Chapter 1 - It Begins

               It had been a long week. The short weeks were always long. Coming back into the office on a Tuesday after the holidays threw everything out of whack. Dating papers? Wrong year. Meeting schedule? Wrong day of the week. Lunch? Wrong time, wrong food, wrong all of it. The whole holiday off-routine thing means my body decides nothing is appealing and I shouldn’t have to eat on a schedule other than when I’m hungry.

              I had made it to Friday, somehow. I wasn’t quite as behind on things as I felt like I was, but I needed to get some ducks in a row before leaving for the weekend or the next week was going to suck.  I hovered beside my desk chair for a minute, undecided. I really needed to do a quick tidy of the office – put a few books back on the shelf, stack the papers neatly, maybe even get a few put in the file cabinet – or I wouldn’t be able to find what I needed come Monday. But… I did need to do a digital tidy up as well, and that could be done while sitting and having a snack. I sat. The physical tidy could be done, as it often was, in one last burst of energy before I took off for the weekend, likely the last couple of things with my bag already slung over my shoulder as I headed for the door.

              I slid the transcription pedal to the side with my foot as one hand reached for the mouse and the other for a bag of chips. I was done with the work-work, this last hour would just be making sure that files were labeled correctly and in the right folder, backed up to the cloud, and logged on the right billing spreadsheet.

              I was almost done, just a few more files to log and back up. I don’t know if it was the weird post-holiday schedule or just sitting funky in my chair, but I started to feel a knot in my back so I pushed back from the desk, stretching my hands up into the air and straightening my back. I startled as my upstretched hands brushed something soft, and I looked straight up to see an equally startled face looking back down at me.

              The next moments were a scramble, stacks of papers flying in the air as I panicked and lunged across my desk and the figure that had been leaning over me panicked and flailed backward. The last few papers floated lazily to the floor as I found myself on the floor beside my desk, looking up at my desk chair still slowly spinning, and a tall, lanky woman bracing herself against the bookshelf in the corner, one hand on her chest, eyes wide.

              “Well, I seem to have given both of us a startle!” Her voice was clear and high, but not fragile. It almost reminded me of an old lady teacher, one of the super strict kind who always sounded out of an old book, or one of those black and white movies that I never paid attention to when I was a kid.

              “Transatlantic accent,” I said. She blinked, and almost sort of smiled. “Well I suppose I have, in a way. Of course you would pick up on it.” I shook my head. “OK, but why are you in my office?” I started to get a bit more anxious as the surprise wore off. I glanced toward the door, then back at the strange lady. There was no way in hell I wouldn’t have seen her when I came in from my last break, and my desk faced the only door to the room. I would have seen anyone come in after me.

              She cleared her throat gently and squirmed just a bit. “Well, I was actually hoping to retain your services, I have quite a large project I would like to undertake and you seem to have just the skillset I’m looking for.” I blinked back at her for a moment. “Hold on.”

              I stood up, steadied myself at the side of the desk a moment. I walked to the door, opened it, and peered up and down the hallway. It was empty. I closed the door and walked back to the desk. “I’m so sorry, this is probably going to seem rude,” I said, “but I need to check something.” I reached out a hand and poked one finger at her shoulder. The fabric of her dress was soft, and the shoulder beneath was firm.  Her eyebrows lifted a bit, but she didn’t seem upset. “Uh huh,” I said, “you do seem to be here. And you want me to do work for you?” I looked up at her face. I realized she was taller than I had thought – everyone looks tall when you’re sitting on the floor – and she was very slender, but that poke at her shoulder was enough to let me know that she was likely pretty strong.

              She grinned a bit sheepishly, and something about the expression made me relax just a bit. “Well, yes. You see, I want to put together a collection of true stories, of fairy tales told in the first person. But while I have a gift of tongues, it unfortunately doesn’t extend to the written word. So I have been looking for someone who could transcribe the stories, and maybe even polish them up a bit so that they are easy to read.”

              I held up a hand. “True stories. Fairy tales.” I held one hand out to each side, balancing-the-scales style. “You see how that doesn’t quite match up, right?” I started to question exactly how tired I really was. I didn’t think I was at hallucination level of exhaustion, but there had a to be a first time for everything, right?

              She straightened up and gestured toward my desk chair and then another across the room. “Why don’t we sit a minute and I can explain a few things.” I shrugged, and decided to roll with it. “Sure, I suppose it couldn’t hurt!” I sat down and waited for her to begin.