Office
-dedicated to Linnie the Pooh-
Lydia Cedar idly typed a few lines of code in a program that would someday run a self-updating criminal database for the LEP. Or at least she appeared to, while actually playing a game of Mudmansweeper, using her green wings to block the screen from her boss's view. There was no way she was going to do any serious work so close to the end of her work hours, and just before vacation, too.
She turned to watch for a moment as two elves, red-faced male and red-haired female, passed by her cubicle and entered her boss's office. They departed, now laden with metal wings and fiberglass guns, and Lydia knew that each of their days was filled with more excitement than her entire life had been. Bouncing Gnommish text boxes indicated that she'd just beaten her fastest Mudmansweeper time.
She wanted adventure. She always had. But everyone had told her not to waste her intelligence on troll-chasing and Neutrino-slinging. Instead, she was wasting it in a moonrise-to-moonset office job.
Finally, the workday was over, and she joyously said a mental goodbye to her office for the next two weeks. When she got out under the pseudo-sunlight, Lydia stretched her wings. It felt good, after they'd spent a long day in cramped quarters, to let her wings extend to their full span. She took flight after a running start.
She had to take care not to get carried away with the exhilaration of flying and rise too close to the sunstrips. She hated that there was a limit to her elevation; sprites missed the open air of aboveground like no other species of fairy.
As she soared home, the dark, industrial buildings of Koboi Labs caught her eye. Her boss made a point to insult either Koboi herself or her company at least once a day. Usually, Lydia had just smirked in agreement with him. But she now wondered whether Koboi was really as bad as her boss always said. Her inventions were just as innovative as those of the LEP, but hers were available to the public. Lydia had never bought any of the Koboi products, because of a mandatory boycott that her boss had imposed on his employees—but she now wondered why she had blindly gone along with this.
Surely, she thought, Koboi Labs will have more adventure for me than the LEP. And Koboi's a girl, too; she'll understand that females can be both productive with their lives and smart. She speculated about how her boss would react to the knowledge that she had defected to his rival and decided it would be worth it just for his expression. She grinned giddily. This vacation from the LEP was going to be longer than expected.
A/N: The disgruntled!LEP!techie OC is based on Linwen, who tells me that after reading this she's a happy!disgruntled!LEP!techie.
Whilily, Dimbledeb, Mossy, Yeti: Your fics are coming, I promise! (Though perhaps not anytime soon. ::shiftyeyes::)