The Wolf Among Us: Season Two

Episode 1: Chapter 5

"Good morning, Gabrielle, how are you today?" Snow asks as she walks through the doors of the business office for the second time that morning. Gabrielle, having her own key and plenty of ambition, had tended to get to the office earlier than Snow.

"I'm doing well, I'm also ready to start for the day whenever you are. I also was working on some possible ideas and projections for the new taxation experiment the other night if you would like to take a look at them." Gabrielle replies, her soft golden hair bouncing as she quickly stood up from her desk. Snow was taken aback for a moment by the amount of effort Gabrielle was putting into this job.

"That, um, that would be wonderful. Thank you so much for doing this." The Deputy Mayor smiles as she takes the file from the woman's outstretched hand. "We don't have any meeting appointments lined up for this morning, we could work on these taxation plans if that's alright."

"Sure, whatever I need to do. I was thinking about also possibly doing a form of a welfare program for, well, I guess people who are in similar situations as to those I have encountered in the past. It could be very beneficial to community morale and prevent strikes or tension since it will be helping those who would be most upset by this action." Gabrielle explains, once again leaving Snow in awe.

"That sounds great, Gabrielle, do you have the necessary numbers and everything for those ideas in here?" She asks, to which her assistant responds with a nodding head.

"Yes, and I was also considering beginning a program where we can provide Fables with Mundy forms of identification such as IDs, drivers licenses, and the like. If we were to promote Fables getting jobs with the Mundies, which I assume we are, it would ease much of the tension and really promote the idea." Gabrielle continues, seeming to be on the tips of her toes to help out Snow and the whole community as much as possible.

"That's a wonderful idea, I don't think I ever would have thought of that. If we are able to put this taxation proposal into place, one of the first things we would do is give you a raise. I mean, seriously, this is wonderful." Snow gushes, it was wonderful to have someone who is on the same level of competence and talent in the office with her. For the past century, her job had mainly been picking up the slack of those around her. Amid this pleasure, however, there was a slight twinge of anxiety inside the woman's heart due to fear that her assistant's talent actually surpassed her own, and she would become the one who was needing to be caught up.

"Oh, of course, it's nothing." The assistant laughs nervously, not fully being accustomed to praise from her new boss just yet.

"So, if you could pull one of the chairs in front of my desk around to the back to be next to me we can go ahead and get started on this. Although, I will be having to go back and forth between the taxation proposal and phone calls and dealing with the stack of letters containing pressing issues left behind by the previous Deputy Mayor." Snow sighs as she sits down at her desk, beginning to sift through the piles of papers Gabrielle had written. Her assistant soon takes a seat beside her and begins helping her with the project, walking her through her notes and projections.

"So, since we don't track the income of Fables living in the community, I had to take some liberties and estimates but attempted to stay as reasonable as possible and provided some room for overestimation in most of the projections. So according to the most recent census from ten years ago, 1984, there were 156 Fables living in the community and that most likely changed very little over the past decade since we haven't received any refugees from the Homelands in over a century and people rarely leave from Fabletown. So I split the community up into eighths, where there are the few high paying jobs or people with leftover fortunes at the top, such as us in the Business Office or those in management positions at The Farm, such as Wayland Smith, and many of the witches and other residents of The Woodlands which are the top one eighth, then below that there are three-eighths of the community that make a decent amount of money but work in rather unfavorable circumstances, such as Holly or, well, me." Gabrielle begins to explain her math and reasoning behind her plans. It slightly pained Snow to hear that only an eighth of the community was living in good conditions at a job that doesn't test your morals, and it hurt her even more to hear that there were three times as many people living a nightmare.