Inyanga's Star and Other Constellations

Mist's Star - 1219 S.E.

Everything about Mist's job was the worst. Most people probably think the same thing, but in Mist's case it was actually true.

Every day, she went to the same office, to the same desk, put in eight hours and hated everybody. For eight hundred years.

It was her job at Constellation to make good mood spells, and the fucking things didn't work on her. Mist disliked every single coworker, every person on her team. And worst of all, at work her desk was nowhere near the window.

Wasn't the entire point of climbing the corporate ladder to get an office with a view from the levitating tower?

From the center of the Alcyone tower office she could hardly make out the magician's college library tower ascending to its record height every afternoon. Restaurants passing on their flight paths captured the attention of the workers in the windows with flashy firework advertisements (the booms muted as per bylaw 1216.SE.3A), she rarely caught the display.

Every week she would tell all of this to her therapist, Asakaze, who had an office to herself in her levitating practice. Clients must get distracted by the motos zooming by, but it was probably worth it for the natural lift such wonders could give to a depressive's mood.

"The skies outside my bedroom window are gray and my room is a mess buried in a mess. I want to sleep all the time." She never wanted to get out of bed in the morning, out from the heavy weight of mounds of blankets — not in the morning or any other time she collapsed into it. The last time she was happy? She couldn't recall.

Would the advertisements and miraculous architecture have improved Mist's moods? Maybe not — not if the spells, mood schemas she designed personally to take customers to euphoric heights, never made even a dent in her fog — but who could say? Her desk in the middle of the pen, in the center of a ring of underlings, pissed her right off. The more she got promoted, the further she got relocated from the action.

Mist wanted to look out the window down at the non-magical pedestrians she flew over. So far she had only climbed to the fortieth floor. If she didn't get to see how high she'd risen, what was the point?

She certainly didn't work for Constellation out of a passion for the cause of the mood improvement spell department.

"Test on me," she used to beg coworkers. The good mood spells had spent shivers up her spine once upon a time. They lit up the dark places, lifted a weight, blew off cobwebs. A few centuries later she sounded so grumpy when she requested, "Please do not test on me."

There was only one remedy that worked for Mist. Every darkened morning when she had to get up before the sun did, and link to the office, every day clocking in and clocking out felt the same, and only one thing could make her feel better. She wasn't entirely sure whether she should tell Doctor Asakaze about it.

It all started with the gatherings around Mist's desk of coworkers coming to whine and moan to her about the baby brigades. Before she knew she was doing it, Mist began to tell Asakaze the setup of the story. "Every noon, new parens come to visit the Alcyone to show off aer star born little immortals, just to make all us barren paupers who could rarely even afford a ticket in the animus lottery feel jealous."

Mist let the baby brigade be, but she couldn't resist making mischief with the wannabes who gathered to be mean and throw shade. The scene came to Mist's mind as she pieced out what she should and should not tell Asakaze about it.

Here was Nyuki, leaning backwards over the desk. The one Mist hated in the middle of the pen. One hand placed on Mist's desk to support her while she complained. "I would have enough saved for a star born and an animus if I had just made promotion last year," Nyuki moaned.