(So I've decided to revisit my much ballyhooed NaNoWriMo project, and since I can't manage to find a more reasonable chunk of this particular passage to use, I've decided to break it into parts. In this first part, clan sponsor Edith Fortunado meets for the first time with potential trainee hunter Danielle Brightstar...)
Edith Fortunado settled into the worn seat behind her desk. Having spent the better part of the morning following the weekly meeting completing forms, reports and other assorted business minutiae, she was looking forward to spending the better part of the next few hours sitting in her locked office and acting like she was busy working. It was one of the few perks that her position as clan sponsor allowed her. She was right on the verge of finding a nice section of newspaper to read through when she heard the knock on her door.
"Oh, for the love of..." she mumbled to herself before shouting annoyedly, "What?"
"Um, sorry ma'am." Barnard's weasely voice strained through the wooden frame of the door. "I know you didn't want to be bothered, but... she's here."
"She?" Edith asked through clenched teeth. "Who on earth is 'she'?"
"The blacko... ahem... the, er, walkabout, ma'am," Barnard answered with a bit of a stammer. "I could tell her you're busy if you'd like. She doesn't have an appointment..."
Edith pondered the idea for a moment before shaking her head. "Nah. I might as well get this out of the way now. Tell her to come in." Edith leaned forward in her seat with a bit of a scowl. She took a few moments to scatter enough of the items on her desk to make it look like she was busier than she ever could have been before taking a deep breath and forcing a faint smile. Sociable enough, she thought to herself as the door opened.
The woman Edith saw enter the room wasn't unpleasant on the eyes. She wasn't very remarkable either, but such is the case with some people. The short cut crop of dark brown hair on top of the woman's head wasn't helping her to look any more feminine, but at least she did have some sort of shape to her. The ensemble of a top and skirt, both made of animal skins, was only bound to make the woman stand out in the city in the long run. But truth be told, Edith thought through her assessment, that can be just as big a plus as it could be a minus.
The first thing Danielle noticed as she turned the knob and opened the door was how old the office looked. She understood more than anyone that in this day and age almost any given person could have his or her own sense of style or culture. She herself came from a place where many of the modern conveniences of the world were ignored in lieu of simpler things. But still, she really expected something less... vintage than the room that she was entering.
Maybe it was just that she expected something different from the leader of the clan she had applied for a permit from. She's not sure why she felt that way, considering the reception she had met earlier in the day in her "mentor". Appearances could obviously be deceiving in cases like this. The leader in question, Danielle assessed, certainly had to have something up her sleeve.
As diminutive as Edith Fortunado was (was midget the correct term?), she must have had some interesting history to end up the head of a clan of Hunters. Her lightly wrinkled face gave way to her age, and her black hair had a thick streak of gray along the left side. The staunch little woman couldn't really do much in the line of intimidating someone in a confrontation, but that, Danielle imagined, could have its positives, too.
Edith decided to get the ball rolling by offering a seat to the entering Danielle. "Welcome. Please sit down." Upon noticing the woman's walking stick she added, "Nice staff."
Danielle started to say something with regards to the comment, but decided instead to just simply sit in the seat offered to her across from Edith. The desk itself was a solid oak, worn by time and buckled gently by what had to be the weight of various files and other items. She sat her staff so it rested between the armrest and her leg, then tried her best to get comfortable in the seating. It was an uphill battle.
"So..." Edith shuffled through a pair of files on her desk before finding the sheet that she was looking for. "Danielle, is it? You mind if I call you Dani?"
"... fine."
Edith wasn't sure why the young woman would agree to something in such low spirits, but it's not like Edith really cared that much about it. "So, Dani... how was your trip? It looks like you made it to the city all right."
"Oh, yes. Not much to say about the trip. It was pretty... peaceful." Danielle's answer was guarded but optimistic.
"Get through the checkpoint okay? No hangups with getting your travel passes or anything?"
"Oh, no. That was just fine, too."
"And how was your meeting? I heard it got moved..."
"Oh, that?" Danielle hedged gently as she leaned to the right in her chair. "I guess I'd say that went fine, too."
"Uh huh..." Edith pressed on, "And your 'mentor'? Everything going fine with him?"
"Mr. O'Ban...er, Lake? He's a little... well, he's not what I'd expe... what I mean to say is that I'm sure that he's a nice enough guy, but...."
Edith's face bent into a wrinkled little smile, "He ditched you, didn't he?"
Danielle all but fell out of her chair at the sudden interjection. "Wha? He... I wouldn't say that...I mean, I don't think that he...” Why exactly was it that she was trying to defend the man, again? Danielle let out a small huff. "Yes. He ditched me."
Edith smiled in earnest, leaning back in her seat. "Yeah, he tends to do that. I'm surprised you actually thought to come here first. Most people would have run around the city like a chicken with its head cut off for a few hours."
Danielle forced out a broken chuckle. The last thing she wanted to do was to admit that she had, in fact, spent the better part of two hours running around the city like a chicken with its head cut off. She had checked every business along the stretch of Main Street where Lake had disappeared. She was halfway through the city gate before she figured that there was no real way that he could have or would have gone to the outside. And she had even resorted to going person to person and asking random strangers if they had seen the man. Which, she mused to herself, was fairly deserving of the laughter that she had received from most of the people she ran into.
Edith stared at the young woman in front of her. She could see on the girl's face that she wasn't entirely comfortable with the topic of conversation. Edith hadn't meant to strike a nerve, but at the same time she wasn’t going to pull her punches either. This was as much an assessment of Danielle's resilience as it was her capability, and before it would be over, there would be far worse in store for the potential trainee than a few hurt feelings
Edith leaned forward and opened a drawer on the left side of her desk. Reaching in, she retrieved a small, tight rolled cigar and popped the end into her mouth. Without so much as an ounce of consideration for whether or not it might disturb her office mate, Edith promptly lit the cigar with a match and took a few short puffs.
Danielle wasn't sure if she was supposed to be doing a better job with this interview. In reality, she hadn't figured out why she had even bothered coming to the guild office. Part of her desperately wanted to find a group of laughing comrades there just waiting to let her in on the fact that she had been the butt of an elaborate joke. 'I can't believe you'd fall for something like that!' they'd chuckle. 'Welcome to the Guild, newbie!' they'd smile. There would also be cake.
Having arrived and finding some of the pointing and laughing but none of the prank-worthy camaraderie she was looking for, Danielle had seriously considered giving up. If she couldn't hack the first few hours of the day, how could she hold up for a week? A month? How was she ever supposed to etch out a life for herself in a city full of mages, psychos, robots and everything in between if she couldn't handle the first few hours? This was only the twelfth time she had asked herself that, and it was starting to feel like a personal mantra. She hadn't exactly expected Edith Fortunado to be a heaping pile of consolation, but Danielle couldn't help but think that the woman could be a little more considerate if she wanted to.
Edith took another pair of puffs from her cigar before propping herself back up into her chair. She looked across the desk at Danielle and vented a stream of smoke from her nostrils.
"What you have to understand..." Edith started with a tinge of sincerity, "Is that a lot of the people around here are worthless. Scum, really. All that pomp and glamour they try to put on the jobs we do is just a spit shine on a crap cracker." She took a moment to assess if that was anywhere near a proper analogy before continuing. "What I mean to say is that this is a hard life choice. It's not for everyone, and it's certainly not for someone that can find work doing something safer. Taking this job will put your life in constant peril. Even when you're not on the job, someone... or something... might try to take a shot at you. Yes, you should be well protected, and once you're with a clan, they'll always have your back, but you have to accept the fact that just by signing up for this job, you're probably cutting your life span in half. There isn't much a of a retirement plan because frankly, not many people make it to retirement age."
"The reason that those guys out there probably treated you like crap is because... well, they generally view walkabouts as bad luck. ‘Blackouts’ is what they call them. Because for some reason, any time one of them shows up, it seems like someone ends up getting killed over it. And that's on top of the usual nonsense that gets people killed around here."
“What I guess I'm trying to say, Dani, is... have you really thought this through? I'm sure that you could make a nice living selling beaded necklaces or horn jewelry or whatever passes for a safe occupation around your neck of the woods."
...
(It should be noted at this point int he story, Dani shows opening frustration because she constantly runs into people who say, "Nice staff," to her (neither she nor the reader understands why at this point) and is almost always asked if she can be called Dani (which she really would prefer not to be called). And yes, Edith is in fact everyone's dream boss. But fear not. This section is specifically designed to spotlight Edith's edge against Dani's seemingly gentle nature, almost as much as the next section is designed to do the opposite.
And yes, Edith is a little person. Not a dwarf, gnome, leprechaun or any other interesting thing she could be. Don't ask me why I went with that choice. I think it was just simple aesthetics.)
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