Chapter Text
Hometown was a small town. This fact had many advantages. For starters, you weren’t too far from anything. Then you also had familiarity; it was hard to get lost (which didn’t mean it was impossible, mind you, the current record-holder was Asriel with a total of four different times,) and, just to casually, not-plot-relatedly, throw around another example, the morning commutes where an easy stroll in your car at best, and if you ever got into a traffic jam, it would always solve itself in a maximum of five minutes. This fact was proudly displayed on the town’s website, despite numerous petitions from the Mayor to change it on the basis that “It shouldn’t be the first thing people see in the main page.” Truth is, the guy who made the website had moved to Ottawa not too long after making it, and now the only one in the town with alleged website-making background was some weird, shady pointy guy who called himself a “Hacker”.
So, with that out of the way you might assume no one in their right mind would care about waiting just a few minutes to get to work. Luckily for all of the residents, Mayor Holiday wasn’t in her right mind.
That’s why she was driving through an empty street at five in the morning, with Invernal Ambient Music (her favorite) playing low on the radio. She gripped the steering wheel tightly. Christmas was over. It would be another whole year till the next one. And she should already have started preparing the decorations… She was alarmingly behind on the schedule.
Why the psychotic behavior of waking up like you were running a bakery? Because time was of the essence. Nobody got anything done in that town, nobody except for her, clearly. She considered herself the thin line between civilization and tribal chaos. In each citizen she saw with her eyes, she also saw something more with her imagination; a potential road-crazed cultist-warrior trying to find gasoline at any cost.
… Well, in the case of an apocalypse, she would also be the ruler, it goes without saying, right? She just would rule less with votes and more with a katana, because the pen is mightier than the sword till that sword is a traditionally forged replica of a feudal original work with the handle modified to be expertly tailored for your hands.
She parked in her reserved spot in the Town Hall (privileges of being mayor) and, with her keys, opened the building for the first time of the day. Remnants of last night’s snow still covered most of the hall’s lawn. Her nose caught the ever-present smell of pine, as decreed by her, and she looked at the completely empty reception. Of course there was no one, only she had enough dedication. Fine by her, it wasn’t like the other guys did much around.
The clock marked a quarter past five, but she knew that the wall clock tended to run faster with each day that you didn’t check it. She had it measured. Exactly 1,32 seconds per day, or in other words 39,6 seconds per month. This difference could appear to be minimal, but it meant each seven months the gap was of five whole minutes… Which meant, as per the the day of its last revision, that the real hour was closer to ten past five. She constantly told the receptionist to make sure the clock was on time, but she never cared enough, saying a few minutes didn’t matter. The deer was the only one who took her job seriously, apparently…
Mayor Holiday hung her stylish yet professional coat in the rack and walked down the hallway to her spacious office. Everything was exactly as she had left it the other night, except for the enormous puddle of water in her highly-exclusive snowflakes-patterned rug.
“…”
I… I would write down her reaction, but that was pretty much it. In its absence, let me assure you she wasn’t happy at all, no sire…
“… I’m sorry, ma’am, but, uh… I don’t see what’s the emergency…”
Starlo rubbed his eyes. He was still in his star-patterned pajamas. They weren’t especially appropriate and looked infantile, and he hated it right now.
“The puddle.”
“Well, I see the puddle, and I see the leak that caused it. It snowed a whole lot last night, but… I don’t understand what I’m doing here…? You said there was an emergency.”
“This is an emergency.”
Yeah. Starlo had gotten up from bed with an urgent call from the Mayor about an emergency, and instead of some Stranger Things type of adventure waiting for him in the Town Hall (Hey, it’s a valid fantasy for a sheriff) he was tormented with… A leak.
The Mayor had this weird thing where she apparently thought that, as an agent of the law, the highest authority in town right next to her in the absolutely-not-convoluted power hierarchy was him. And she treated him in consequence, which was flattering but time-consuming. Each time there was going to be a holiday celebrated on the streets, Carol called him to know the “details about the security and traffic protocols.” And he had to make up something that sounded remotely police-like to satisfy her unnecessary demands. Like, really? security protocols? Traffic? What traffic? Did they live in the same town?
Starlo wasn’t even there most of the time. He worked at Revelstoke. The Sheriff Station was there. Hometown didn’t have any form of specific law enforcement, the town’s jurisdiction was subdued to the city’s due to proximity. He still patrolled around the streets from time to time, either by foot or by car, but it was mostly to play the role and have an excuse to be friendly and have people say hi to him. “Morning, Sheriff!” “Hello, Sheriff, how’re you doing?” “G’day, Sheriff!” It felt great…
Not to mention, Carol, as responsible as she was, had the tendency to weaponize his existence. When someone took her parking spot in the town hall, she called his personal number, waited for him to come and then stood there, behind him, watching as he filled the fine. It was weird… The culprit returned while he was just putting it on the glass and said he wouldn’t do it again, that he just had to pick up his daughter from church because she had fell and injured her knee and he didn’t see where he was parking, and as Starlo looked at the Mayor in search of any trace of mercy, she was already shaking her head slowly, staring at him, almost saying “go on”. God it was awful…
“Maybe it’s not as bad as you think! Maybe it’s handy to… change the office’s mood?”
“It smells like dampness.”
“Well, it smelt so much like pine before that your nostrils would melt together, so I don’t think— Err…”
When folks said Carol had a chilling gaze, they weren’t talking metaphorically. Your body temperature genuinely went down a few grades.
“Anyway, I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do here. I’ll go to bed now, see if I can get a few more hours of sleep before I have to wake up again, ‘kay?”
It was twenty five past five in the end.
“…”
“… I’ll take that as an enthusiastic ok. Goodbye, Mayor Holiday. It’s always a pleasure.”
Starlo left, shuffling away.
It seemed like Carol was alone at this. Just as always, no one was willing to go an extra-mile for their job. No one, no one except her indeed. So in spite of the lack of experience with leaks, up to her it was to fix it.
She should start by cleaning the rug and the floor though. They were humid and gross, and its cleaning shouldn’t wait or the wood would get damp too.
Ugh.
Politics Bear enjoyed his work very, very much.
The world of politics was intense and ever-changing, and he learnt something new about it every day he worked at the town hall. Things like the right number of hors d’oeuvres or the placing of new waste bins that were crucial to any society’s survival. And his best role model in this journey was the Mayor, of course. Albeit she could be… Not-nice, sometimes, Politics Bear could recognize the genius behind her uncomfortable silences and killing stares. And if you survived your first days working with her, chances were you would survive indefinitely!
At this point he wasn’t scared anymore of the Mayor’s menacing coldness. He knew that deep inside, she obviously valued the hard work of her peers very much, and he liked to think they were all like a big family at the town hall. A family with a really powerful matriarch at its center, but a family after all.
Right at the moment he was finishing an authorization paper for a construction site near the National Park. He had started it the last day, but felt tired and left it for today. You shouldn’t overwork yourself too much!
It was aaaaalmost finished. It just needed an itty bitty signature… The Mayor’s signature.
Well, he would have to go ask her for it! He did this all the time. Sometimes, when she was really tired from pulling all-nighters, she would essentially sign everything you put in front of her sleepy face. That was the way Politics Bear had obtained not two but three serviettes signed by the Mayor. He was sure they would gain value with time… Someday…
He got up from his small desk (maybe too small, he was always stuffed like a sausage in there) and knocked on the Mayor’s office door, assuming she would have been working silently in there since very early in the morning, as it was customary. When he didn’t receive any answer he started getting worried.
“… Mayor Holiday?”
After a few more knocks, he cautiously opened the door, peeking inside and finding there was no one. If you didn’t count the big stain of water in the rug and the bucket placed under what appeared to be a leak. But you don’t usually count buckets as persons, do you now?
He backtracked and talked to the receptionist.
“Hey, have you seen the Mayor?”
“She left a note. Said she had to go buy something.”
“Oh… Ok, thanks.”
The signature would have to wait. No problem, none at all. It had waited for a while already, it could wait a bit more.
Politics Bear returned to his desk and tried to find something to do.
After a few good minutes of actively looking into the hardware store’s showcase, Carol finally went inside. Although her angled face didn’t show any of it, she was filled with the uncertainty and worry proper of a first-time experience, not having done anything related with this magical world of “handywomansery” before. Needless to say, it was way beyond her area of expertise, which usually covered political intrigue, urban management and festivity planning. She already had to drive to the opposite side of town to get to the store, to a point where it could have maybe been easier to just go to the city, and she wasn’t in a good mood.
Down a looooong hallway with big rows of shelves at both sides stood the counter. The man that manned it, with a dense beard, a plain cap, and a checkered shirt, read what appeared to be a motorcycle magazine. Carol felt highly overdressed in her blue cardigan as she ignored the shop’s owner, who appeared possessed by his reading, and moved towards the nearest shelf. It couldn’t be so hard, could it?
She was used to doing things on her own. Never needed anyone else, not really. If she had called the Sheriff before it was to give him something of use to do. She knew from before no one would give you anything for free in this life, to the contrary, life would hit you like a train, then set the rails on fire, then dance Salsa on your ashes. That’s why you had to make sure it was life who was on the rails, and it was you who were capable of hitting like a train… and dancing Salsa.
And yet, however self-dependent you might want to be, it sadly had its limits. Because after two minutes of absentmindedly checking the shelves, Carol just discovered she had no idea of how to fix a ceiling leak.
Begrudgingly, she went in front of the counter and cleared her throat with grace.
The shopkeeper was startled by this, closing the magazine fast and leaving it on a table behind him. “Well, if it isn’t the Mayor! What do I owe the honor to, chief? Never thought you’d show up around my shop!”
“How does one fix a ceiling leak?”
“Hum, it depends, is it roofing or plumbing problems…?” He scratched his head under the cap.
Carol thought about what Starlo had said about the snow. “Roofing. Probably…”
“right’o, then the first thing you ought to do is drain the ceiling. ‘Cause there’s gonna be water trapped there, maybe a lot of it. So you want to turn off the electricity (better safe than sorry) cover the floor with something, put a bucket, grab your best ladder and drill a hole at the centre of the leak to let it flow.”
“So I would need a drill?”
“Sure, pretty much.”
“Then what?”
“Then you cut a hole with a handsaw, place timber braces over the ceiling, fix a new piece of drywall into the hole you just made with screws, coat it with plaster compound, let it dry then paint it and you’re done. Piece of cake.”
Carol blinked a few times. “So… I would need all of that you just said?”
“Sure, preeetty much.”
She sighed. “How much would it be?”
“Huuuh, I don’t know, I’ll tell you in a while, I still have to grab the things… Hey, y’know, I also do a few home repairs, here and there. I’m just saying, if you want me to go and check it out, I could do it for you. The name’s Bill. Pleased to meet you.”
“… Thank you, Bill, but that won’t be necessary.” She tried not to think about the idea of a person like Bill inside the Town Hall, just as he discreetly (or in a manner he thought was discreet but wasn’t) scratched his butt.
“Alright then, I’ll, huh, I’ll go grab those things. Oh, here, I’ll write down my number in case you change your mind…”
He did so and came back in a while with two heavy bags with all the aforementioned objects (and a phone number in the ripped out corner of a paper sheet.) He could have picked the most expensive iterations of every single one of them and he knew the Mayor would have paid for it without any thought, but he went for more economic and rookie-friendly options. He doubted she would need those things more than one time anyway.
Carol grabbed the bags and started leaving after paying.
“Thank you, chief! I voted for you, by the way!” Bill yelled when she was halfway up the aisle.
Mayor Holiday shook her head. So did most of town, Bill. So did most of town…
When Carol had finally left, Bill grabbed his magazine again, being allowed to read in peace… But it wasn’t a motorcycle magazine he would be reading, because under it lied a copy of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. He was loving it till far and was fascinated by how much the prime transitional period between Victorianism and Modernism during the late 19th century and early 20th century, along with the implied dichotomy between the freedoms of the new middle class versus the still oppressed lower class’ women, affected Woolf’s diachronic exploration of discrimination suffered by the aforementioned gender in literature.
Next he was planning to read Manufacturing Consent. He had read some of Chomsky’s takes on linguistics, but had yet to read some of his politics.
What? Owning a hardware store and wearing a checkered shirt doesn’t keep you from being a cultured person.
Carol went inside the Town Hall with one bag in each hand. The receptionist didn’t even look at her, though it was hard to tell taking into account they had a giant hand for a head. Politics Bear, on the other hand, got up from his chair, almost tripping to the carpeted floor in the process, and intercepted her in the middle of the hallway, walking beside her.
“Mayor Holiday, here I have something that needs—“
“Not. Now.” She walked even faster.
“Ah, yeah, fine, I’ll wait…”
He returned to his desk looking down.
As for Carol, she returned to the wet mess she had left and realized she would be needing a ladder.
Luckily for her, they always kept one of those small ones that fold themselves in the storage closet, useful for things like reaching to the clock walls when it is needed to set the clocks on the right time, which basically means, as we had already discussed, that they accumulated dust in the left side of the closet.
The Mayor was confident in her skills. Always had been, for whatever the deed was. And you can’t blame her; statistics showed her right.
She looked at the clock in her office (the only one really in time) and clicked her tongue. She had already lost too much time, too much time fixing the architect’s bungling work and the faulty mistakes that the constructors had apparently committed when building the roof AND the drywall ceiling…
See, that’s why she always ended up doing everyone’s jobs! You just can’t expect people to reach your level of perfection.
So now she would follow the instructions and make it in no time… Alright, cross that, she should have finished it yesterday, so she would follow most of the instructions and make it in… Negative time? She would invent time travel…?
Who needed to put something on the floor anyway? The bucket would take it all. It just needed to do its job well. She just retired the already soaked carpet and moved the bucket a bit to be exactly under where she planned to make the hole.
Carol climbed the ladder, portable battery-powered drill in hand, and drilled a small hole in the ceiling (Much to her disdain, because she found making holes in the ceiling distasteful) without much effort. Instantly, a thin stream of water flowed all the way from the cap to the bottom of the metal bucket, causing a constant sound that could give you problems if you had been holding your pee.
The Mayor climbed down satisfied and sat in her chair watching the stream go down. Now, supposedly, she just had to wait.
Yep. Waiting. Getting the work done. Putting the hours. Earning the money… Yeah.
…
The hands of the clock never stopped, just like the stream of dirty water from the roof.
The reindeer tried to focus. She did, ooooh yes. But that sound, that enervating sound, that metallic chime, which would sometimes slow down, just to get back at it again, and crush your hopes, and you raised your eyes to look at the bucket, see how full it was, and at the clock, she how late it was, how much work had she got done? Zero? BECAUSE OF THAT DAMNED BUCKET PERHAPS???—
Uh, errrr… Gee, sorry. Feelings are like viruses; contagious. Whether it be grin and beam or doom and gloom. In this case, more doom, especially wished upon the bucket. And the water. And the concept of time as a whole.
This state lasted until she just… Snapped. She grabbed the handsaw and climbed the ladder again, huffing and grumbling. How much more water could be left? Surely not much. She made an incision on the drywall and— Nope. Hold on, let her try again… No, still no. That drywall sure was a tough one, and whatever handsaw Bill had sold her, it wasn’t enough to penetrate into it.
She tried harder. And again. And again, but with more fury. She tried till she was basically slamming the saw against the ceiling.
Carol caught her breath and looked at the now-hated wall clock.
She would finish this NOW. She just needed a little something from her house… Just a small ride away.
Politics Bear washed his furry hands and left the pristine bathroom. The Mayor never liked it when they spent too much time in there, but it was sooooo well kept that it was a pity to leave it each time you entered with the intention to do your business. Much better than the crumpled desks, anyway…
Once in the hallway, he decided to try again (understanding he could incur in his boss’ rage) and see if he could get the paper signed.
And as he opened the door, fully expecting the Mayor to be there because she was already back from her little morning trip, just to find a small stream of water falling to a bucket from the ceiling, which again, last time I checked, you also didn’t count as persons.
He backtracked (deja vu?) and was about to ask the receptionist when they got ahead of him.
“No, I don’t know where she is, she just left in a huffie.”
“Ok…”
He returned to the Mayor’s office out of curiosity. He was so accustomed to finding her seating on that ergonomic office chair… Or sleeping on that ergonomic office chair… Or even just… Standing. Menacingly. She said it helped her blood circulate.
The bear had always asked himself, “how would that chair feel in your butt?”
… Well, there was no one around, right?
He sat on Hometown’s throne and looked at his important surroundings. All those little details… The coffee machine on a small table all for herself, the order surrounding the desk and every single document on it, the official collection of stamps used to authorize everything of importance, those weird metallic-ball-thingies on cords that kept hitting each other for a while with a small push, the wall clock that actually worked, the photo of the mayor’s daughter (Politics Bear didn’t even have a pet to put on a photo for his desk), the high-quality-paper, the pen cup with a wide arrange of pencils and fountain pens, along with two mini-flags, one of Canada and the other of the Delta Rune…
Gosh, it made him feel powerful.
What was that smell…? Could it be… The genuine smell of politics?
(No, it wasn’t. It was the smell of humidity.)
The receptionist left out a gasp when Carol almost kicked down the Town’s hall doors. The Briefcase Guy. (Who doesn’t deserve any other name) held to his briefcase for his dear life. It wouldn’t be the first time the Mayor cut his briefcase in half with the katana she was wielding just now, and believe me, it won’t be the last…
She looked bewildered; disheveled and breathing fast. Let’s just say she’s the holder of the new record of car sprint from her house to the Town Hall.
Carol walked down the hallway, stepping hard, determined to finish what she had started whatever it took.
“Oh! Mayor Holiday, I can explain, I-I was already leaving!”
She didn’t care about the bear in her chair. That was a sign something was wrong…
She climbed the ladder for the last time. The stream of water kept flowing. She readied her slash…
“Mayor, that doesn’t seem like a good—“
An unexpectedly massive downpour of water fell into her and into the floor. The bucket was filled in that instant.
Carol looked up, processing what had happened. She was soaked from antlers to hooves, and it wasn’t a hot day, exactly. The ceiling had a seizable hole, maybe too big for its own good.
Indeed. There was still water.
“Are you fine, Mayor Holiday?”
She sighed. Defeated by nature…
The mayor ran her hand through her wet hair. She kept it cool, of course. There were expectations to be met.
“You needed something from me earlier?”
Politics Bear, still in shock, handed him the paperwork to be signed. She dried her hand in his suit, an act which he gladly accepted, before grabbing it and taking a closer look at it.
Her eyes dashed from one side of the paper the other. “...”
She sighed, for longer this time. The bear could almost swear he saw a twitch in her eye.
“Is something wrong… Mayor?”
“This is from a month ago.”
Politics Bear gulped slowly. Carol wasn’t looking at him, she was just… Staring at the paper in her hand, showing no emotion apart from a general sense of tension. Fearing for his physical integrity, the bear chose retreat.
“I see you’re… Very busy. Sorry to bother you. I’ll be leaving now.”
He rushed to the door and disappeared. The mayor stood stiff, with the paper in her hand. A few drops still dripped from the ceiling. The wall clock joined the rhythm, and for a few seconds, that duet was the only thing that could be heard.
Looks like Bill’s reading would be interrupted again…