ruby clarity. He had changed robes (to the exact same cut, fit, fabric, and grey as his torn ones); that part of him still looked correct.
Mr. Grey and Ms. Maysey waited in a crowd of employees outside the Regional Justice Center. The Gaunt, Brooding, Hungry Wind had dragged her clouds busily all about town that morning. She covered the hopeless sun with such a shroud, that the assembled workers were regularly checking their pocket tickers for reassurance that they’d arrived to work the correct half of the day. The sky was bleak; the air, chill.
Ms. Maysey shivered and wrapped her hands around the bowl of her pipe. Mr. Grey stiffened his own into his pockets. He said, “Still the same bug you had last eon, Ms. Maysey?”
“And the eon before that. And the one before that, don’t you know,” said Ms. Maysey. “On my existence, I shiver to think I might not last to my sabbatical. I should have gone ages ago.”
Mr. Grey nodded, with as much sympathy as is expressible without outwardly changing one’s expression. Ms. Maysey took her sabbaticals on a scheduled basis. Neither the king’s government nor Mr. Grey held it against her. Mr. Grey knew she needed them, he had been present at her seventh interview at the Regional Justice Center. Her application came with a note from her doctor. Her diagnosis: ‘hopelessly neurotic and intractably hypochondriacal’. Knowing this from the outset, the government hired her anyway. The Regional Justice Center authorized the sabbaticals as a necessary treatment.
Ms. Maysey shivered. “I wish they’d let me leave at my first sniffle,” she went on. “I'm sorry to say I think I passed it onto the building.”
“Don’t blame yourself, Ms. Maysey.” Mr. Grey looked at the Starharbor Regional Justice Center. His eyes passed up and up and up, scaling the unforgiving creation; this cloud-puncturing, artificial menhir; bolted, welded, and mortared out of glass which gave no shine, and the deepest, darkest granite. Mr. Grey, despite his own words, thought Ms. Maysey’s were the probable truth.
Whether from Ms. Maysey or some other sickly visitor, the Justice Center did have its own cold. The entire megalith stood encased in glistening, frozen snot. Snot covered the giant foundation, which jiggled in a feeble way, as though it sat on quakesome ground. Snot clung to the granite walls that seemed to sag and droop. Snot lacquered the glass windows and the heavy iron doors, shivering noisily in their frames. Snot blocked the entry. The Justice Center workers waited outside, in the bitter cold, beside the jelly canal.
Ms. Maysey craned her neck and set her mouse-eyes looking down the street. “Could the building shiverer possibly - sniffle - be any slower this morning?”
Mr. Grey said, “It’s probably freeing up some sick, small buildings in other burgs. I think skyscrapers need special shaking clamps. So I’ve heard, anyway.”
“There’s so many employees waiting here… I’d prioritize better, that’s all. I’m not saying the shiverers do a bad job, of course I’m not!”
Mr. Grey didn’t know what to say. For a few moments he listened to the ambiance: other workers’ grumbling, The Wind making airy remarks about the weather, the chattering teeth of Ms. Maysey’s mice. Mr. Grey finally broke the silence by saying, “Got all your parchmentwork done for the trip?”
Ms. Maysey smiled wanly. “I do! And if you’ll forgive me for expressing myself strongly; I do think a few of these clients we assist perhaps complain a little too much.”
“There’s always one or two in a day who come with grievance baggage.”
“Yes indeed. You know, I filled in a dozen of the visa forms before my first appointment. And let me tell you, the pencil pusher I met with didn’t get any of our regular games over on me!”
“Our regular games?”
“He tried the usual redirects. ‘Go to this department.’ ‘Talk with that administrator.’ But when I showed him my Transport Authorization Report File - filled out and pre-approved - you should have seen his face! The poor pusher nearly tipped his word machine. A-stonishing!”
“I do think the office eases visa restrictions for employees. It’s a handbook clause.” The handbook had its own hillock down in the parchmentwork mines. If anybody knew its contents it was Mr. Grey.
Ms. Maysey stepped back verbally. “Of course! I didn’t say employees don’t have ANY privileges. I appreciate them for…”
Ms. Maysey’s words picked up speed, as though warming up for an improvised speech on the subject of employee benefits. At that moment, however, the building shiverer arrived.
The vehicle - a tiny, dragon-engine tractor the size of an office cubicle - attached itself by heavy crab claws to the side of the Region Justice Center. Its engine growled high as the machine jackhammered the icy snot. A quiver moved across the building’s foundation, beneath the cobblestones of the nearest streets, up the spines of the cold, complacent employees. The structural mucus fell away in huge sheets, exploding on the ground in frozen-snot shrapnel. The Wind rushed over the workers as the shiverer worked. She tossed hair and robes hither and thither, working herself into a flurry of last moment badgering.
After unclogging the Regional Justice Center’s sickly sinuses, the building shiverer rumbled back down the sidewalk. A night shift member of maintenance who’d been locked inside the Justice Center threw open its heavy iron doors. As one, the employee herd shuffled into the cold, glaring hallways. Mr. Grey walked stiffly in the center of the crowd, a position calculated to avoid his manager, Jack York.
This has been In Different Color, a fairy tale.
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