Disclaimer: Hands up again. (Recounts hands.) Right. We've established that I'm not Terry Pratchett. Again.
A couple of people asked if I could add to Pencils, so I've decided to do a second chapter in Moist's POV.
Moist examined the pencil. He prodded it. It rolled, in the usual way of pencils. He picked it up, and wrote something with it. It wrote in dark grey lead.
It was, in fact, an ordinary pencil. He was quite sure of that. He was also quite sure that the other pencils were ordinary pencils.
What he wasn't sure of was where the damn things were coming from.
He hadn't noticed at first. After all, a pencil is, in essence, a pencil. Nothing more, nothing less. So it wasn't particularly strange that there were some lying around. They were a useful writing implement.
But, unless he was missing something important, you shouldn't mysteriously have what added up to a packet of pencils in your pockets.
Moist was very sure of this. He was certain, in fact, that if pencils were in the habit of appearing in pockets, someone would've told him.
"Maybe they just grow?" He mused out loud, and winced. No. He didn't know where they were coming from, but he was fairly sure that they didn't grow in his pocket.
"Mr. Lipwig?"
Moist glanced up at the worried looking employee. He pushed musings on the mysterious pencil discoveries to the back of his mind.
"Hello. Jack, isn't it? What can I do for you?"
"Lord Vetinari would like to see you. At the palace."
Moist blinked, and looked at the paper open on the desk under the collection of pencils. Oh no…
"He says you have an appointment…" Moist sighed.
"An appointment right now, I assume."
"No sir." Moist blinked. Could it be? An appointment he knew about before he ended up in it….? "He said the appointment was right away ten minutes ago. Sorry, sir, but the hallway was blocked, and…"
Moist wasn't listening. He'd kept Vetinari waiting for ten whole minutes. He threw on his jacket, paused, and pulled a pencil out of the pocket. He hesitated a moment, wondering why it had a piece of cotton around it, then added it to the pile on the desk and ran to the palace.
When a exhausted Moist returned from the meeting with Vetinari, he was completely bewildered as to why he had yet another pencil in his pocket, or why it had a length of wire attached. He removed the wire, then sat staring at the pencils for a moment. Moist shrugged, picked up one of them, and entered the wonderful world of Administration.
They were, he thought, very good pencils.