Germaine Street - Chapter Nine

Across town and, despite it being a Saturday, Mayor Una Crescas was reading surveying reports from her head of public works. True she was doing so while sipping sweet tea and swaying in a hammock, but she was still productive and that was the important thing!

Sometimes she considered ruefully that being Mayor was a never ending task before she reminded herself that this was the point of being Mayor in the first place. That said, a little less unending being applied to the reports turned in by Micha might not go a miss. As this was occurring to her the ping of her phone, alerting her to the text arriving caused her to cease her hammock swaying.

Here Una faced a common dilemma in all the years of her existence; she had still not worked out how to extricate herself from the hanging lounging contraptions with any degree of grace. As she always did she dropped one foot to the floor and was briefly hopeful that this time would be different. Of course it wasn’t and Una gave a little “meep” of consternation as she was deposited on the lawn. Thankfully her sweet tea survived and she dusted herself off before stepping over to where her phone lay.

The text was from Tobias Rirsen and invited her to a cookout the next afternoon, Una’s first impulse was to politely decline but she stopped herself. Maybe she needed a second opinion. Sipping more tea she went looking for her box.

🐾🐾🐾🐾

The box sat on its little table, the blue velvet interior looking a little dusty in the early afternoon sunlight. Una picked it up, there was a brief moment as Una detangled her consciousness from Claudine’s and drifted towards the box. Claudine blinked a few times and gently closed the box.

“Sorry Claudine, I just needed to have your opinion free of my thoughts”

“Oh no trouble Una, what’s up? The text from Tobias?”

“Yes, should I go?

“I assumed you would, is there a reason you wouldn’t?”

The box severed a little, a sign Claudine had learnt indicated Una was steeling herself to say things she didn’t want to. Presently the quivering subsided and there was the briefest of pauses and then Una replied.

“I’m not good at parties…”

“You’re not good at...Una you have been in existence for close to 380 years and most of those as Mayor, or similar, of this town, you have to have picked up some sort of small talk ability”

The box seemed to exude a sulky air.

“I suppose”

“Would you prefer I just go? We’ve done it before, I think I do a pretty good job of mimicking you”

Una seemed to consider this “No, Tobias always knows and then he’ll never let me live it down on Monday”

“So then” Claudine picked up the phone and replied

Looking forward to it

To the text.

Inside the box Una sighed, but it was a complicated sound. Of all of her hosts Claudine was by far the most pushy, but perhaps that wasn’t the worst thing in all the worlds.

“Ready to hop back in?”

“Yes”

Claudine opened the box and allowed Una to envelop her. There was the brief moment where the background electrical charge in the room spiked as it always did, elevating every one of Claudine's hairs before Una was recombined and able to wander over to the large mirror that hung across from the box’s usual resting place.

It took a few cycles through her combined morphic field before all the hairs were clear of static and then a little bit of brushing before Una felt presentable again.

“Now” she said to herself “Where was I? Oh yes, hammock…”