Hired Help

[Izdihar]

Phobos had been expecting a weathered laborer, and with any luck one that would be deaf and mute. What she got instead was Tryphaena: 5'3", couldn't have weighed more than a buck ten when wet, was dressed from head to toe in a puke-inducing hue of bubblegum pink, and had... pigtails. The little waif didn't look a day over 14. Phobos knew this was not going to end well. The girl looked like she couldn't even hold a pickaxe, let alone swing one.

Not that she had much of a choice. Her bank account was dwindling, and there was no way she could supply her shop on her own. She needed a miner. A miner that was obsessed with Valorite. That, too, was part of the problem: Tryphaena was obsessed with Valorite- and she wouldn't shut up about it. It was as if she didn't run off of food, the way normal people did, but was instead powered from hearing the sound of her own voice. When she wasn't raving about her precious ore, she was singing off-key. In French.

Phobos constantly felt her fingers twitching for her bow, and was simultaneously enraged and thankful that she hadn't built her home in Tokuno or Felucca.

After two weeks, Phobos was feeling downright smug about her impeccable self-control. She hadn't maimed the little snot-nosed brat yet, and she'd only said a handful of snide comments to her, most of them addressing Phobos' concern that Tryphaena had been dropped on her head too many times as a child.

Phobos was blissfully unaware that this was going to change in precisely 2 minutes and 47 seconds.

***********

It's very difficult for a Drow to go pale. Phobos managed to go to ash grey when she walked up the stairs into the second floor of her castle.

"What.... have you done?" She managed to choke out as she leaned against the stone wall.

Tryphaena looked up from her perch on a large pile of brightly-colored pillows. "Oh, this?" She waved her hand dismissively towards the travesty that used to be Phobos' favorite room. "I figured you needed to redecorate. The dank ooh-look-at-me-I'm-an-evil-scary-castle thing just wasn't doing anything for me. No wonder you're so damned grumpy After 3 minutes in this place you feel like you would chew through your own wrists if you were handcuffed to the wall."

For the first time in her life, Phobos was struck speechless. She could only stare in open-mouthed horror at the crudely-drawn yellow smiley faces on the wall, the cutesy posters, the pink and white bed that looked disturbingly like a wedding cake, and various other hopelessly cheery items.

Phobos regained her composure and opened her mouth to administer a good dose of verbal whiplash, because she had hit her limit and that gangly little human needed to leave, RIGHT NOW and-

"Close your mouth, you look like a fish. Anyway, I already know what you're going to say- you're really predictable. I'm going on a personal quest to go mine Luna- I want more Valorite. I figure that will give you long enough to get over yourself and redecorate this place. I think an elegant gothic theme would go well with the castle, just be sure to have a lot of lighting because this place desperately needs it. The body parts and fake blood have to go. It looks like someone was trying to decorate for Halloween and completely overdid it."

The corner of Phobos' mouth twitched. She had decorated for Halloween, and had been too lazy to take down the decorations. Was it really overdone? It did look kind of tacky, now that she thought about it. She could've done without the graveyard on the roof, and random bloodspatters, and.....

Wait.

"Since when have you ever made a relevant observation? You've been a total scatterbrain ever since you arrived at my door. Wh..."

But Tryphaena had already left.

For the first time in her life, Phobos had been made a fool of, and for the second time in her life, she was speechless.