[crow]

And then they'd just be back to square one, with needing ponies on the phones, and needing qualified professionals with decent personalities.

So it just so happened that poor Fluffmutter was on phone duty sometimes. He wasn't happy about it either, but he understood why it had to happen. He probably hadn't even been anticipating a really terrible time today... Just a normal level of things he didn't want to deal with, which was honestly probably bad enough.

[crow]

But then the mist had to appear, and throw a wrench in all of that. With the mist here, there was all this hubbub... And enough ponies feared that it had something to do with the weather that they had probably called in, whatever the tower's announcements and assurances.

Hey, not everyone had a convenient access to a unicorn at hand. They were a third of the population, but it wasn't like they were in every household or anything.

[crow]

And any initiative that tried to make that a thing would probably get shot down right away, on grounds of being discriminatory and restrictive officially. Unofficially, it would be shot down due to the fact that it was just too inconvenient to implement in practical terms. And the public outcry that would inevitably result.

"There were a lot of calls," said Fluffmutter. "We didn't know anything. They kept calling though. Some of them got pretty nasty about it."

[crow]

As far as Fluffmutter went, this was already a real long speech from him. Not his longest, but definitely right up there. But then, he was the one being asked to explain, and it wasn't as though he could fall back on anyone else in this instance to be doing the talking for him. So talk he did.

"That sucks," Jack said. "We got the info from the tower, but... I guess you guys are all pegasi, huh."

[crow]

"Yeah, it'd be wild if you had an alicorn, but..." Maple shook her head. That really would be wild if an alicorn worked at the weather department like everyone else. It would, in fact, be a bit too wild. When was the last time anyone had met an alicorn in person? Anyone they knew, anyway? None of them could remember such an occasion.

"Yeah," said Fluffmutter.

But again the sense nagged at Lacuna, that this wasn't the whole story.

[crow]

That 'yeah', and something about the way Fluffmutter's expression looked... Something just didn't seem right. It was clear that he  wasn't completely comfortable talking about it, from the way he seemed to need to build up to it like he was doing...

She couldn't say for absolutely sure what it was, and she didn't want to press, and didn't want to drive him out of his comfort zone before he was ready to say whatever it was, but...

[crow]

In the end, her attempts to hide her curiosity proved to be futile. He made eye contact with her, and Lacuna knew in that moment that she had been utterly seen through in her intent. "Oh, um," she said. If she'd been noticed, she might as well ask, right? "It... It just looks like there's something else on your mind. Er, was there anything else that happened?"

"Mhm," said Fluffmutter, But he was quiet for a real long time this time.

[crow]

By now, Cocoa had returned with another batch of drinks. They could hear the sound of the blender or the juicer or whatever whirring away in the background while Fluffmutter spoke, but none of them paid it any mind.

Peppermint Swirl came back out with him, carrying a tray laden with little sandwiches. Another tray held a bunch of cute little fruit tarts, glazed with syrup. She was balancing them precariously, and they looked liable to tip over any minute...

[crow]

"We got it," said Lacuna and Jack in unison, already on the task. They staged an artfully coordinated rescue of both the platters of food, and rested them on the counter.

They took over the task of handing out snacks to every other pony present too, while Cocoa moved around refilling drinks from a big pitcher. It was a sizable one and the juice looked heavy, but at least Cocoa looked like he could handle it.

[crow]

It couldn't be any worse than having to juggle a big old coffee pot, could it? And he did that often enough on the job that he really wasn't the one anyone should be worrying about, at this point.

It was a nice interruption though. It eased the tension in the room a bit, which Lacuna was plenty glad for, given what it had been just moments prior. It wasn't that they were all tense so much as the mood was a bit... well, gloomy.

[crow]

It was hard to be festive when Fluffmutter was clearly troubled by something.

And the more he talked, the more it felt to Lacuna that his troubledness wasn't really irritation. She was sure the others had sensed it too, more or less. Everyone was friends here, even if not all of them went back to the early schooling years of their acquaintanceship. They all knew how to read each other's tells. And this wasn't an annoyed Fluffmutter.

[crow]

As far as his tells were concerned, irritation was actually usually pretty easy... and pretty readily apparent. One of the more visible Fluffmutter moods on him.

He wasn't happy with the way some things had gone at work today. This much was true. But the root of the problem wasn't this, and everyone who had been listening to him this whole time suspected it. They were all just waiting for him to clarify what the real problem was.

[crow]

When he did finally get all of it out, whenever that ended up being, they could offer sympathy or help as it was needed, and as they could offer it. But the anticipation wasn't easy either, right now.

No one ate, though the stuff that Pep had prepared for them all looked very tasty indeed. They were all waiting for Fluffmutter to collect his words and get out whatever it was that he wanted to say.

[crow]

It was probably a good thing that none of the foods that Pep had served would become less tasty for being left alone a bit longer... Which was to say that none of them were hot foods, anyway.

After what seemed like an eternity, Fluffmutter spoke again. "They saw I wasn't doing all that great on the phone," he said. This surprised absolutely no one, at least among their number, since they all understood Fluffmutter's personality well enough.

[crow]

Everyone nodded, but only to show that they were listening, and waited for him to continue.

"Well," he said. "They took me off the line and sent me out with some of our other staff to check it out on site. Someone tipped us off that it wasn't dangerous to go through, at least for the short term. Heads thought we should get an idea of what it is, just so we had something to tell all these folks that have been calling."