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Spring Cleaning — Description

“Clean! Clean! Clean!” Jennivien yelled up the stair. “You know if you had just worked a little on this each day that it would not build up to such an extreme?”

A muffled thump followed by the sound of papers flying emanated from somewhere past the basement’s door followed by a string of curses. Closing her eyes and practicing the deep breathing exercises she had learned online, Jennivien nudged to door open with her toe.

There, her employer was hunched over the communal dining table and surrounded by several piles of papers and a newly formed mess of documents that now littered the floor.

Without looking up from tossing documents into one of several piles around him, he retorted.

“If I had the time to clean and organize half this mess, I would have done so six months ago.” Grunting, he straitened his back the knotted muscles popping as he did so. “Do you recall where you last saw the Dead Sea Scrolls, I swore they were filed under ‘S’ but I can’t find anything.”

“Have you tried ‘D’ for Dead yet?” Jennivien huffed, dropping the assorted stack of documents she had pulled up from the basements accounting and filing room.

“Yes, nothing – at least not in a language I could translate.”

“And you need these why?”

“Because,” And in an overly dramatic display, he reached into one of the piles and pulled out a letter with several official looking government seals attached. “The IRS keeps calling, wondering when I am going to file that amended tax return in regards our Other Assets.”

Jennivien groaned and rubbed her face with both hands. The dark circles under her eyes had not recessed, and if anything, they had only gotten worse over the last few months.

“The IRS…” She muttered between her fingers. “Cant we just send them a check? Or have Krecker deliver it?”

“As amusing as that would be,” Her employer smiled. “No. The creatures that live there aren’t human. And I don’t want to expose anyone, least of all Krecker to what lurks in those dark halls of the government.”

“You should see what lurks in the halls of your accounting department.” Jennivien growled, the words slipping out before her brain could check them.

Arching a brow, her employer regarded her with a quizzical glance.

“Sorry, sorry – its, I’m tired.” She hastily added.

For a second more her employer looked on in silence, then, shaking his own head, he slumped downwards onto the table.

“We’re all tired.” He responded in a quite voice.

And for a moment the towering figure of unrelenting endurance seemed to melt away, leaving a tired and diminished figure before her. Overworked, and with bags under his eyes that rivaled her own, pale skin that needed light, and a hollow sort of weariness that penetrated to the bone.

Then drawing in a breath the he righted himself, his smile returning, back straitening, and he was back.

Rising from the table he walked over and plucked the first pile of documents for the stack and, as an after thought ruffled the top of her hair in a casual display of affection.

“Hold fast my friend.” He spoke, resolution and confidence rich in his voice again. “Three more weeks and we are free. I need you to hold on for a little bit longer, be strong, and hold the line. Three weeks.”

Jennivien watched as returned to the table, a little smile caressing her features as she bushed her hair back into place.

“Three weeks.”

C.S. Notes: Well, it has been a heck of an eight month run, but it is almost over. And in twenty one days I will be very happy indeed. ^^