As I’m spinning my wheels deciding what to do now that The Audacity Gambit has finished its run, please enjoy a short story from the same world, some years later. This was originally published on Patreon: July 16, 2021.
Michael had a schedule and he took great pleasure out of sticking to it. He got up a little before seven, matching the start of the workday in other time zones, and drank his coffee while answering emails. He liked starting his day by diving directly into work. Around nine, he’d shower and make breakfast, often sharing it with Ian, who more or less got up around then. He’d then take a leisurely hour tending the grounds of the Royal Oak trailer court. The work he’d done over the years to fill in bare patches of grass with clover and other low maintenance ground cover made it easier.
By noon he was back at work, either photographing things and writing up descriptions or packing them up for shipping. By about four, emails and message notifications from the multiple sites he sold through had picked up their clip and he’d have a late lunch—supper, really, according to Ian’s sister Hannah, who said the actual definition of dinner was the big meal at the end of the day, so if it wasn’t lunch and wasn’t dinner it was supper—while answering customers.
He would do another round of the property by six, mostly just enjoying the native pollinator garden and making sure the birdfeeders and various animal water sources were filled. If it was a family meal day then he’d cook something, but if it was just him then he’d heat one of his prepped meals and read on the porch.
Michael thought it was a pretty flexible schedule. It had to be, as the two other main people in his life were either chaotically unemployed or in food service. Emily, at least, would copy out her hours when she made up the work rota for the café so Michael had an idea of when she’d be around. Ian was not allowed in Michael’s trailer between the hours of ten and seven, which he’d accepted easily because Ian had the self-awareness to know he was antithetical to a productive work environment.
Mondays were always family dinners. They tried to have at least one more meal together during the week but, no matter what, they sat down at Michael’s beautiful dinner table and had dinner at 8 pm exactly every Monday.
Tuesdays he’d take the car to the post office after breakfast to mail everything, then have a sort of treat day where he’d stop at the bookstore, buy lunch on his way to one of the town’s parks, and enjoy whatever the weather was doing.
Wednesdays were his rest day. Most of Michael’s work had him going to estate sales and hole in the wall antique and junk shops all through the valley on Saturdays and Sundays, so he’d claimed the middle of the week his weekend. Sometimes Ian would have something planned and they’d go out to the ocean, or visit a diner he’d found. Most of the time, Ian did not, but they’d end up hanging out anyway, either playing video games in Ian’s trailer or just both sitting on their respective porches, reading.
Michael had other schedules, monthly and quarterly and yearly. He’d honed his systems during his two years at business school and felt that by the time he was twenty-five he’d be ready to have things like five-year goals.
His planning felt like a latticework protecting the Court and giving structure to the vines that were Ian and Emily. They made him feel important and safe. Emily might have raised them all, taught them about the Sidhe and the possibilities and terrors there but after Matty, the youngest, had graduated and left as far and fast as possible, Emily mostly seemed tired. He thought about a shrew he’d seen on the coast once, out of place in the wet sand and beach scrub. Injured, it scampered in circles, as though invisibly tethered to some point and unable to escape the slowly deepening circle it was running itself.
Sometimes Michael felt his age of twenty-two—not the false weight of time, he could live as long as he wanted with a door to the Sidhe in the courtyard—but the existential press of so many years ahead and youth’s absence of tools to plan in any sort of long term. Watching Emily and her girlfriend, he felt like falling into something easy had its temptations. Something like normalcy. But, even so, he saw her pushing against it even while seeking its comfort.
He’d sit sometimes with his inspiration planner and ask himself: if he could do anything, what would it be? He’d look at his days, try to figure out what the best parts were, what he looked forward to. The problem was, Michael had scheduled everything out perfectly. His days felt balanced and not rushed, he could do what he wanted as he needed. It was, in fact, little different than if he’d chosen to stay in the Sidhe, like Abby did, and live a mostly immortal life of comfort. This realisation terrified him.
This post is part of The Audacity Gambit – Serialised. Learn more about when the book was first published here, see the archive and overall content warnings here, and find more of my writing here. I’m over on both Comradery and Patreon, if you feel like supporting my creative endeavours. If you’d like to subscribe to this story, here’s a handy email box for you: