 “I’m sure you’ll find something here. There’s plenty of work to go around,” Gaiane said, smiling at the honesty of the bird. She took note of the blush on the man’s face, and shot an apologetic look. She knew all too well how embarrassing it was to be caught in a vulnerable position. She wasn’t looking for work, herself, and was effectively unemployed, so she didn’t really have any idea what it was like to need to find a job, or to be dismissed without even a trial period because there was no work to be had in a particular field. It was strange though, since she recalled that the garden staff had recently lost an employee. She supposed the circumstances of that loss had the head gardener a bit on edge about hiring anyone new, however.
Sorry that she’d interrupted, but grateful for the company, Gaiane began to walk toward the small grove of fruit trees, which were ripe with the juiciest apples at the moment, keeping a slow pace both for the man’s sake, and her own. Occasionally, she glanced toward him and his familiar, wondering if they were keeping conversation in their heads as she and Pallas used to. Although she lacked magical powers of her own, she had hoped that the magical connection between her and the feather dragon would have been restored before now, and each light she spotted of magic she wished it was theirs, but none had been.
“There’s always the kennels or the stables in need of help, and I think the mews are short staffed. If you’d rather work inside, I’m sure there’s work for you there too, in the kitchen or with the guard.” She threw suggestions around with little real understanding of what went into hiring or managing a staff, or running the household affairs of a castle. At some point, she’d learn it, she was sure, but she’d spent so much time studying since she’d arrived she’d barely spoken to anyone who worked there. “Something tells me, though” she added with a smile, “that you’d prefer the outdoors.”
The something was the fact that he seemed to have started with the gardens, which were an outdoor activity, predominantly. Obviously there were some duties inside, such as working on maintaining some of the arrangements in the various gathering halls and corridors in the giant building, but mostly it seemed the gardeners remained in the courtyard or other areas of the grounds. The facts were confirmed when he presented the young woman with his resume, and she smiled. She really hadn’t needed to know that much, and wouldn’t have cared if he’d lacked a job. Certainly not as much as he seemed to, anyway, the way he tacked the list onto the affirmation of his familiar’s words.
However, the train of thought was broken when the falcon found a new topic of conversation, one which revolved around Gaiane and her injuries. Her head tilted from one side to the other, trying to think of how to answer the question before actually opening her mouth. “Yes, technically.” Her mother had always been of the belief that she should give as little information about herself as possible to others, in case it was used against her, while gaining as much as she could. That philosophy had never made her mother friends with anyone, least of all those she’d wanted to befriend, and Gaiane’s current count of one friend seemed to follow that same pattern.
“No, no. It’s okay” she said, as the man berated the falcon for her question, before elaborating on the answer. “I was a bit of a damsel in distress not so long ago, so I asked started reading up on self-defense. My familiar pointed out that it wasn’t a substitution for practicing, so I asked a knight, my rescuer actually” she smiled again at the thought, with a slight blush, “if he’d train me. It was a lot easier and less painful to read about it.” She laughed easily at her attempt at a joke. Pallas wouldn’t have found it particularly funny, but then, the dragon rarely did. If the dragon weren’t so proud of how clean her feathers were, Gaiane would have called her a stick in the mud to her face many years ago. It seemed safer and more prudent to keep that thought from her mind now that the dragon was much larger than the fairy she’d come from.
“So if fields are out, which animals would you prefer to work with, William,” she said, hoping to return the conversation to him. “Horse, dogs? Birds?”
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