[crow]

But then, was she really surprised by their lack of progress on the issue? That was an unforeseen magical phenomenon they were dealing with. Well, she had to presume it was magical, anyway. It certainly didn't seem meteorological, at least from where she had been standing. Maybe Fluffmutter would elucidate them on the matter in a moment, but for now...

For now she didn't know what to make of the situation, any more than she did before.

[crow]

There was a creepy mist floating around, and things were not exactly peachy, and no one had any more information than that to go off of.

The tower folks had ascertained that it wasn't going to immediately kill them or anything, which was about as good as it was going to get for the moment. It was just a matter of figuring out if it posed a slower and more insidious danger, or if it was just a benign phenomenon.

[crow]

Fluffmutter heaved a sigh. "Yeah," he said. That 'yeah' sounded, if anything, even more tired than any of the other utterances he had managed so far. That 'yeah' was the 'yeah' of a pony who had seen some shit.

"Do you want to talk about it?" said Cocoa. It was less a sympathetic question, and more a genuine query, than it might have been with a different individual. After all, this was Fluffmutter they were talking about.

[crow]

Did he want to talk about it? Maybe he just wanted to suck up watermelon juice and be left alone. Considering the day he was implying he'd had, none of them could nlame him.

Cocoa did chance a look at them, though, clearly seeming confused. Oh, that was right, neither he nor Pep were unicorns. And maybe the shop had already been closed for party preparations by the time the announcements had been made about the mist.

[crow]

If that had been the case, then none of their customers had heard the announcement the tower had made either. Maybe they just didn't happen to have any unicorns in at the time.

"Oh, you two don't know, huh," said Jack, catching Cocoa's look. Well, he did always like to play the guiding older brother role when it came to Cocoa. Lacuna was content to just sip her drink and let him explain, if that was what Jack wanted to do.

[crow]

He did glance at her to see if she wanted to take the helm on this, but she just tipped her glass towards him. It was all his if he wanted it.

With that, Jack launched into an explanation of what they had seen earlier at the diner. He talked about how the mist had come up all of a sudden, as if out of nowhere... There was a brief description of what the mist looked like.

[crow]

At this point both Lacuna and Maple interjected to clarify some things they weren't satisfied with. So it turned, for a moment, into a small debate over the specifics of what exactly the stuff had actually looked like, and what the nature of its movement had been. As Lacuna kept saying, it wasn't like it just erupted out of the earth looking evil and wicked...

But once they got that sorted out, Jack's account continued without further incident.

[crow]

And he was the only one who had any experience running through the stuff, so that part was all his to tell, and not theirs.

"It doesn't feel like anything, you know? It's just... there. Like air. But you can't see anything, it's all opaque..." he was saying.

Fluffmutter's expression darkened visibly on the word 'opaque'. "Yeah," he said, this time less tiredly and more... darkly. The dark to match the way his face looked just then.

[crow]

Clearly something unpleasant really had happened at work regarding all this mist business, if this was anything to go off of.

"Did something happen, Fluffmutter?" This time it was Lacuna who asked. She was genuinely curious, but if he wanted to get it off his chest, that was going to be good for him too. And if he didn't, they wouldn't push him into it, even if they were curious about the specifics. They were friends, and if he needed the space...

[crow]

It would be a shame but if he well and truly didn't feel up to being here at the party, they'd let him go too, so he could go home for the night and get some rest. He was beginning to look like he needed it too, as he started to relax under the pleasant hum of the air con.

Well, he had been relaxing, anyway. The way he looked now couldn't exactly be called 'relaxed' either.

[crow]

Fluffmutter mulled the question over for a moment, then sighed. "Hazy flew into it," he said, that weariness in his voice reaching a new peak.

All around the room, everyone's expressions immediately turned into ones of sympathy. "Ahhhh," said Cocoa. "That's a shame. Is she alright?"

It would be Cocoa who asked this... and it was a very Cocoa thing to ask. The rest of them privately felt as though they might not be able to get away with it.

[crow]

It wasn't like Fluffmutter hated his cousin or anything, but she really did make things harder for him at work, being the way she was.

And sometimes, after someone had just made things really difficult for you, it was hard not to be at least a little bit mad at them for having done it. Even if they didn't mean to, and you understood that. Sometimes there was only so much that even this sort of understanding could do.

[crow]

"Yeah, she's fine," said Fluffmutter. At least he didn't seem too angry about that. But actually, it almost seemed as if Hazydaze and her mishaps wasn't the thing that was really getting to him. Usually it was, considering the fact that he was otherwise good at his job, and liked it just fine.

He had, in fact, been a lot less grumpy and more just taciturn in a general personality sense before Hazydaze joined the work force.

[crow]

Someday they'd see the return of that particular Fluffmutter but... Probably it wasn't going to happen anytime soon. And in the meantime they could all commiserate with him and support him as best they could.

It wasn't like Fluffmutter had become insufferable in the meantime, but he was also even less talkative than he used to be, which did put a bit of a damper on friendly conversation. At least, friendly conversation that went both ways, anyway.

[crow]

Lacuna thought that it was just a guess... But she was going to venture it anyway. Slowly, a little cautiously, she said, "That isn't all there is to it, is there? It's not just Hazy today, right?"

"Yeah," said Fluffmutter, but it felt like an admittance. There was a great rush of air out with the sound of that 'yeah', like he had sighed it out. He wilted a little bit, and took another long drink from the glass.