Lidea slid eggs onto a plate with some toast and a sliced pear. Ey settled it on the table just as Sunny was coming down the stairs. Ey had learned quickly — the first lesson of cohabitation perhaps — that ey didn’t know how to cook from raw ingredients. Sunny had always been the cook between them. When they knew they were traveling together, he was in charge of travel rations. He was the only person ey had ever met who could make a mixture of dehydrated fruits, nuts, and nutritional yeast feel like an actual meal. At home with a full kitchen at his disposal, he put together the kinds of meals a person spent all day looking forward to.
Ey wasn’t incompetent around a saucepan by any means, but the gap in skill was immense. Eggs and toast ey could do, though.
“How do you get the eggs perfect every time?” Sunny asked, dropping into his chair. Lidea joined him, taking eir chair across the table.
“I can manually manipulate the heat distribution across the bottom of the pan.” Lidea broke eir yoke, tore a piece of bread away, and dipped it into the center.
“Wait, are you serious?” Sunny paused with his fork hovering over his egg.
“Yeah…that’s…how I learned to do it. Throw a little magic in there. It’s actually slightly easier with these things.”
Lidea nodded down to eir fingerless gloves.
"I'd never thought of doing that," Sunny murmured. "How are those working out for you?"
Lidea flipped eir hands over a few times, flashing the cloth and filament gloves from all angles.
"I'm getting used to them, for sure. I don't know that I would ever want to change over completely."
"It's too difficult to go back and forth, though," Sunny said.
"I'm aware," Lidea snapped back. Ey tapped eir fork on the edge of the plate, and Sunny didn’t push the conversation.
Ey had always used some kind of staff or staff-like instrument. Ey, like a lot of young magicians, started with a big, bulky staff that strapped across eir shoulder blades. When ey first started traveling, ey switched to a small cudgel that ey could beat someone with in close combat, if ey needed to. Now ey preferred something in between, a thick rod that could extend like a combat baton with a flick. They must exist, but Paul was the only greenwitch ey personally knew that didn’t use some kind of rod or staff.
Sylvan magicians preferred gloves, finger cots, hand chains, and stacks of rings and bracelets. Anything that positioned the focus of magic directly in their hands.
Humans weren't so uniform. They learned on a few common artifacts, then branched into an entire array of different devices. There was the typical stock of bracers and pendants and staffs, but if something could be safely turned into a focus, someone had done it.
Eir staff had always been cumbersome on public transport and tight spaces, but it had never been a problem ey had to deal with for long stretches. Going back and forth to a workplace, though, this minor inconvenience was turning into a genuine hassle. Fingerless canvas gloves in the sylvan style were Sunny's first recommendation if Lidea wanted to try something new. They just didn't work the same. In the field, ey wasn’t sure they’d be able to keep up with em.
But then maybe that was okay. Maybe in-town the gloves were enough. But if that was the case, why would ey need to get accustomed to them at all? Not like ey was staying here, in the city, forever. This was Sunny's last day of classes, and ey had two more weeks on eir contract after that. Then they were back on the road.
Surely, they’d be back on the road.
The fact was, they hadn’t talked about it. Normally, Lidea would have started looking for eir next contract already. Ey just…hadn’t…Ey didn’t really know what was stopping em. Ey could have gone back to eir room at the guild within a week of being back and just…didn’t. Ey hadn’t given it up, either, not wanting to lose access to a space that belonged to em alone.
Sunny glanced up at the clock, then gobbled down the rest of his breakfast quickly. He moved to the freezer and pulled out a hank of steak, throwing it into the sink.
“Gonna make that for dinner.” He moved toward the door, grabbing his work bag from the hook, then doubled back to peck Lidea on the cheek. “See you tonight.” Then he was gone. Lidea pressed the tips of eir fingers to eir cheek. It was a weird passing thing he had started, brief glances across eir cheek that barely touched. It wasn’t an unheard of neutral greeting between all different people ey had met, especially sylvan, so it had taken a couple of days for em to notice Sunny had picked up the habit for himself.
Systematic desensitization to domestication.
Ey finished up eir own breakfast, then mentally worked through the couple of things in eir chore list that needed to happen before ey left. Sunny would have made the bed already, but ey needed to start the automated dish-washing machine and put the bags out for the laundry service.
Ey sighed. Was this the shape ey wanted eir life to take?
"Sunny."
"Yasira."
The stone elf slotted in to walk alongside him as he walked out of one of the small restaurants near campus. It was a little too expensive for the average student, so it was one place faculty and staff could catch a meal with a reasonable chance they wouldn't run into any students.
The school wanted to take full advantage of having him for lectures, so they packed him for four ninety-minute lecture times a day, four days a week. Fridays were more open-ended study halls and times for one-on-ones. He didn’t have a huge number of students across his courses, which made up for the tight schedule. This morning had been full of practical exams, though, so this lunch was particularly precious.
"Come out for drinks tomorrow night with some of the other staff. Bring Lidea."
"Don’t you have a baby due any minute?” Sunny asked.
“Not here, yet, and with Indy already in the maternity spa…”
“You don’t like being home without her.” Sunny had lost track of Indy’s pregnancy until, suddenly, Yasira had them over to help with some minor remodeling of the kitchen. He had waited until Indy went into prenatal seclusion so it’d be a (welcome) surprise when she got home after her thirty-day postpartum period.
“I get it,” Yasira insisted. “It’s tradition. It’s healthy. But, you know…visiting hours stop at eight, and I miss my wife.” He pouted a little then threw his arm over Sunny’s shoulder. “How has Lidea found eir little break?”
"Difficult."
"Oh?"
"Ey hates it."
"How so?"
This was one of those times where, as much as he liked Yasira, he wished he was having this conversation with Lidea around. Ey knew how to frame things so he didn't have to talk so much, to explain himself with his own words. He got through his lectures because they were pre-planned.
"Ey's not used to being in one place for any real length of time. Ey's getting restless, but ey won't admit it because ey doesn't want to hurt my feelings."
"But otherwise, ey's having a good time? Exploring the city? Spending time together?"
"Uh…yeah…actually, yeah." All other things considered, he was enjoying being able to plan things with em more than a few days out. And he was pretty certain Lidea was happy with that turn of events, too. Probably. Right? Right.
"Professor Childress?" A student, a first-year from one of his intro rockhounding classes, appeared vaguely from the side. "Can I ask you some more detailed questions about being a mercenary auxiliary?" Sunny looked her over, a young human woman. Slim. Maybe athletic, but very little muscle mass. If he recalled exactly who she was in the sea of faces, she had made a good grade on her written test but her short practical yesterday had been lackluster.
Mercenaries would eat her alive. The smart thing would be to convince her not to go down that path if that's what she wanted to do. But then, that hadn't worked on him. And if he hadn't joined up with mercenaries, he never would have met Lidea.
"Alright, kid, what do you want to know?"
Lidea wandered the printing floor, staying just the other side of the yellow tape that kept em safe from swinging arms. They had been feeding em middling administrative tasks that no one else wanted to do to keep em busy. And ey liked those tasks, that was the weird part. Ey could sit in a corner and just listen to a radio show while ey transferred and sorted data. If anyone could be good or bad at that kind of repetitive task, ey was performing well. Dana was regularly impressed with how quickly ey got through things.
They also only needed em in the building when they were running a magical ink print. Those weren't happening all the time, so ey’d taken to doing stock runs for the snack cabinet in the break room.
Late the week before was the first time ey actually had to really pay attention to the magic ink machinery. An arm had come loose that offset the intended print, and two veins of ink that should never touch overlaid on each other. Ey caught the spark of conflicting magic immediately and had the machine shut down within a minute, long before any permanent damage to the machines or the people nearby.
The printing mechanic fixed it within the hour, but Lidea questioned why these two inks were being printed this close together to begin with. This kicked off a week-long audit of their graphic design and production department. Were they adequately aware of the mechanical limitations and implications of the printing machines? Why were they designing products with such a narrow margin of error for magical blowouts? They were working with such small amounts of the magic-shift ink that the danger was low on an individual basis. Magic issues snowballed on top of each other, though, faster than you could typically anticipate. Better to cut them out at the source.
The designers drew up their designs on specialized art machines made up of a giant television-like screen and a fancy pen. Lidea was terrified of them. They showed em how to navigate the "files," though, and see which ink mixes they used to get which effects with which colors. Ey could then take that list of composite materials and make recommendations on what two things should maybe not touch.
Next week, ey would start writing up the proper, formal safe process manual that should really have already existed and hopefully get it done before the end of the contract. Now, ey needed to stretch eir legs.
"You're really good at this, you know." Dana caught em from the doorway as Lidea passed on one of eir circuits.
"Good at what?"
"Everything; that's kind of the point. You're doing the work of five people."
Lidea shrugged, fingers drifting to the back of eir neck.
"I just do what needs to be done, I guess."
"How does it compare to being on the road all the time?"
"Ah…well…" Lidea flapped eir hands on eir thighs then leaned against the wall next to the doorway. "I don't know. The predictability is nice. Sleeping in a bed every night is really nice. But…don't you ever get bored? Of just all this over and over and over?"
"Have you gotten bored in the last six weeks?"
"Yeah, a little."
Dana pressed her eyebrows together in confusion but gave a guffaw.
"And has it been that bad? Being bored?"
"Honestly, not really. It’s been fine. I can admit to that.”
Dana lightly smacked em on the shoulder with the back of her fingers.
"We don't really have anything open after your current contract is up, but I know a lot of people who would love to have you around to cover their ass. Just tell me." Dana moved back through the doorway. Lidea watched her go, and realized, with some dismay, the concept didn’t horrify em.
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