Forums → Art, Music, and Writing → The Way of Moderation has ended (page 566)
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Unfortunately as this stage of the project is actually coming to its close, applications are now closed. However, there are later stages for which I will need help, so if you're up for that, keep following the WoM and we'll see what happens.
AND HERE IS THE NEXT STAGE!!! The Cenere saga continues:
It's Nothing
There finally came a time when one had to sit down and deal with the inevitable. Well, many things in life are inevitable, but some are more inevitable than others. A certain intellect once claimed it was death and taxes. With taxes came paperwork. Such was the nature of the civilised world, from which intellects could spout their many wisdoms and wisecracks.
But wisecracks could never detract from the mountain of paperwork that Strop had set himself up for. Even if he was able to turf most of the real mule work to his trusty inter- assistant Cen, who, despite absences, was still somehow dutifully churning it all out, he still had to sign off on every last sheet as the co-ordinator of the tournament. As the damages rose and so did the number of irate complaints not pertaining to any of the moderator duties, it was so very easy to take each cardboard box of files and claims and shove them to the dark corner of some storeroom labelled "to be fixed in the next version." Speaking of which, he wondered where Kingryan could have gone to after he had given him his latest assignment...
...in Kingryan's absence, Strop had temporarily claimed his office, specifically the desk near the front entrance of the library. And so that was where he sat this day, sipping his carrot soup in his custom mug, upon which was emblazoned the aphorism: "Don't be a whiner, be a winner!" and on the other side, Have a WHINNEY day!" Strop didn't know what he had meant by that, but... well, it had seemed like a good idea at the time.
Just then, a shadow fell across his face. He looked up, and saw a silhouette. Obviously, since the shadow was falling across his face, it stood to reason that the light was coming from the door and thus in the relatively dim room, he could not properly discern the features of that which was eclipsing the doorlight, but he felt it relatively safe to assume that it was his trusty in-
"Hi Cen, glad you could make it!" he grinned under his ninja mask. "Got the paperwork?"
Wordlessly, the silhouette dumped yet another cardboard box filled with sheets of paper on the table.
"Uh, thanks... actually, if you could just dump it in the corner over there..." Strop vaguely gestured to the shelves, over which he had plastered a makeshift sign: "TO BE FIXED IN THE NEXT VERSION."
Wordlessly, the silhouette turned around, shuffled to the shelves, dumped the box there, and shuffled back.
"Ah good, thank you for that Cen, we're not going to be doing anything until nex- woah, Cen, what the hell happened to your face?"
Now that Cen was out of the direct light, Strop could not only tell that it was Cen, but that his face looked somewhat the worse for wear. Since Cen didn't even move, he jumped up to take a look, but it was already obvious from far off that Cen was sporting a rather spectacular black eye. Strop fussed over it, racking his brain and immediately wondering just how neglectful he had been of his trusty in- ... he really needed to stop calling Cen that.
"That wasn't there last time I saw you, right? I didn't do this, did I?" Cen didn't say a word, let alone reach up and strangle Strop, so Strop meant that to mean no. "How did you get it anyway?"
Cen merely shrugged.
Strop sighed and shook his head, racking his brains for what to do next in the complete absence of history. "Does it... hurt?"
Cen shrugged again. "...dunno."
Strop rubbed his ears. Cen being Cen, he knew that something was probably wrong but that it would probably take several hours of sustained interrogation to achieve an equivocal confession probably engineered to get Strop to bugger off and leave him alone. At another time, Strop told himself, he would probably have not buggered off and made Cen apply an ice pack with rest every fifteen minutes, if he even knew how old the black eye was, but of course it was so spectacular that it could have been anywhere from an hour to three days and he wouldn't have been able to reliably tell... at another time, maybe, but the sun was setting, he had his duties to attend to, the patients to manage, his assignments to write, all ironically compounded by the fact that now just about every other mod was away... and if the result was going to be the same, anyway...
"Okay Cen, you should go on home... take the next few days off, and the swelling will go down. Take care of yourself okay?"
"Mmk," came the reply, at least Strop assumed it was that because it sounded more like an "mmblml." And then Cen was gone.
Strop sat back in his chair, and started scrawling over the forms he was already going through. Then he stopped. It was like an itch had started in the back of his head, and there was no way he couldn't scratch it... if only he knew how. Who else would know what was going on with Cen? Strop knew full well he couldn't ask Sai, that girl was about as discreet as the soopadoopahawesometasticmegamegafone ("wannabe ninja? Hmph!". And chances were that she was wrapped around Cen's neck simpering over his black eye... if she wasn't the one who gave him that black eye...
...In which case Strop knew of one other person who might be able to provide insight, except, of course, she preferred to be referred to as a critter, and whether this critter would even speak to Strop given the circumstances...
It was worth a shot.
---
Cenere the Cheerless
"Stropling, it's three in the morning."
"I know, I figured you'd be up at this time."
"I wasn't, but I am now."
"Oh."
Strop's consult with Zophia had gotten off to a flying start. Standing ankle deep in snow and blowing clouds of steam in the damp cold, Strop huddled at the front door of Zophia's residence, and Zophia, dressed in her jammies and blearily rubbing the hair out of (or maybe into, she wasn't really with it) her eyes, huddled on the other side of the threshold.
"I'd invite you inside, but... well, the inside isn't really visitor-friendly at the moment," Zophia snuck a backward glance before arranging herself in the doorframe to try and hide as much of the interior as possible. "What do you want anyway?"
"Uhh." Strop was there now, he might as well have gone ahead, so he did: "Actually it's about Cen."
Immediately, Zophia became more alert, her eyes narrowing slightly. "...what about Cen?"
Strop tugged at his scarf; he could only imagine what scenarios Zophia was thinking of and what she was thinking to do to him now, so he hastened to explain. "Well, I saw him today and he... well he had this massive black eye, and I'm pretty sure it had nothing to do with me." Zophia glared at him. "No, really! He was away for a while and he was perfectly fine then!" Strop shuffled a bit in the snow and looked down. "Would you know what happened?"
Zophia studied Strop for a moment. The silly pony was so busy gallivanting about doing his own thing, that she had often been the one to pick up the pieces of Cen that had invariably fallen off while he was being battered about fulfilling promises that she couldn't fathom. But this, this was a first, and strangely enough, it only reinforced her own gut feeling on the matter.
"Hmm... well, I found him like that... in the snow, sitting by himself, and all he would say was... 'she left'."
A ray of ice ran Strop through. Cen may have been a bit on the wimp side, but the little firebrand must have been quite mad to be able to give him such a shiner. And Strop had absolutely no idea how Cen would have been able to get Sai mad enough to do that, but then again Sai was quite mad in herself anyway. In a good way, except maybe when she might do something like punch Cen in the face...
Evidently Zophia was probably thinking the same thing, because she was sporting the same worried look as Strop. "Do you think he meant...?"
"Yeah." Strop nodded. "It seems that way. He's probably going to feel pretty down... would you know what would cheer him up?"
"Cheer... Cen up?" Zophia opened her mouth to state the obvious, but then stopped. Here was Strop, longtime ruthless tormenter of Cen. And Strop was standing in front of her asking for her expert advice in an area where he clearly had no knowledge. She stifled the smile spreading inside her, her tail nearly kinking from the effort.
"There's one thing I know of," she said.
