A Volunteer at the Bureau

by Comma Typer

An Afternoon in the Life

Sam went about the rest of his afternoon shift in one piece, to say the least. He visited a diversity of creatures, all of them former humans who’re staying there for at least a few days, adjusting to their new bodies, their new drawbacks, and their new abilities.

He met Turbo Jet, a black pegasus whose room was quite standard: A flat wooden floor for ease and that lodge-like quality, a multi-purpose desk where he’d transferred his collection of toy airplanes, and a bed with some built-in drawers for baseball hats and random stuff.

“...and you stay here just to sleep?” Sam asked, seeing the pony brush his mane with a wing-wielded comb.

“Pretty much,” was his reply as he stretched his wings out, bending his pinions and exercising them in a little warm-up. “I’ve always dreamed of flying since I was a kid: freedom to go wherever you want, whenever you want; the adrenaline of being high up in the sky, soaring above the ground...and I could see everyone and wave at them.”

He paused, letting Sam study his pegasus form. “Of course, not like this. I’d wanted to be a pilot, but why be a pilot when you have these bad boys?” and spread his wings, showing off his span.

Sam tipped backwards a little, impressed by how Jet’s adapted to his third pair of limbs. “Airplanes are obsolete with you guys hanging around, right?”

“Not really,” he replied, then sat on the bed on his four hooves. “They’ll just get used to having less passengers now, because anyone can get their free set of wings,” and spread his set out again. “Even then, some pegasi prefer planes—gets their wings rested for the shorter trips.”

Jet pointed a hoof at Sam. “Eh, what about you? What’re you gonna take when it’s time?”

He looked to the side, failing to dodge the question. “I haven’t made my decision yet,” then, noting the wings on Jet, “I’m afraid of heights, so that might be a problem.”

Jet rolled his eyes. “Yeah, that is a problem. Still, don’t be afraid. Conquer your fears, am I right?”

Sam shrugged his shoulders, unwilling to commit but willing to pretend. “Yeah, you’re right.”

---

A deer lived inside his quarters brimming with plants. These many plants stood on the shelves, hung from the ceiling, suspended on the walls—all kinds of colorfully vibrant flowers, bringing out a smorgasbord of soft, oriental scents for the nose to take in. Sam could even hear the chirp of birds inside, making him think for a second that he was indeed in the great outdoors.

Birds did land on the bed stand.

Then, Sam’s attention was directed to the deer in the room: Adirondack, tending to his plentiful plants with a watering can, antlers magically glowing as the leaves of a minty herb surged to good posture.

Adirondack pointed a hoof at the one and only chair in the room. In a magnificent, slightly royal voice, he said, “Come. Have a seat.”

Sam felt uneasy with this majestic, marvelous deer talking to him. Then, he re-noted the thing that distinguished him from the average, run-of-the-mill deer: bigger eyes.

“So,” the deer began, pacing around on the floor and picking up a potted shrub with a gentle hoof, “what questions do you bring to me?”

Sam gulped, tugging his collar with a shaky hand. Such a big deer before him; ramming him to the door would’ve been easy. This little fear made him eke out a simple “Um….”

After a few seconds of maintaining a regal smile, Adirondack smiled and snickered, putting a hoof to his laughing mouth. He slapped himself on the face, and said, “Hey, take a joke!”

That floored Sam to his seat, now even more fearful at this somewhat funny deer.

“Shoulda’ seen the look on your face!” shouted the deer, leaning his head and his heavy antlers to the side.

Sam didn’t have a mirror to do just that. Not that he wanted one right now.

“Forgot to introduce myself to you,” he said, waving it off with a hoofwave, “but you know who I am. You got my details there,” gesturing at the clipboard and folder on Sam’s lap, “so you should know me.” Then, leaning on a rack of lush green plants, “But, you can tell what my pastime is, can’t you?”

Still recovering from the shock, Sam silently nodded.

“See, I was born Adirondack,” the deer continued, putting a hoof to his chest which was adorned with a sash and a tiny barrel of sorts. Pacing around again, “I’ve always had a liking for forests and camping, so it only made sense for me to be a deer, and—”

Bumped his antlers into a shelf and a pot fell.

“Aiee!” and saved the pot from doom.

He looked at Sam who’d stayed on the chair, dumbstruck by what’d just happened.

“Oh, come on!” Adirondack pointed at the precious plant that’d lived a bit of life on the edge. “You could’ve at least tried!”

Sam raised his hands in protest, mellowing his voice a lot to say, “Sorry! It was all just so sudden, and meeting you was really mesmerizing, and….” waned away.

Adirondack sighed, then put on a smile to fix the situation. “Well, sorry for bursting out at you. Can’t blame you really.” Pointed at his antlers. “These...they make getting around difficult. Can’t fit in the library aisles, the grocery aisles, all the aisles...” and stared at the plant once more.

He gently put it back to its place in the rack.

“But, you’ll be OK?” quipped Sam, indicating the antlers.

“I’ll be OK,” the deer replied. “I heard antler trimming is on the rise these days.”

That only brought a look of unfamiliarity upon Sam. “I haven’t heard of that one before, but sure.”

---

Sam opened another door and found himself in a dragon’s quarters. It had a hoard of sparkly gems by the corner, a cavern-like interior of rocks and stones, and a big pot simmering with some kind of stew, fiery logs underneath it. However, some modern amenities managed to make it here: a television, a video game console, a couple books printed with plastic pages so as to prevent accidental burning.

Sitting on an old metal chair and overseeing the stew was a blue dragon. She stirred the soup with a big wooden spoon, smelled the wafting scent of food.

Sam slowly turned the knob to close the door, trying to be as quiet as possible.

The dragon kept stirring, kept turning the spoon around.

Sam, like many other people, was scared of being burned by a dragon. So, he went about greeting her in a most humble way: “Uh, hello, Paraffin?”

“Oh!” and she rested the spoon in the pot. She walked up to him in a few heavy steps and extended a claw to shake. “How do you do, Sam?”

Sam looked at his small hand, and then at her big claw. “Wow.”

“Heh. I get that a lot,” and just shook his hand.

Sam bit his tongue, smiling to hide the pain of his almost-crunched hand.

She looked behind herself, made sure her tail wouldn’t knock anything off. “You’re here to see if I’m doing fine, aren’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sam said, massaging his affected hand while reading over his clipboard. “You’re...you’re ninety-five years old, correct?”

She nodded. Her lips gave way to a fanged grin. “Now, why would I lie about my age?”

Sam gave his paper another thorough look. There it was, Age: 95. He looked back at her. “I know you’re ninety-five, but I don’t feel like you’re ninety-five. You get what I mean, don’t you?”

“Strange how it all works, huh?” Paraffin glanced at the bubbling pot, then flew her way to it.

Sam followed her and stood by the pot.

Much heat carried away from the stew, giving him a blast of hot air straight to his face. The stew itself was a thick yellow goop, sprinkled with shaved beryls, amethysts, and diamonds.

“When you want to live a couple hundred years more,” she remarked, stirring the pot again, “you’d better take it. If you can take it, don’t miss out.”

The little nugget of wisdom made Sam thoughtful for a while. “Yeah, that’s true.”

As Paraffin stirred the stew, she gave her food a pensive frown. She clenched her claws on the spoon with rested scaly chin. Then, her stirring slowed, the stew now slushing around like a smoothie.

“Couldn’t move around as much, ma’am?” Sam asked, adding that last word to be respectful in yet another stream of thought.

Paraffin breathed a long sigh; he could see the steam come out of her nostrils. “The doctors said I’d still live another ten years on veggies and supplements. I’ve always liked them, but,” becoming wistful towards the stew… “can’t enjoy life much when you’re an old fogey strapped to a wheelchair.”

He imagined what this Paraffin had looked like. Another glimpse at the clipboard and he’d found her last identification photo as a human: wrinkled and creased with fluffy white hair; pair of glasses perched on her pointed nose. Compared to the chipper dragon before him, Mrs. Morganti looked her age.

Sam looked back at Paraffin’s current self. Though she was now a young adult again, he could still see traces of the old lady in her careful, meticulous movements—how her fingers were equally spaced apart and moved up and down like those on a cello. “You didn’t like being confined in one place?”

“And the isolation, too,” she added, turning her sight away from him to full focus on her cooking.

Sam nodded in agreement with her, nodding in an I-know-how-you-feel kind of way. “No one called you up? Texted you or what?”

Paraffin snorted, fuming out black puffs of smoke from her nose. “My son used to bring his family along to my place, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to tell it was just a routine. He’d be ratted out if he missed a trip—gossip’ll start spreading, and not even I wanted that for my wayward son.”

A pause as she stirred on. She looked down at the logs which were beginning to cool. This was rectified by blasting a ball of fire at it.

Fshew! and Sam jumped away, shielding his face with his arm as a hot spell came over him. He lowered his arm, saw that his clothes remained unburned.

At least the pot was back on high heat.

Instead of blabbing out a hasty Sorry!, Paraffin shook her head at herself. She smirked at her would-be victim, and that was enough to rebuild Sam’s trust in her and draw him back to the pot.

Not that he had trust issues with her. It had to do more with the fire she was handling.

“Now, where was I?” she said, keeping herself busy with the spoon and the stew. “Ah! He was a heartless man, a very unthankful man. Successful, but unthankful.”

Took a while to let her thoughts settle on someone else. “His wife, my daughter-in-law, ended up my real child—always giving me gifts, letters, photos...we had a little shopping spree together. Made me relive my youth for a day,” and beamed at remembering that.

Sam beamed, too, though it’s more out of seeing a dragon smiling so openly. The lullabies and bedtime tales of knights slaying dragons hadn’t produced a friendly impression on him. Even after Equestria and Earth opened formal travel between the dimensions, the average dragon he saw was always seen frowning or pouting or scowling. Combined with their draconic physique and their fire powers, Sam didn’t want to raise their ire.

That in mind, he loosened the question brewing in his mind: “Well, what happened to her? Did she become a dragon like you?” Then, pausing. “I’m sure you must’ve had some weird looks from your son when you became a dragon.”

“Even before that,” she added with a wagging finger… “even before that, he didn’t like it. He was silent when I told him, but I could tell he was bothered.” Faster stirring—”Started calling me names when I wasn’t around, about how I stabbed him in the back for choosing to live.”

She spat at the pot, the spit bouncing off the walls and into a trash can.

Sam was grateful he did not get hit by such a dangerous projectile.

The dragon looked off at the pot. “We lost contact for a month. That’s when Georgina went to my place...alone.” Slowed the spoon down to a boiling halt. “And some baggages.”

A pause.

Breathed in, breathed out.

“Separated. Divorced.”

A thick silence reigned.

Sam rubbed his forehead, taking the old news in. It’d be bad to put forth a rash question at this tense moment, so he kept quiet and let the not-so-old dragon speak.

“There, I took care of her, for as long as I thought it feasible to stay a human. I still had the knack to cook food for her, to take care of her money, and to let her recover from that horrible disaster.”

Paraffin let go of the spoon. She flew over to a cabinet where she kept some rock bowls. Returned with one, used the spoon as a ladle, and poured some of the stew into it.

He felt the stew’s heat without touching the bowl, without putting any part of himself above it.

While she held her food with her claw, smoke and steam meandering upwards: “When the time came for me to say goodbye to my old self and go here, she gave me a tearful hug. Even now, I get a daily letter from her.” She lifted the bowl to her mouth, drank a gulp down fast, surprising him with how hungry she must’ve been. “I’m expecting tonight’s just as I always have.”

She drank more of her stew, leaving Sam without any. He’d decline anyway, given that the precious stones made it inedible and intolerable for his stomach.

The dragon shook her head as she wiped her mouth clean with her claw, not once resorting to tissue paper. “I never heard from my son again. I tried contacting my nephews and nieces—even the company he was working for, and they were so kind—but he’s nowhere to be found. Perhaps he wanted to cut ties with me for my decision.”

Then, she threw the half-finished bowl into the sizzling pot, smoke and bubbles surging up as it melted.

Sam held his hand up, protecting himself from whatever might come...and also from a probably low-temper dragon.

“So what?” Paraffin declared, staring at that boiling pot. “I’ve taken care of him, even pampered him from time to time when he was young. If he remains adamant in his ways, I won’t poke myself with such thoughts. A millennium is too long for me to worry about him.”

Having heard that, Sam nodded yet another time, hoping that it’d be enough to make the dragon not angry at him.

---

And Sam left his last “new creature” with a baseball cap saying Merponies at Venice! His shirt and pants were a bit wet from the splashing pond which was merely access to an underwater suite built just for the new merpony, but Sam trudged on with less-than-stellar fashion taste.

After returning the folders and the clipboard, Sam walked to the lobby and found Canter Crowhop conversing with Dark Roast at the coffee bar.

The energetic pony—made more so with her third cup of coffee at night—waved Sam on with her hoof. “See ‘ya tomorrow, buddy!”

Sam replied with his own wave and a smile. “See you, too, Crowhop!”

Before he knew it, he was back outside in the hot air of loud and noisy Los Angeles traffic. Remembering to put his ID inside his pocket, he turned on his phone and booked yet another Uber ride.

With good ol’ Arthur who was the closest one to the bureau.

As he walked his way to the black car, passing by the myriad of headlights and storefront lights and streetlights and star lights, too—as he walked up to it, he thought about how Crowhop was already calling him “buddy”. The sheer light-heartedness to it was fun, if a bit cheesy since she’d only known him personally for two days.

Not much time to think about it, though, since the passenger door opened on its own.

The car window lowered down, revealing Arthur wearing a pair of sunglasses. “Come on in, already!”

Comments

[Alex Warlorn]

a multi-purpose desk where he’d transferred his collection of toy airplanes,

Normally I hate the word 'logistics' being used in fiction-land, but given how many people this place is meant to handle, I'm stunned at how big it would have to be and their staff size just to handle people who are using it as a freeing motel.

This makes me realize that the conversion center and the halfway houses would logically be separate locations beyond physical therapy and psychological overview after the change.

because anyone can get their free set of wings,”

Not for those who became creatures without wings. And people have legs, that didn't stop the car from being invented. Tails in Sonic The Hedgehog can fly, doesn't stop him from having a biplane.

“I’m afraid of heights, so that might be a problem.”

His dream was being a pilot, but he's scared of heights, I know people are contrary but how does that work!?

I'm still stunned at how much these people are heavily customizing rooms that are meant to be brief temporary affairs.

Such a big deer before him; ramming him to the door would’ve been easy.

He hasn't interacted with dragons, yak, etc, and ponies, even mundane ponies, are stronger than they look.

“Hey, take a joke!”

?! What's the joke?!

These are sincere words of advice from one story teller to another: I think a weakness in your work is that you can forgot to include details you have in your head, or the bridge between idea "A" and idea "B", and assume the audience will thinking the same unspoken thing as you. Having the reader come to a conclusion themselves is part of the skill of being a writer, but they need to have the right puzzle pieces in order to put it together. I am saying this NOT as a put-down or to discourage you, but for you to improve as a story teller.

“I heard antler trimming is on the rise these days.”

At least deer antlers grow back.

Sitting on an old metal chair and overseeing the stew was a blue dragon.

How old did she APPEAR to be?

Sam looked at his small hand, and then at her big claw. “Wow.”

She acts like they've met before, but Sam's reaction feels like a first encounter.

----
As Paraffin stirred the stew, she gave her food a pensive frown. She clenched her claws on the spoon with rested scaly chin. Then, her stirring slowed, the stew now slushing around like a smoothie.

“Couldn’t move around as much, ma’am?” Sam asked, adding that last word to be respectful in yet another stream of thought.

Paraffin breathed a long sigh; he could see the steam come out of her nostrils. “The doctors said I’d still live another ten years on veggies and supplements. I’ve always liked them, but,” becoming wistful towards the stew… “can’t enjoy life much when you’re an old fogey strapped to a wheelchair.”
---

How does the first paragraph connect to Sam's statement?
How does same's statement connect to her diet?

“You didn’t like being confined in one place?”

What is she now?

This was rectified by blasting a ball of fire at it.

Not sure it quiet works that way. Logs burn out, more fire wouldn't make more fuel.

“Ah! He was a heartless man, a very unthankful man.

“Separated. Divorced.”

So he got the kids?

"and go here, "

Why hasn't she visited? Why hasn't Paraffin moved back into her own home yet?

“I never heard from my son again.

JUST HOW LONG HAS SHE BEEN STAYING HERE?!?!?!

Merponies at Venice!

Ah.

I imagine they went through a lot of clean up of the channels.

The ending of the chapter feels a bit odd, like it's supposed to be this downbeat or reveal, but I don't know what.

[Mix-up]

Finally gotten around to read this story, it's interesting so far at how you are doing the world building and building mystery so far and gives an interesting perspectives on things. It's been a while sense I have seen an interesting TCB story that was Chatoyance and I am happy to see another good one again.

Also if you are interested in having a cover art for your story I am open for commissions, the link to my DA gallery is in the link bellow; you can PM if you want to discus this further. I hope to hear a reply from you and looking forward to see an update to your story.

https://www.deviantart.com/amalgamzaku

[Comma Typer]

9244659
Ah, thank you! Yes, it's been a while since TCB's last heyday, but I said "Why not?" and rolled with it.

Also, your art is fantastic. I've already seen some of it on stories like Off the Mark, and I wish I could have even just decent cover art, but I'm afraid I don't have the budget to afford a commission of any kind. Still, thank you for offering your services!

[Mix-up]

9245041
Don't worry it's fine, the door is always open if you want to. Still, I wish there was more attention on this story.

[Comma Typer]

9245060
Well, there really isn't much attention on it at least partly because of me. I'm writing a TCB fic when the hype train over it is all but gone. Nowadays, the one spearheading the TCB (at least with M-rated stories turned off) is Alex Warlorn, and I'm just chipping in to his branch of the Verse.

At least much of the controversy's died down; perhaps people are more willing to give it another go.

[Mix-up]

9245954
What controversy are you talking about? Sure, I agree that things are a lot darker With Celestia and Luna being really show to have alien minds with their own agendas , that are not good or evil but do what they thing it is good or best for humans in their POV.

[Venerable Ro]

9249390
I believe a while back there was a real glut of the things, with, varying, degrees of quality. Similar to the old Five-Score-By-Four craze and the current fascination with Displaced fics. So people were sick of them, and the deep undertones of speciest misanthropy the genre attracted didn't help either.

Folk tend to take pride in their humanity, stories that thumb their noses at said pride often cause a good deal of friction.

[Ardashir]

I love the brief conversation with the dragon. The comment about her moving carefully works very well. You wouldn't unlearn that in just a few weeks or months. I do think the whole 'abandoned by their family' bit is getting tired, though I've seen it myself. It can also be really difficult to look at someone who always felt like a tower of strength and see them near helpless now.

Still you'd think that some grandkids would be delighted to be able to say "My Granddad/Mom is a dragon!"