The morning's soft light gently shed itself through the opening between the room's dark curtains, glinting off scattered crystals left behind mid-tinkering across a messy desk. Warming everything it touched, it crept further in as the minutes passed. It shed itself upon bookshelves and potted plants alike, the latter of which eagerly greeted it with their nigh-imperceptible shifts towards its source. In perfect silence, the morning sun's light soon fell upon the bed of a sleeping individual, the messy jumble of sheets casting shadows that danced in slow motion under the light's continued advance. For a single unbroken moment, everything hung gracefully in suspended, silent peace.
This silence was suddenly and unceremoniously pierced by the loud beeping of an alarm.
A low grunt came next, as the alarm's disgruntled owner shifted in bed to clumsily reach for it. A few halfhearted clacks of cloven fingers on wood as the still drowsy being fought a miniature war against their side table in search of the aggressor that rested upon it. Finally, a victor was declared as hand met the cool metal of the alarm clock and quickly swiped across it in a well-practiced gesture The room was sent once more into silence - shortly after a small sigh of relief from the accosted sleeper as they adjusted themself back into a comfortable position in bed, that is.
Unfortunately for said sleeping individual, this calm return to rest was brief.
"Kaaaaaayde… Come on now, you know you must get up soon," a small voice nagged from atop the bundle of sheets.
A groan of displeasure, muffled by pillow and blanket, was the only response. After a pause, the voice - belonging to a very small creature, no taller than 4 inches, with a wide cap of sorts atop its head that, when combined with its thin, almost stick-like body, made it look almost exactly like a mushroom with limbs and a tail - piped up again. "I know you don't want to get up after the interruption last night, but you really can't be late to your morning shift again."
Another momentary silence hung in the air. As the tiny creature opened its mouth to speak again, it was suddenly thrown off balance (with a quiet, startled "Eep!") as the sheets shifted beneath it. From underneath these sheets emerged a disastrously tired looking goat. They sat up slowly and rubbed their hoof-like hands against their eyes, blinking them open to reveal striking orange irises with horizontal pupils. Wordlessly, they turned and slid themself off the bed, their hooves softly thudding on the rug underneath the bed as they stood.
The tiny mushroom creature steadied themself and hustled over to the edge of the bed, hopping up onto the goat and deftly climbing up to perch on their furred shoulder. "Are you feeling rested enough, Kayde?" they asked with more than a little bit of concern in their tone of voice.
Kayde, grunting as they adjusted the pajama pants that hung loosely around their hips and tail, gave a slight shrug. "I guess." They walked over towards their bathroom, the muffled thuds of their hooves turning to sharp clacks as rug gave way to wood, and soon to tile floor.
"You sure..?"
"I'm sure, Pico. I mean, yeah I'm still tired, but not catastrophically." Kayde stopped in front of the sink and gave themself a brief look in the mirror. The evidence of the interrupted sleep was visible, but hard to notice against the dark gray fur on most of their face. Pico sat on their shoulder, its wavy yellow pupils trained on Kayde's tired expression in the mirror with a small frown of worry adorning its face. Noticing this, Kayde reached over and patted a single hooved finger on the diminutive Fey's head in reassurance. "I'll get a nap in sometime today if it makes you feel better."
"It would," Pico replied, offering a small smile.
"Good. I'm gonna get cleaned up now. Lil privacy, please?"
"Yes, of course."
Pico stood up on Kayde's shoulder and, in one swift motion, hopped down all the way to the floor. Despite the height of this drop, Pico landed gracefully and without any sign of harm - though they did bounce a bit upon impact - and quickly hustled their way out of the bathroom.
With the departure of their smaller familiar, Kayde busied themself with their morning routine - first and foremost, the removal of pajamas and a short stint in the cleanser. Fur shampoo and conditioner were applied in turn, each then magically scrubbed in and cleared away as the chamber's sleek arms manipulated mana fields around the goat, leaving their fur shiny, smooth, and fresh. Several more minutes passed, spent brushing their headfur back into its half-styled tuft, and another few minutes more were dedicated cleaning and shining their hooves - both pairs, of course. Finally, they took a moment to fuss over the manaflame flickering at the tip of their long, tapered tail to make sure it looked healthy.
After this, they spent a few more minutes spent brushing teeth and fussing over their floppy ears and the body of their tail itself. As always, they put a little extra special care into tidying the several stripes of orange fur to look bright and natural.
Satisfied, the goat left the bathroom and returned to their bedroom space to put on the day's outfit. Sitting on their bed was another small creature, with Pico sitting in their lap. This second creature was considerably larger than Pico, but still no taller than a foot in height. They looked somewhat like a large gecko, but with orange and yellow shelf mushroom caps adorning their back and a tail that shared more in common with a mossy twig growing from a small tree than any regular tail.
The larger one noticed Kayde's approach first, and gave them a brief wave. Pico, whose eyes were closed in relaxation, blinked a bit and looked around as the larger creature stopped petting the mushroom cap on their head. They then gave a quick wave to Kayde in turn as they noticed the goat's presence.
Kayde, however, was a bit distracted to notice these greetings. As they approached the large window near their wardrobe, the light of the morning sun filtered through Kayde's dark gray fur in a way that caused a gentle glow to surround them. Kayde stood there, looking out the window towards the sunrise, simply savoring the soft warmth and allowing themself to become briefly lost in the moment...
"Kayde..?"
Pico's voice pulled Kayde back to reality. They shook themself lightly and turned to the pair of Fey on their bed. Gathering themself and giving the two a brief nod, they resumed their task, turning to the wardrobe to pull out some clothes for the impending day.
"Heh, morning nerd. Get a lil lost there?" the larger mushroom creature teased, leaning back on the bed casually as they watched the naked goat.
"Morning, Tack." Kayde replied, largely unceremoniously as they stepped into a pair of underwear, and then some dark pants, taking care to fasten the rear elastic bands of each item around the thick base of their tail.
"What, no rebuttal?" Tack prodded at the goat as they continued to get dressed.
"Eh. Got more pressing things to think about. Gotta log in and check messages before heading out." A purple, sleeveless shirt was next, pulled over their head - taking care to not snag on their short horns - and smoothed out down their chest as it settled into place.
"Wouldn't've guessed that from the way you were just spacing out."
"Tack, hush." Pico lightly elbowed Tack in the stomach, prompting a light "Oof" from the larger Fey. "Do you think the content managers would've already replied this early?" Pico questioned, its head tilting slightly as it sat up from its place in Tack's lap.
"Likely. Those guys get up way earlier than anyone." Kayde began wrapping a lighter purple scarf around their neck loosely, tucking the ends of it into the collar of their shirt and letting them hang out at the bottom - one end on the front, and the other at the back. Once in place, they buttoned up two of the three buttons just below the shirt's collar.
Tack scowled slightly. "Why can't it just wait until you like… get to the desk? Are they THAT impatient?"
"About the content being tampered with? They're incredibly impatient. So if I don't want an earful when I get to the library, I gotta check now." Kayde fiddled with their earrings slowly, carefully inserting one small black hoop at the bottom of each floppy ear.
Satisfied with their clothes for now, they draped a burgundy robe over the edge of the bed and turned to their small desk, upon which sat a small metal box, around the size of a textbook. They reached a hand out to its side and pressed their thumb onto a small divot.
A light chime rung out as the box started to unfold. The previously seamless metal suddenly split apart, with two thin pieces unfolding to reveal two different things. Firstly, the upper piece revealed a display, which quickly lit up into a startup screen. The piece that unfolded from below that similarly lit up, but instead showed several rows of simulated buttons and keys - a projected keyboard, of a sort, but specialized for Kayde's cloven hands.
From there, the two pieces detached from the main body and began to float into the air in front of Kayde. The thin display rose up to eye level with them, while the other floating piece coming to rest in perfect position near their hands. As they began to levitate, a light blue glow emanated from the cavity left in main body of the device, with similar glows lighting up on the backs of the floating pieces. Trails of swirling, almost hazy blue light slowly drifted outwards from these glowing points - the base's light lazily pointing towards the two detached pieces, and the pieces both pointing similarly at the base.
Once their computing device fully booted up to its familiar interface, Kayde walked over to the bed and sat down; the floating pieces of their device followed them effortlessly, with the light trails still managing to point towards the base in their lazy manner to maintain connection, despite the distance. Tack and Pico scooted closer on the bed, with Pico once again scampering up onto Kayde's shoulder to get a perfect view of the screen.
As soon as the device connected to the network, it loudly beeped and displayed a notification. Kayde rolled their eyes knowingly and tapped a hoof finger on the keyboard, and the notification expanded to fill the screen with a message readout.
"Yep, called it. They already messaged back about what I found last night. Let's see…"
Subject: RE: Content Emergency Discoveries
Here's the content that needs to be slotted into the page. Please manually add it into the page for now. I've copied the infosec mailing group into this message so they can see what happened and use this info in finding out how to improve security. Message me back once the page has been fixed.
Thanks,
I've dug into the content issues that were reported on Magia Archives. Looks like the same suspect of vandals on the Fey Culture page. Almost the exact same screed as usual inserted at the exact same point in the page.
I was going to revert to a backup with the admin tools, but it looks like our vandals pulled a new trick this time. All of the page backups were wiped, so I can't roll back to anything. If you have a backed up copy of the content that is supposed to go into the Fey Culture page, it will have to be inserted into the page manually. Otherwise, someone will have to rewrite the page from scratch.
Please contact my manager if the former option is viable so that he and I can discuss the amount of effort required and shift our current work schedule to fit.
- Kayde
"…figures they'd just shove the work to fix it on me without checking with my manager first." An exasperated sigh escaped Kayde's muzzle, followed by them shaking their head. The machine's screen swayed side to side as it tracked this movement. "Whatever, I'll just shoot them a quick reply to let them know I'm on it and handle it once I get in."
The frustrated goat started typing up a reply - short and sweet, just enough to acknowledge the situation to get the content manager off their back until they got to the library to clock in. This filled the room with a repetitive clacking, as cloven fingers tapped on cool metal with a quick, consistent rhythm.
"It's really not fair of them to keep piling this extra work onto you like this."
"Yeah, you should get extra pay for this junk."
"Oh trust me, I know. Tyler and I have been discussing it ever since they started outsourcing this wiki upkeep work onto me."
"Tyler's your manager, right?"
"Yeah. Looks like they CC'd him on this message too, which is good. More evidence for our argument."
"Don't you already have enough 'evidence' of you getting overworked out of your mind?"
"You'd think so, but Tyler's been having a hard time convincing the upper management of it."
"Bastards."
Kayde simply nodded in response, proofreading their brief message to the content manager. A few more taps on the keyboard produced a soft chime and, in a quick flash, the floating screen showed an animation of the message packaging itself up and being sent off to its recipient. Pleased with this, Kayde stood up (grabbing their robe as they did so) and walked back over to their desk. They placed their thumb into the same spot on the main body of their computer as before in a quick, practiced motion, and the device swiftly bundled itself back together.
"Right. I gotta get going. You two keep out of trouble, I'll be back in a few hours, yadda yadda same as always."
"Of course Kayde. I hope work is kind to you today."
"Yeah, what Pico said."
Pico quietly hopped down off of Kayde's shoulder at this point, landing softly on the desk, allowing Kayde to start to pull their robe over their shoulders. Their arms slid easily into the sleeveless openings, and the long robe settled down their back, splitting into two halves that rested on either side of their tail. They quickly picked up the metal box and pressed a finger into a different, smaller divot on its side. In a very soft flash of light, the box shrank down to the size of a matchbox, resting comfortably in the palm of Kayde's hand. With little fanfare, they tucked it into one of the inner pockets of their robe.
Giving a quick wave to the small mushroom Fey, Kayde turned and headed out of their front door. A quick touch of their lock card to the outside of it produced a quiet but substantial ka-chunk as it locked. A quick nod to themself later, they hustled down to the street and walked off toward the sunrise.
