Solo A good impression

[Yvar]

35th Summer, 520AV:

It was natural to be anxious on the first day of starting at a new workplace, Yvar kept telling himself as he crossed the bridge. His nerves were more pronounced, though, on this particular day. He still wasn't fully at home in the city, having only recently become a resident. To make matters worse, he'd had trouble sleeping. When he finally did nod off sometime in the wee hours, the Inartan had been plagued by the strangest, most discomforting dream. The details had faded when he awoke, covered in sweat, but something left him unpleasantly disturbed - a feeling that remained with him still.

Arriving outside the office of the Stargazer Gazette, Yvar paused a moment to steel himself before opening the door and stepping inside.

Immediately, he was taken aback by the office itself. Such a large open, airy space yet packed to the rafters with his favourite commodity – information. Shelf upon shelf lined the walls, taking his mind back to his time spent in the Enclave back in Wind Reach.

Returning to his senses, his azure eyes located the woman he was here to see. She seemed oblivious to his arrival as he scanned the pages before her. Yvar made swift progress across the length of the office to stand before her.

"I'm Yvar. Due to start work here today...", he said.

Kenvell looked up and smiled warmly. "Ah, yes. Very punctual, I see." She picked up a considerable pile of old, tattered papers from her desk and shoved them into Yvar's hands.

"These are from the archives. They've all been damaged in one way or another and are in danger of becoming illegible. You'll need to copy them verbatim onto new pages which will take their place in storage.", her smile was warm and genial, but she seemed intent in getting straight to the point.

Yvar nodded his acceptance and stepped back a moment. Looking around at the office filled with shelves and papers, but rather lacking in desk space, he paused in thought.

"You'll have to clear yourself a space to work, I'm afraid.", Kenvell explained. "Once I'm done with this I'll have more jobs for you." With that, she returned her attention to her task.

The new boy stood a moment, looking around a little lost, before retreating into the office proper, where things seemed considerably tidier. Finding himself a space, Yvar placed down the papers into as neat a pile as he could muster. Finding his own way around, for the most part, he gathered some blank paper, a writing implement and some ink and sat himself down. The pile of papers was intimidatingly high but he neverthless took the top item, placed it beside him and began to carefully copy its contents.

If Yvar had been hoping for some interesting work, those were dashed the moment he began to copy the faded text. 'The harvest festival of Autumn 509 was well attended and remarkable for the quality of root vegetables on display in the quarter finals of the amateur horticulture competition...'

The Inartan took great pains to copy the text neatly and accurately, desperate to make a good impression on his first day. As he settled into the task at hand, though, the mundanity of the subject matter conspired with his lack of a good night's sleep to leave him utterly exhausted. Determined not to make any mistakes on his first day, at least, he told himself he couldn't afford to let his attention flag. He filled his lungs with a long, slow intake of breath in an effort to rouse himself before ploughing on with his writing.

OOC: Wordcount = 606

[Yvar]

35th Summer, 520AV - sometime later:

It hadn't taken long for Yvar to become lost in his work. If he had any, that was one of his strengths. To focus himself and lose all awareness of the outside work in favour of the task at hand. Long hours spent copying texts in the Enclave honed that skill to perfection for him, and it was being employed to great effect now.

The next time that the new boy became consciously aware of his surroundings, he surmised it was probably at least a couple of hours later. He couldn't recall much of the detail in what he had been copying, but the pile of papers that his boss, Kenvell, had given him was now considerably smaller – perhaps even half the size.

He looked over at her as stiffness caused him to roll his shoulders and crane neck. She had said that when she was done with what she was doing she would be giving him some other work. Not that Yvar minded doing boring or repetitive work. In fact, at times he found it quite meditative. But he had been hoping for the opportunity to show how valuable a worker he could be, and copying text verbatim wasn't really going to impress anybody.

Aches and pains alleviated, to some extent, Yvar returned to the task at hand. He no longer felt quite as tired as he had when he first arrived, but the mundanity of the subject matter he'd been given was beginning to grate on him.

'Mr Hearthcrafter then went on to claim that not only had the street vendor's food been responsible for his later malady, but that when confronted about it some days later...' Yvar made certain that he copied the text onto the new paper with complete accuracy. A couple of times he'd even copied exactly what he suspected to be spelling errors. Normally, he would have corrected them, but he couldn't be sure that what he saw as errors weren't actually colloquialisms that were well known and accepted around Lhavit, but unheard of in Wind Reach. Besides, the job he'd been given was to copy the texts for archiving. Not to edit or improve them.

Over time, the pile of work remaining to be completed diminished to such an extent that there were but two more sheets on the desk before him. As he took up the penultimate sheet for copying, he noticed Kenvell rise to her feet. The pessimist within him groaned inwardly. It would be just his luck to have the job almost finished just as she replenished his to do pile with another pile of papers – even bigger than the first.

When she arrived at his desk, though, she had just one single sheet of paper in her hand. She stood by his desk, motionless, and waited for wordlessly for him to finish what he was doing. Yvar paused a moment to look up at her.

“Now you've almost done, I have some other work for you. I'm writing an article in the morning, but haven't got the research done yet.”, she said. The paper in her hands was placed on the table before him.

“I need to run an errand, so if you could look in our archives for any reference to this woman...” She pointed toward a name on the page before them. “She's a local socialite. So try the event pages.”

Then she turned and headed toward the door, “I'll be about an hour. I'll see what you've come up with when I get back”.


OOC: Wordcount =593