fandomtownies | Fandom Post Office, February 18 (Tuesday)

Entry tags:

Fandom Post Office, February 18 (Tuesday)

Éponine had, once again, missed out on the chaos of the past several days, but after last year's brush with it she wasn't going to complain about being left out.

She didn't have time to worry about it, in any case; someone had ordered a massive shipment of . . . something, anyway, she couldn't tell what was inside the stack of light but annoyingly large crates stamped OCME and currently occupying the majority of the mail room. Either that or it was a misdelivery, and they never knew which, since with shipments from that company it was an even chance of being one or the other.

The problem was that the one crate out of the entire lot that had the waybill attached to it was somewhere in the middle of the whole damned pile, so if they had any hope of figuring out where all of this was supposed to go they'd have to find that one crate. "Like a quest of some kind," Éponine muttered to herself as she pried crates apart, "only not nearly as interesting as the sort you read about, is it?"

Good thing she was still so scrawny, and could squeeze between crates without having to move them too far, but that didn't stop the entire situation from closely resembling the worst large-scale game of Jenga ever.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

You might have to.

She can't spend the entire day in there, can she?

Don't answer that.

"Helloooo?"

Kenzi stared at the pile of boxes. "Anyone alive in there?"

"Yes, and I almost wish I weren't," Éponine called from somewhere in the middle of the pile. "Stupid damned mess -- if I ever find out whose idea it was to pack these -- whatever in hell is in here, I don't know and I'm certain I don't care one bit, but the things I'd say to whoever's responsible for this if I only knew how to find them!"

There was a muffled thud, and then some swearing in French that was half-unintelligible but clearly colorful.

"Send up a signal!" Kenzi called into the mess. "I'll help you get out. And wait, someone just dumped all this crap here without a name?"

Wow, did she not want Éponine's job.

"I've got to find the damned waybill first," Éponine called back stubbornly, "so's I can tell whether someone'll be along to pick this up eventually or we've got to send it back because it took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up here. With my luck it'll have been stuck to the bottom of one of these -- aha!"

Some scuffling followed, and another thud.

"Now I've got you! Not so clever after all, are you, you sneaky little devil? No, sir, that you aren't, not as clever as me!" The triumphant exclamation got progressively louder until finally Éponine wriggled out of an absurdly narrow gap between two crates, clutching a crumpled piece of yellow paper in one hand. "Good lord, what a ridiculous bit of business that was."

Kenzi was hooting with laughter by now, at Éponine's victorious ranting. She offered a hand to help the other girl up. "Okay, that's hilarious. Who's to blame for all that, hunh?"

Éponine wasn't above taking Kenzi up on the offer of some help up; that whole caper had been mildly unsettling for some reason she couldn't quite name. She gestured scornfully at the OCME label stamped on one crate and huffed.

"Someone who works there, no doubt; we've had trouble with them before, but --" She unfolded the waybill and squinted at it, her lips moving silently as she read the print. "Ah, yes, it's for the old fellow who -- yes, I'll just run round to his place in a bit and let him know his things are here; he'll come pick them up, he always does, but how funny, since he's ordered a lot of things from them in the past, just never quite this many all at once. That's good, at least. It's much more vexing when it's here by mistake and we've got to call them to come take it all back. They make you wait for ever so long, and can't even give you decent music to listen to while you're at it."

Someone was not a fan of Muzak.

Kenzi snickered and hitched herself up on the counter, legs dangling. "Old guy? Do you know what he's getting? Because seriously, he could assemble a battleship with how many boxes he's got here."

"What! D'you think I'm about to go to the trouble of opening one to find out?" exclaimed Éponine, laughing. "No, thank you, it's hardly worth having to put the whole thing back together again afterward. It can't be anything too interesting, anyhow, I don't think. Those crates aren't heavy, I don't think they're worth that much."

"Now I am so, so, tempted," Kenzi said, leaning over to poke one with a toe. "Just to find out what it is. OCME, I wonder what they make?" She shrugged, and bent her legs back up like pretzels, grinning. "So, did you have a kid-ful or kid-free weekend?"

"No kids for me this time, thank goodness!" exclaimed Éponine in obvious relief. "Or if so, I didn't know about it, that's for sure, since I didn't have any brats tracking me down. I had a nice, quiet weekend, and it's just as well since the book I started reading was too interesting to put down. Don't suppose you were as lucky?"

"Not even close. Man, I'm glad they're gone. I'm so not ready to be anyone's mom. Especially since one of them was almost sixteen, and jeez, she was not taking me seriously." Not that Kenzi blamed her at all. "Her and two others. I don't think they ever slept."

"And that means you didn't either, hmm?" So maybe Éponine looked a little bit smug; she hadn't had any such problems, and don't think she didn't enjoy knowing that.

Kenzi stuck out her tongue at her, and aimed a kick that missed in her direction.

"I was gonna offer to get you some coffee here, but now I'm thinking I should drink all of it."

Yeah, that's not a denial.

"It's not as if I don't know the way to the Perk myself," Éponine scoffed, though there was no real heat in her tone. "Besides, seems to me you're more in need of it than I am after all that."

Because no, it wasn't a denial and she knew it.

"Seriously, sheesh. Next time, I'm passing off any extras to you, if you don't have any. That seems fair." No, she's not talking about the coffee. "They were cute little monsters, though."

"What's fair got to do with anything?" Éponine asked, with a raised eyebrow that implied she was aware the coffee was irrelevant to this conversation. "I'm not about to look after anyone else's mômes, not unless there's something in it for me to make it worth my time."

Which, from her expression, carried a pretty high price.

Kenzi snickered, drumming her heels. "One of them could change your mind against your will. Little brat." Said mostly fondly. "And the other one could read your mind. I don't think I could make them do anything they didn't want to."

Éponine's eyes widened in horror, and she couldn't repress a visible shudder.

"No," she said, very emphatically. "No, thank you, I don't think I'd like being saddled with that at all.

"Awwwwww." Kenzi pouted, hiding a grin. "Yeah, don't blame you. We're lucky they liked Toby so much. And Uncle Cecil was willing to tell them stories, jeez." She stretched out on the counter and sighed. "You heard the school kids are going on vacation next week?"

"Again?" Éponine's expression was an awkward mixture of jealousy and disappointment, but she managed a too-loud, careless laugh and tossed the waybill onto the desk, assuming a nonchalant look instead.

"Well! That's good. It'll be lovely to go and get myself a drink or some dinner and not suffer through them all over the place, being loud and silly."

"Yeah. Somewhere tropical. I'm thinking of trying to talk Toby into dragging me along." Although sometimes Toby didn't want to go on these things, and honestly? She was okay with mooching, but mooching around students was occasionally... embarrassing. Even if she'd been one less than nine months ago. "We should so teach a class just so we can go on a trip somewhere."

"As if I'd be any good at teaching," Éponine scoffed, quick as always to value herself as little as possible. "I never did finish learning times tables, but I can count money. What would we teach, anyhow? We'd have to, as I don't know any teachers with room to drag me along otherwise, and -- well, never mind," she concluded, just a touch gloomy.

"How To Get a Job Anywhere, Or At Least In Fandom," Kenzi said. You could almost hear the capital letters. "We could so teach that. And if you wanna learn times tables, I'm telling you, internet. They're on there. I haven't had to use them in ages, though."

"Yes, it's all very easy now, with these phones that do nearly everything but fix meals, isn't it?" Éponine said contemplatively. "Don't suppose I have to learn them, not any more. But d'you really think it's a good idea, letting them in on the secret that way?"

And what if Cosette ended up being in the class? Wouldn't that be embarrassing?

"What, like we need more jobs?" Kenzi grinned, then sobered a little. "I'm not going anywhere, but c'mon. Half those kids are going back to do... whatever the hell it is they do. A class on how to get a summer job, how much is that going to mess us up?" She drummed her heels. "Besides, I don't know if teachers get paid, but: trip! Trip somewhere not here!"

"They must get paid. Who'd do that for free?"

Éponine was learning to act less out of pure self-interest, but that would be going too far.

"Besides, they'll manage. We had to, didn't we, and them with more education! If they can't make anything of themselves after that it isn't any of my concern."

That was terribly dismissive . . . of everyone who wasn't Cosette, but why should she be fair?

"And I repeat: TRIP." Kenzi was not going to let this go in the long-term. Nope. Éponine was going to have to get used to the concept. "I mean, they have a class on friendship. Taught by the pony. And that grumpy guy with the cute puppy. We could so do better than that." She hopped off the counter. "You keep thinking of stuff, though. I'm getting us mochas."

"Make sure to tell them I want extra whipped cream," Éponine said, already half distracted by the possibilities, though admittedly not for terribly constructive reasons.

Work eating my head again. Send help.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Fandom Post Office, February 18 (Tuesday)

Mod Your Post Office [2/18]

Talk to Éponine [2/18]

Re: Talk to Éponine [2/18]

Re: Talk to Éponine [2/18]

Re: Talk to Éponine [2/18]

Re: Talk to Éponine [2/18]

Re: Talk to Éponine [2/18]

Re: Talk to Éponine [2/18]

Re: Talk to Éponine [2/18]

Re: Talk to Éponine [2/18]

Re: Talk to Éponine [2/18]

Re: Talk to Éponine [2/18]

Re: Talk to Éponine [2/18]

Re: Talk to Éponine [2/18]

Re: Talk to Éponine [2/18]

Re: Talk to Éponine [2/18]

Re: Talk to Éponine [2/18]

Re: Talk to Éponine [2/18]

Re: Talk to Éponine [2/18]

Re: Talk to Éponine [2/18]

Re: Talk to Éponine [2/18]

Re: Talk to Éponine [2/18]

Re: Talk to Éponine [2/18]

Re: Talk to Éponine [2/18]

Re: Talk to Éponine [2/18]

Re: Talk to Éponine [2/18]

Re: Talk to Éponine [2/18]

Re: Talk to Éponine [2/18]

Re: Talk to Éponine [2/18]

Re: Talk to Éponine [2/18]

OOC [FPO 2/18]