(Today’s assignment was to write about finding something, and have it as part of a series with Day 4’s post about losing something. Here’s mine. It’s a little out of sequence because it’s actually the scene before the one in Day 4, but I think it works. Basic questions: What do you think of the scene? Can you feel the emotions? See the office? Do you want to know what’s going on?)
“Hey,” Mira landed on my shoulder as I was pulling open the office’s door. She panted in my ear and I stroked her back. She was too big to really ride on my shoulder but she scrunched up to make her paws basically fit. “New… ahhhh… guy… ahhhh… Jeffries saw me, had to fly.”
“You are the most adorable spy in history… and the worst.” I grinned, scratching her head as I walked down the hall. The conference room door was closed. Jefferies probably slammed it shut behind Mira. “You got the skinny on the new PI?”
She bobbled her head side to side. “Nope, civil rights lobbyist. Guy has three massive pieces of legislation for magic users’ rights in the last two years under his belt. Two state, one federal.”
If I could whistle, I would’ve let one off slow and low. As it was, I just smiled bigger. “Boss-man’s getting down to business. We’re going to have this splashed all over the six o’clock news if he gets his way.”
“That’s not even the best part.”
“Seriously? What could be better than three bills for magic rights?” I reached for the door knob before remembering myself and knocking.
“One moment, Millie!” Jeffries called. “I locked the door after that bird of yours.”
“Meowl!” Mira corrected him before lowering her voice and saying to me, “He went to Vandy. Two years before you. Ol’ blue eyes chased me out before I could get his name though.”
I heard voices muttering and the door opened a moment later.
“Hey kid,” Jefferies said as he pulled the door back and stepped out of the way. He didn’t look good. Greying hair lay greasy and flat against his head, skin practically grey, ‘ol blue eyes, as Mira called them, dull and tired. He’d obviously been up all night.
I couldn’t even get annoyed and tell him not to call me kid. I hugged him around his poochy middle, my head barely coming high enough to rest on his chest. Mira flew to his shoulder and rubbed her cheek on his, purring like he was catnip as I stepped back.
“Oh man, I must look like shit,” he said, pulling Mira off his shoulder and flipping her over to cradle in his arm like a fuzzy baby. She could fit on his two meaty hands and looked like a stuffed animal next to him. He scratched her stomach and she batted at his hand with her claws retracted so he’d know she was just playing.
“See, you grumble but we know you love us,” I said, looking around the office. Where was this new guy?
“The empty office,” Mira said, grabbing at Jefferies’ finger as he waved it in her face and danced it over her head. “Yes, you are that predictable,” she said to me without looking away from her target. She caught his finger between two paws with a move so fast it evidenced the saying, “cat-like reflexes,” and let it slip away to hunt it again.
“Who’s the new guy, boss-man?” I walked into Penny’s office, with Jefferies still teasing Mira with a finger as he trailed behind me. Jefferies’ office was tucked behind his paralegal’s, taking up the building’s corner with the empty office on the right, the layout a kitty-corner mirror to mine on the left. I beelined for the right office.
This was so exciting!
“You say I never do anything for you? Well, I hired a friend of yours.”
I crinkled my nose, trying to think as I walked into the no-longer-empty office. The guy with his back turned to the door wore black suit pants and a button up the generic light blue I’d come to think of as law school blue because so many guys in law school seemed to favor it. None of my friends had those kind of credentials. We were all still baby lawyers. The only person I knew who even did anything like lobbying for magical rights certainly was no friend…
He turned around from whatever he was arranging on the desk.
“Hey Millie!” he said, grinning so wide it looked like his face should’ve split.
My blood turned to iced fire, a poison in my veins, and I literally felt the blood flee from my head.
No. Fucking. Way.
I stumbled back into Penny’s office and his giant grin melted down to pinched up concern.
Pressure built in my back, between my shoulder blades. Animal instinct demanding to be let free. I gasped, doubling over as it built to the pain of being trapped in a too small top. Steps rang across the hardwood floors and black encased legs came into sight. Oh god, he was coming up to me. I backpeddled.
RIPPPPPPPP.
My nice silky top split as my wings burst out in a glorious release. Pain zipped through the right one and I tore my eyes away from his legs to see what my wing hit.
The bookshelf was wrecked, two shelves near the top tossed off their supports and the thick legal volumes and tasteful knickknacks they bore in a heap on the crashed boards and dumped on the floor like a literary cave in.
Fog filled my brain, coating it with synapse lard. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t look up. Couldn’t hear anything outside the rush filling my ears. I hadn’t felt this way since spring of 3L, when he just popped up one day after I hadn’t seen him for nearly a year. I was out with girlfriends, partying it up in downtown, and making sure their drunken asses didn’t wander off, when I saw him across the street making out with the girl I later found out was his girlfriend.
It was the first time my wings burst out and I first learned I was one of the newly magical beings in this reality since the gods woke up. I’d learned to control it since then.
Until now.
Male voices were talking near me and I couldn’t pull my mind back from its spiral enough to comprehend what they were saying. The legs came towards me again.
I tucked my wings tight against my back, crossed my arms to keep my top shreds on, turned tail and ran.
I don’t know where I came out of the building, but once sun hit my face, I spread my wings and took off.
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