It’s Thursday.
You have the early shift today. You should have gone to bed early but you wasted your time worrying about the future instead. Well it’s the future now, technically.
You make the bed before you start getting ready for work. It’s queen-sized. When you got it, you naively thought that you might be sharing it with someone by now.
At some point after buying it, you removed the box spring and headboard. Scrambling up and down every morning and night got tiring. They hauled it up here for free, but getting it down would cost money. Money you can’t spare.
You remember the first time you put on this outfit. It was so exciting, working for a REAL Arcanery. You were certain you’d be making magic tools, rubbing shoulders with the famous craftsmen. Learning something NEW.
And now you dread going to work every day. You can’t remember the last time you touched a magic tool other than to take it down from a shelf for a customer or to restock.
It’s your violin. You haven’t touched it in a while. That’s a lie actually. You pick it up all the time. You hold it. The music just doesn’t come any more.
You don’t eat breakfast. Not since you threw up when a customer yelled at you for bringing them the wrong model of ward generator. Things have usually calmed down by lunch so that’s when you eat.
You live on the 5th floor. When you were looking for a room, you wanted one that was high up because you wanted to really experience the city life. Before you had always lived on the first floor or underground.
The novelty has since worn off. Now it’s just 5 flights of stairs when coming home or when bringing back groceries. A good work out for your legs, you guess. Not that you need any more considering what you do at work.
You still enjoy the commute though. The smells, the sounds, the hustle and bustle. So different from back home.
There it is. Your home away from home. The one, the only, Arcanery. When you applied you didn’t realize that an arcanery was a type of shop rather than a specific brand.
(Author note: I decided to swap to the roughs because I felt they had more personality)
“Hey green,” Alyssa says. Calling a goblin ‘green’ is a bit racist, but Aly is otherwise pretty nice to you so you generally let it pass.
“Morning Aly. Is the boss in?”
“Not yet, but he’ll be here. He’s always here.”
You always ask, on the off chance that he doesn’t come in. It’d make the rest of your day so much better. He’s always especially hard on you for no reason. Other than that throwing up thing the other day. Actually maybe that’s why.
“What are you reading?” you ask.
“A book about rocks.”
“That’s… different.”
“Someone called me as ‘unchanging as andesite’ the other day and I’m trying to figure out if that is an insult or not.”
“W…well andesite is an igneous rock, so on the scale of rocks, I’d say that’s pretty malleable?”
She looks at you oddly. “Why the hell would you know… oh right you wanted to be a craftsman.”
You still do technically, but you don’t correct her.
The break room. You use it to eat lunch but that’s about it. The boss doesn’t believe in breaks. Doesn’t stop Aly or Wilma from taking them though. In fact it looks like Wilma is already taking a break now.
Aly doesn’t take nonsense from anyone and seems to be in a sort of truce with the boss. Wilma, you and Aly have theorized, must have something over the boss, because she is incredibly demanding of him. Once she off-handedly mentioned that the breakroom was too boring, and the next day a Public Scrying Panel seemingly materialized out of nowhere.
You are too scared to slack off like they do. City apartments are pricey, and your savings are slim. If you lose this job you’d have all of 3 weeks to find a new similarly paying job or be out on the street.