_______________________caldera & buddy
____________________________nothing happens to you, it happens for you

“Board isn’t provided with the job?” She asked, taken aback. It was in the Volcano. Nobody owned their own home except rich people; employers built accommodation for their employees to live in. Elderly ker were expected to move back in with their families after they retired.

Flynn clarified that board was, fortunately, provided with the job. Cal hadn’t really considered where she would live if she was refused work. Homelessness wasn’t really an issue in the Volcano, since the state made sure that everyone was employed. If you couldn’t get employment on your own, you were conscripted into the military. Ker who were unable to fight for whatever reason – disabilities, health problems, conscientious objections – usually got shunted into admin or arms manufacture. This system was very efficient – ruthlessly so. If they didn’t have such a system here, where would she go? It would be embarrassing to trudge back to the pantheon and admit to Allianah that she’d been unable to secure employment, but sleeping under the stars seemed like it could be a dangerous option in the winter nights. The autumn daytime was already much cooler than she was used to.

She placed her spitter regretfully down on Flynn’s desk and, as an afterthought, pulled her dagger from her belt and left that there too. Applicants were usually expected to turn up unarmed to interviews in the Volcano. As they exited the office, she reached up to her ear and tapped the tech.

“Hey Buddy? I’ve got an interview,” she muttered, falling into step slightly behind Flynn. “You can stay where you are. Don’t contact me unless it’s an emergency, okay?”

They’d barely gone two yards when her earpiece hummed to life, and Buddy’s excruciatingly loud voice piped up.

“Cal, I don’t think these aja can talk! This one mare – ”

“Buddy!” Cal hissed, falling slightly further behind in a vain attempt to keep Flynn from overhearing too much of the exchange. “I said emergencies only!”

“This is an emergency!”

“Right. We need to define ‘emergency’.” She glanced at Flynn’s back, noticing his lack of tail for the first time. Weird. He either couldn’t hear her conversation or he was professionally pretending not to. “If no one’s dying, it’s not an emergency, okay?”

She touched the earpiece to deactivate it and jogged forward a couple of paces to catch up with the captain. To her relief, he started talking about the job instead of her eccentric aja. Most of it sounded familiar, save for the dining with the king part. The force in the Volcano weren’t considered important enough for that, and the army was too big to fit all in one building. It wasn’t as abstract as anything she’d already heard, though. Sure as heck not as weird as blue eyes.

When Flynn disappeared behind the funny patterned curtain, Cal had to resist the temptation to contact Buddy and relay all the goings-on to him. They always worked as such a close team, sharing everything as soon as it happened when they weren’t together thanks to Rock tech, but she knew if she called on him now it would be a bad plan. For a start, a conversation about the strangeness of Shaman could go on for hours; for a second, if she broke the emergencies only rule now, then Buddy would assume he could break it too. Instead, she straightened her clothes as best as she could and tweaked her ponytail, wishing she looked a bit smarter than she did. In fairness to her, she had begun the day in a professional state – but she had also begun the day on Earth. Since she’d woken up that morning on a different planet, she had travelled to some fancy palace, passed through a magic portal, found her way to the temple to meet with a goddess and learn that she was no longer the same species, then travel to this castle and receive an on-the-spot job interview. Under those circumstances, Cal thought a few stray hairs and a slightly crumpled shirt were probably permissible.

She smiled back when Flynn returned, more confident than nervous. Cal’s smile was permanently cheeky. She was never sure if that played into her favour or not.

“Yeah, about a million.” She gave him a mock Xaran salute, which was close enough to a Shaman one to be apparent what it was supposed to be. “Lead on, cap.”