Work was weird, there really wasn’t any other way to describe it -- and Edith would know; she was a ‘writer’. It seemed like Elias was the only constant in her life right now. Her name was on the column, she had been given a desk, the column moved sections, she moved editors, her desk moved to an office shared by another
political writer. Then there was the actual ‘work’ part of it all: there were expectations now, and not just those huge ‘storm the Ministry’ ones. She had just returned from the W9 where she had been both a plus one and an implied media presence, and she hadn’t been able to get rid of that uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach she had had since.
She tapped her pen -- she had to supply her own because
The Prophet only supplied quills -- on her desk, her W9 notes long abandoned, her gaze fixed on a point somewhere outside her open office door. Her officemate had left a while ago, clearly better at meeting deadlines than Edith was. She had done a bit of writing, sure, but it wasn’t anything she could turn in to be published: three identical letters to three maybe-a-little-more-than acquaintances, looking for a bit of a chat. It was productive, sort of.
Still, her officemate had left, and Edith knew where he kept his whisky; he wasn’t as cheap as her, either, and it had taken her a few swallows to not anticipate the smell of jet fuel that she was accustomed to. She set her glass back down and looked back out into the hallway, just in time to see a familiar face streak by. “Arawn!” They had gone from living together to living a continent apart to sitting two doors down from each other, working for the same woman. There had been ‘hello’s and ‘good to see you’s and ‘we’ll catch up’s but also ‘wow I’m so busy’s. They hadn’t caught up and Edith wasn’t
that busy.
Edith was hesitant. It was different, in a way, to meet new people that had read her column. They knew things about her now, but Edith had been able to control the information she had released. But with those that knew her before -- like Arawn -- it felt so much more intimate, even though it had been the same column for them, too. They had lived together but they hadn’t discussed the war, didn’t dive deep into why she was so reluctant to have any magical conveniences around the flat. Was it obvious now? Even if it wasn’t, she was still going to overthink it.
She regretted calling him out and clung to the very tiny hope that maybe he would keep on walking, but she knew better than that. He was just
too polite to ignore her, wasn’t he? His reappearance in the doorway pretty much confirmed her assumption. “Hey.” She tapped her pen a couple more times before dropping it on her desk, pushing her notes to the side in the process. “You have time for a drink?” She tilted her head to the side toward her officemate’s generous contribution. “I saw Knox leave, so I know you have time.” She tilted her head in the other direction, toward her officemate’s empty chair.
Rolling her chair back a smidge, Edith opened a drawer -- the one with her much less exciting alcohol -- and pulled out another glass, matching her own. She didn’t think he’d recognize them, but he had bought them on their IKEA trip for their flat last year; they didn’t match Elias’s already complete set of glassware, so they had found their way to the office. “C’mon.” She didn’t want to think about work -- or much of anything -- for just a few minutes.
@Arawn Davies 
