//------------------------------// // Books and Stationery // Story: Grief is the Price We Pay // by Scyphi //------------------------------// When the two potential new employees she knew as the glasses-wearing dragon Spark and grey-with-cyan-mane unicorn stallion Thornton came knocking and Fly Leaf unlocked and opened the front door for the disguised dragon and changeling, she was pleasantly surprised by the sight of them. Though both were looking fairly optimistic about their opportunity to work at the store and still hopeful to be employed to keep working after today, both clearly arrived feeling nervous, worrying about what might happen should something go wrong, and both were slightly out of breath. Fly Leaf realized they had been worried that they would arrive late, and had probably pushed themselves to hurry as they traveled through the still-quiet streets of Vanhoover towards the not-yet-open-for-the-day shop, which heartened her; it meant they were taking this opportunity seriously. Nonetheless, she put on a friendly grin and went to put their concerns at ease. “Thornton, Spark!” she greeted. “You’re both early! I wasn’t expecting you two for another half hour.” Thornton blinked in surprise himself and pointed one of his grey, disguised hooves at Spark. “Really? He kept telling me we were going to be late.” Spark, however, just shrugged it off, adjusting the collar of his sweater vest before politely removing the fedora he wore from his head. “Better early than late,” he pointed out then glanced hopefully at Fly Leaf, the thought suddenly coming to him that she might have an objection. “Right?” Fly Leaf, though, was perfectly okay with it. “Oh, but of course!” she said, opening the door further to permit the two to enter. “C’mon in. I’ll give you two the run through of what I’ll need you to do today.” She started by getting Thornton set up at the cash register, helping the unicorn pony get familiarized with the device while also reviewing that he actually knew how to properly handle the money as claimed the previous day. He did indeed know how to do it just fine. To him it was just simple math. It was the daunting register with its many unfamiliar buttons that was a bit more of a mystery to him. Nonetheless, with some explaining on how it worked, Fly Leaf was able to get him up to speed enough that, as the time to open up drew close and asking if he felt ready, Thornton timidly voiced some confidence that he could manage. However, he still looked nervous about it when Fly Leaf left him alone at the front desk to unlock the store’s front door, opening for business. That done, and reminding Thornton to just shout if he needed help, Fly Leaf then turned her attention to Spark, instructing the dragon on how to help customers, showing him the basics of where to find what items in the store, and explaining how it all needed to be kept organized. Spark dutifully listened and obeyed, and when she set him to work rearranging some stationery items on one of the shelves in the front of the store, he went right at it. Satisfied for the moment that the two prospective employees were in position, Fly Leaf then turned her attention back to a box of stock whose contents she had been setting out for sale when the two had arrived. Business was initially slow, with the first hour after the shop formally opened passing by with only one customer visiting; a regular here for a routine purchase of some more stationery paper and already knew where to find it in the shop. But after that, the number of customers gradually increased and the store grew busier and busier as the morning drew on. As noon neared, it wasn’t uncommon to see as many as four to six customers in the store at a time, and at one point reach as high as ten, a lot for the small and humble store. Spark and Thornton pressed through it all though, continuing to do as asked. Completing reorganizing the stationery items as asked, Spark was then set to work keeping the store tidy as business picked up while also successfully assisting and directing customers searching for specific items. Meanwhile, though he was initially very nervous about having to operate the cash register and having to face customers one on one, after he had helped one or two, Thornton warmed up to it quite quickly, and seemed to find he enjoyed the job a great deal. A little past noon, Fly Leaf granted the pair a brief lunch break which they took together in back. After the break they went right back to work like they hadn’t stopped. Because Fly Leaf had taken over work at the cash register while they were on break, the two were put to work maintaining the shelves and helping customers, Spark assisting Thornton as the dragon was already fairly versed on the requirements. It was while doing this that the shop saw its peak number of fifteen customers in the store at once, making the store feel its most crowded. But Spark and Thornton pressed on through without problem, both clearly anxious to prove themselves capable to Fly Leaf by the end of their shift. What neither of them knew however was that by this point in time, they had already well exceeded the shift Fly Leaf had planned to work them for. She had originally intended to have them work the morning shift until lunch then decide whether to hire them or not and, whichever it was, let them off for the day after that. But neither of the two prospective employees seemed to be watching the time or anxious to leave, and seemed perfectly willing to keep working however long as needed or expected of them. So Fly discreetly let them, making a mental note to pay them accordingly no matter what she decided to do with them in the end. Besides, she was increasingly impressed with their excellent work, and it was relieving for her to have added help around the shop again. After her last assistant had quit, running the store on her own had become something of a chore. But now she could reliably split the workload with not just one, but two assistants (something she had always wanted but had given up hope of obtaining as there wasn’t enough interest in the Vanhoover workforce for her to have much hope of finding more than one assistant at a time), both she quickly found she could trust with the tasks without fear of problems arising. They were capable. They were willing. They were helpful. She had been discreetly watching the two friends work throughout the day, and was honestly impressed at their capability. She had been worried initially about Thornton when getting him set up at the cash register, as while he quickly proved he could do the math required, he really didn’t seem to understand how the register itself worked. Yet after some momentary tentativeness for the first two or so customers, Thornton warmed up to it quite quickly and only had to call Fly over to assist twice, both times for things beyond his control; once when the drawer on the register became unexpectedly stuck, and a second time when neither he nor the customer he was assisting could find a price tag on an item. Likewise, Spark carried out his tasks reliably and willingly, performed precisely as Fly needed him to with little deviation, and was wonderfully helpful around customers, with one going as far to tell Fly how impressed she had been with Spark’s assistance. But it was the peculiar things about the pair that stood out the most to her. As the afternoon wore on and business for the day gradually winding down again and having let Thornton back onto the cash register so to go set up Spark with some basic bookkeeping tasks, Fly noticed that Thornton seemed to have a strange ability to know how to specifically treat and react to every customer that approached him, almost as if he somehow knew in advance the customer’s attitude beforehand. After discreetly watching him work from afar for most of the day, she was at a loss as to how he did it. She thought for certain it would break down the moment Thornton had to face off with inevitable upset customer, but even when finally confronted with such a customer halfway through the day, Thornton still seemed to know precisely how to react and what to say to keep the customer satiated enough to avoid conflict. It was almost uncanny. Spark also had abilities that surprised her, the little dragon being startlingly fluent in organizational systems, seemingly mastering Fly’s within the first hour. He had it down so well that he was able to find items within the shop without Fly’s assistance, even when he couldn’t have previously known where to find it. At one point he had even kindly suggested an improvement to Fly’s system that she had never considered before, yet seemed almost genius in retrospect. And when she eventually had him try his claws at some bookkeeping like they had discussed yesterday, she found Spark knew what he was doing there as well, much more than he had conveyed to her yesterday. All he needed was a calculator (he claimed he was poor at mental math) and could go at it without needing further instruction. Fly swore it was because he had worked in some sort of shop like this before, and wondered why he hadn’t just said so. But whenever she asked, he again claimed that he’d gleaned what he knew from his “volunteer work at a local library.” Not quite explaining it for Fly though, she asked what library enabled someone as young as him the chance to make use of all these skills, but the most Spark would say was it was some little country town library that was sadly no longer standing. He wouldn’t give a name for either the library or the town and when asked, always found a way to change the subject instead. She also noticed that Spark seemed to have impeccable eyes for observing…despite wearing glasses. Fly at first shrugged it off as the dragon having only slightly poor eyesight, with vision still good enough that he could manage without eyewear if required…but the more she noticed him observe little things from far across the room, the more stretched that belief became. She also noticed that Thornton, inexplicably, seemed very hesitant to use his unicorn magic in public, preferring to rely on it only when he thought no one was watching. As an earth pony, Fly knew little about magic, but seeing that Thornton seemed capable, she was at a loss as to why he looked worried he’d be caught for some reason every time he used it, even if to just briefly levitate an item to one side. In short, there were things about the pair that didn’t quite add up still, and while she had hunches why, nothing could quite explain their curious quirks. She had to concede that the quirks had their upsides though, especially towards the end of the day when she saw a specific customer enter the shop and approach Thornton at the front desk. A regular for the shop’s supply of scrapbooking materials on the second floor, Fly knew the zebra customer who was friendly enough, but unlike her husband and young son, she did not know the Equestrian language well and would habitually slip into her native Zebra language when faced with terms she didn’t know the Equestrian equivalent of. Though she was always a patient and apologetic customer, it was constantly a chore for Fly to try and work with her to determine just what it was the zebra needed because of this language barrier. Suspecting Thornton would face the same problem, she kept to one side to watch and see how he handled it. It began routinely enough, with Thornton greeting the customer like he had done all day. The zebra returned the greeting then rather clumsily attempted to explain what she was here for in a blend of clipped Equestrian and Zebra. Thornton at first seemed unsure up until the zebra mare apologetically repeated the Zebra name of whatever it was she was looking for, unable to explain it better. It was then that Thornton perked up, and to Fly’s absolute surprise, gave a response back in full and perfect Zebra. Delightfully surprised at the fact he could speak her language, the zebra immediately switched to full Zebra herself, and within moments Thornton had assisted her successfully and was ringing up her total while Fly stood in stunned shock. When Spark passed by her, she stopped him. “Thornton speaks Zebra?” she repeated incredulously. Spark glanced in Thornton’s direction. “Oh yeah,” he responded calmly. “He’s multilingual. I’d almost forgotten about that.” “Why hadn’t either of you mentioned it before, then?” she asked. Spark shrugged. “I guess we didn’t think you’d care. Most of the other employers we tried didn’t seem interested in it.” And having nothing further to say on the subject, he trotted off. Fly shook her head, bemused as she looked back at Thornton, giving his farewells to the zebra now. “Curiouser and curiouser…” she murmured to herself. The two diligently kept working until finally the day started to reach its end. Though closing time was still about an hour off for the shop, Fly Leaf saw that the store was empty for the moment and it wasn’t likely a new one would be entering right away, so she decided to take the moment to address the final matter of the evening, calling Spark and Thornton over towards the back of the front room to talk. “So…” she began, the pumpkin orange earth pony leaning against a set of shelves as she watched the two. Both were trying to keep themselves calm and neutral-faced, but she could tell both were hopefully awaiting her final verdict on whether they would be employed or not. “Now that you’ve experienced a day’s work…what do you think?” “I thoroughly enjoyed it,” Thornton declared immediately. “Honestly, I don’t know why you haven’t had more ponies applying for the job. I think it’s an absolute joy, helping these customers.” Spark, meanwhile, could only chuckle at his friend’s enthusiasm. “You would have the more unique viewpoint on the matter,” he responded to the unicorn before facing Fly Leaf. “But I gotta admit,” he went on to state more conservatively, “I’m pretty satisfied with the day’s work myself. It’s nothing glamorous I suppose, but I knew that going in, and I’m perfectly okay with that. I’d be happy enough to keep doing the work…if you’ll let us.” “Well, I will admit that you two surprised me here and there,” Fly admitted. “You're both more skilled than you gave yourselves credit for.” She grinned. “Lucky for me then that I’ll keeping you both around, huh?” Both immediately brightened at this. “You mean we’re hired?” Spark repeated eagerly. “Hired, and welcome to stay that way for as long as you want,” Fly responded. She gave them both a wink and she started for the batwing doors leading into the back. “After all, I think the thing I noticed most about you two is that you’re both excellent workers…and why would I ever want to turn away something like that?”