Open The Slups The Trenches Waffle Day

Character Biography
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Vacations were supposed to be refreshing. Yet no amount of little umbrellas, beach chairs, or tiny cucumber sandwiches could get Eskila to rest. And then the crew on the ship ride home had been buzzing about the Opera burning down again, and even though it wasn't part of the 14th's jurisdiction, the talk instilled a sense of misplaced urgency that was difficult to shake. After all, it had already been weeks ago.

Perhaps the urgency she felt as she stepped onto the docks was simply hunger. After all, it was Waffle Day.

The walk from the docks to the Slups hadn't been contemplative, for there was little to contemplate about. It was a fair day, the cooling weather brining the air even this deep into the twisting, ramshackle streets in the heart of Bully. Nothing in the general vicinity was on fire, just the usual smoke from beasts cooking breakfasts throughout town. Dreams of syrup-soaked waffles gasping for air in a deep lake of butter swam through her mind, much unlike the waffles.

Eskila stood in front of the 14th fire house and yawned at the board nailed haphazardly across the doorway. She put the fishbowl she was carrying down on the steep, and pried the wood away and opened the door.

It was dusty. No one was cooking a waffle. This made her ears droop. First things first... Commander needed to be put in his tank proper. She headed upstairs, only paying attention to the task at paw: Refreshing the tank water with the pump in the washroom, and watching him swim about in the larger container for a little while.

Tidy time. She grabbed a nearby broom -

She sat up, blinking, confused. She stumbled into the chair in her little corner office - she was already downstairs - and stared at the lump of green fuzz on a plate on top of the papers. She moved it aside and unsealed the first missive.

"Sss...son... con...gra...t...tu... congratulate...shins... Sap... Cap...tain..." She knew this next glyph! "Ikamaye."

Odd. Who was this Captain Ikamaye? Should she be reading their mail? That was a crime, right? Yet the outside of the letter had her other name glyph on it. Maybe there were more clues inside.

"On... y...yoo-urrr... your... p... pro... mot... shin. I am... r...re...sig... nin... singing?" She scratched at her nose and squinted harder at the paper. "Re...sig...ning... fr... from... my... po...sit... shin... as... S... Cap...captain... Oh..."

The morning ticked away, lulled to sleep by the monotonous sable's salient struggles with the written word. In summation:

Everyone had resigned. There had been an incident with some fireworks (da... - heck! She'd missed fireworks! And upon thinking the word "heck", she dropped a gilder into the Cuss Cup, along with an IOU ripped in half for the other half a cuss she'd almost thought) along with some other incidents, such as another sergeant sleeping with the Captain's wife, which had ensued in a brawl in which two privates had gone bankrupt betting on the wrong beast; one getting an eye pecked out for not refilling the Kipper Jar for the Missertross, resulting in the 14th being blacklisted pending an apology delivery of pickled cod and fried potato fingers, which had in turn resulted in no one knowing when they needed to do their jobs...

But they had made her a sandwich for her return, to celebrate her becoming the new Captain. Well-earned, the letter had said, seeing as she spent all of her earnings on repairing, cleaning, and stocking the fire house with anything that it needed.

She took the plate of fuzz upstairs to the kitchen and dormitories, and gently slid the fuzz into the trash. It wobbled pitifully at the bottom of the bin.

She cast about for the waffle plates, but they were no where to be found. In fact, quite a lot of things were missing from the house. Each little dormitory bunk had been cleaned out, and the door to the one she shared had been locked to keep her armor and other belongings safe - she'd been barred from bringing much of anything with her on her medically mandated vacation.

Her stomach rumbled, and frustration welled up. The food stores were also empty, or else also fuzzy, and even the tin of coffee was gone. The Cuss Cup would be full by mid-afternoon at this rate.

She stirred at the bottom of the stairs, not bruised, but a little sore where her arm and face had struck the wall. She stood up, collected her fallen halberd, and slouched down the hall to the foyer and the street beyond.

Breakfast. Coffee. And then: The bank to get her vacation pay, followed by pickled cod and fried potato fingers brought in person to the nearest post office with a formal apology that she'd had to repeat twice after drifting away in the middle of the first attempts. But the Gulls would again deliver news of fires to the 14th, so that was worth it. She got kippers, and a jug of vinegar, a few packets of spices, and a caboodle of other essentials necessary for keeping things running smoothly.

It was evening by the time she trudged back to the 14th and put everything away; she started a new pickled kipper jar kept by the upstairs balcony door, swept and mopped, brought her armor downstairs and put it on one of the armor stands in the foyer, cleared out the rest of the papers in all the offices and put them in a crate to be sorted once she'd hired a clerk to deal with it all, and finally she could...

It was dark, and there was a waffle stuck to her face. Really, truly stuck on there.

With a sigh, she went to run a bath. One particular perk of such an establishment: their own water pump, and a nice little furnace to heat the water to keep it from freezing. Winter was the worst for accidental fire breakouts, especially in the poorer parts of the Slups, where beasts realized they didn't mind their home burning because it wasn't like they were about to last until the next night even with four walls and a roof. The thought that three of those walls also belonged to their neighbours wasn't kept in mind on such nights.

She spluttered awake, bolting upright, cold water splashing everywhere.

Shivering and snuggling her towel around herself, she slipped into her bunk at last. Eyes closed. Eyes open. It made no difference in the darkness. She turned this way and that. Plans formed, melted, formed again. Ideas and responsibilities clashed ceaselessly, her feet kicked, her tail thrashed, blankets and pillows flew across the room and were collected to fly again.

At some point she found herself out in the training garden out in the back, the pitiful clumps of grass moist with dew. Wet lumps of wood scattered around, the last remnants of the last practice held there. She raked it all up, breath fogging little puffs that became visible with the bluing of the sky, and then stacked the water-chucking buckets by the door. Amazing they hadn't been stolen, what with being outside -

What had she been doing in the hallway? She was still standing up. It was light again. Groggily, she went upstairs and put on a kettle for coffee, changed out of her orange pyjamas into her orange tunic and skirt, and even though it wasn't Waffle Day anymore, she felt she deserved to eat the rest of them before they too turned fuzzy and green.

Of course, she shared a few crumbs with Commander, who swam about nipping at the waffle chunks. Yes, she was a good turtle mom.

Downstairs, she put on her armored boots, grabbed the Cuss Cup, and went to sit outside on the stoop. As the Slups and Trenches woke around her, she rattled the gilders in the cup and called out:

"Make the most important decision of your life! Prove to yourself you have the strength and courage to climb trees! Join the Bully Harbor Fire Brigade! Become part of an elite... become part of a peacekeeping... become part of a force! See historic buildings! And stop the spread of dangerous flames throughout the Harbor! Become a hero! Become a legend! Become - "

Eskila wobbled and looked down into the Cuss Cup. It was empty. The shadows had shifted again. And there was somebeast standing in front of her, giving her a rather funny look.

She cleared her throat and asked, "Are you here to volunteer for the Bully Harbor Fire Brigade? Guaranteed wages, and your own halberd?" She bit her bottom lip. "And every day can be Waffle Day."
 
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