A Pleasant Village Called Selk

Chapter 2

Interacting Colleagues

'Don't insult me. I never beg and I never kneel.'

With a heavy, burdened sigh, Megan practically threw herself on her chair, grumbling incessantly and incoherently about how much her muscles were aching. Rubbing her sore neck, she turned on her computer, and began her work of transitioning multiple calculations to different columns of the document. 'Psst, hey Meth!' greeted an eager, familiar voice, their voice exposing their excitability, which was in likeness with a young child. With a face that could easily scare the bravest of people, Megan slowly turned to face her colleague, a scowl visible on her average features (but the expression itself was indeed not ordinary). 'What have I said, about calling me that name?' growled Megan  threateningly, in the midst of deciding whether to do serious bodily harm. The person in question laughed heartily, much to Megan's apparent irritation, her eye twitching. 

'Oh come on, no need to be such a grump.', the person in question was a woman who looked to be in her early thirties, her eyes a pleasant aqua and her hair a gleaming gold. She had a rounded, childish face with a glint of mischief in her eyes. She wore the same as Megan did: a pair of trousers along with a white shirt (as it was the uniform). Such an observation made Megan hum in thought, and she chose to dwell on it when she wasn't so thoroughly annoyed. Such a uniform, when she thought about it, did seem rather odd, especially for an accounting firm.

'Stop being annoying, Jean.' yet another one of Megan's colleagues admonished, their voice slightly deeper and controlled than the other's. Contrary to the blonde known as Jean, she had raven hair which was neatly done in a chignon, the black and angular glasses on her pointed nose seemed to enhance the look of her whiskey coloured eyes, and she bore a serious countenance. Whilst Jean Hummingfirth sat to Megan's left, the raven haired woman, Uriel Faux, sat to her right. Uriel sat with her back straight as a ruler, her presence radiating with unspoken authority which was in contrast with Jean's playful demeanour. Despite their obvious differences, both women got along surprisingly well, which although confused Megan, she reasoned it was probably due to them being close in age, as well as knowing one another before they entered the company. Megan paused in her task, her hands trembling slightly as her eyes widened, unbeknown to her colleagues who were in the middle of bantering with one another. What was the company called again? Megan could not recall, which she inherently knew she should. After all, she had been working there for 20 years. Had it been twenty years? It felt, to the middle aged woman, like she had been there both forever and not long at all. Which one was right, she could not decide.

Sulking slightly, she bit back her pride at a question which seemed completely obvious. 'What is the company called, again?' A nervous lilt in her tone alerted the serious woman, and thoroughly confused the blonde. 'Company?' repeated Jean. 'What company?' Before Megan had the opportunity to ask more, the door to the medium-sized room burst open, the door slamming against the side wall with a loud crash. All three, as well as a few other heads (how they appeared and who they were evaded Megan), and before her stood a woman that made her gasp. There was something so familiar about her, that she felt very unsettled by it. The woman in question had twinkling midnight blue eyes, and a wild, curly mane of flame-orange hair that reached her shoulders, her cheeks and nose riddled with many freckles, making her look even more distinct. On her right hand, Megan noticed, was a red tattoo that looked to be Celtic in origins, and had the peculiar illusion of reeds and ropes intertwining with one another. What was completely baffling, was what she was wearing. The wild woman wore a baggy, brightly coloured red silken shirt that reached her mid-thigh, along with it she wore nude-coloured shorts that reached her knees, and the most surprising part was that she wore sandals. The ensemble, to Megan at least, was even more baffling due to it being an especially cold winter. Not to mention that due to her hair colour the red she wore looked rather odd to say the least.