At work the following morning, I was greeted first thing by my best friend, Elanius.  Elanius, aka Lani or El or “whatever I felt like” calling them, was the only person I had ever met who knew about both me and Kat but didn’t care much and still liked to hang out with me specifically.  Elanius was agender and therefore less bothered by me having a female alter persona than some people and was a gargoyle so the idea of telepathically communicating with others also was pretty normal to them.

“I have started a new project,” Elanius announced when I got to my desk.  “I had this idea of creating a wall hanging for that wall that’s been bugging me.  I’m still debating between patterns in the knit or just alternating colors – maybe demi colors?”

I put my messenger bag down and began carefully setting everything in its precise location.  “And this is easier than painting the wall?”

“It’s more fun.”  They blinked at me with wide eyes.  “It’s math.  What’s not fun about that?”

I mean, I could agree with that.  I understood the enjoyment of having everything neat and orderly and math tended to just make sense, unlike the rest of the world sometimes.  Elanius had promised to teach me how to knit, but Kat had laughed so hard at my first efforts I’d gotten very flustered and we’d kind of decided to put it off for now.

“Guess what!  Did you know that male lions lose their manes when neutered?”  Elanius went on, pulling out a stack of forms.  “They look like female lions.  Weird, right?  Never realized they’d lose their manes like that.  I guess they’re just for attracting the ladies, huh?  Meanwhile most humans are the other way around – it’s the women with the long hair that supposedly attracts the men.”  They mused over this for a bit.

I finished squaring up my desk nicely, put on my work gloves, and then glanced over, raising an eyebrow.  “Are you suggesting men should have long hair – manes – and women shouldn’t?”

Elanius shrugged.  “It works for some men, right?  Some ladies – and men – flock to the guys with long hair.  Maybe they’re like female lions and want a male lion who’s showy.”

“Uh-huh.”  I flipped on my computer.  “I don’t think most people think like lions, Lani.”

“Oh, now, there’s where you’re wrong, my dear Ezra.  There’s a lot of similarities between people and animals!  Many species are monogamous, for example, but there are also a lot of animals that may have multiple mates or may never see a partner again and just keep moving on from one to the next.  Foxes, for instance, are usually monogamous but sometimes will have multiple partners, even of the same gender.  A huge percentage of animals worldwide participate in gay activities, actually.”  Elanius adopted a stern, professional-teacher type look.  “We even have animals that are basically asexual, like pandas, and some that are fraysexual, like cheetahs, who lose interest in partners after they stick around for too long.  Meanwhile, a number of fish are trans or can change their gender, like clownfish do if the breeding female dies – a male will turn into a female.  If you look, you may find there’s a lot of similarities between people and animals.  Including LGBTQ+ people!”

I hadn’t meant to disagree that animals didn’t correlate, just that I didn’t think people specifically looked for long hair as an attractive partner.  At least when it came to men.  Probably.  Maybe.  I had no idea.  To be honest, I generally took Elanius’s word for it because they knew a lot about a lot of random things so if they said some people found long hair attractive in guys, just like with male lions, it probably was a thing.

“Kat and Leah broke up,” I murmured kind of quietly, as Elanius lapsed into silence after their speech.  Thankfully they were good with changes of subject and didn’t care if we hopped around a bit – actually, they usually volunteered random topics, too, if some fact they hadn’t told me yet popped into mind.

“Aww, that’s too bad.”  Elanius looked over at me sympathetically.  “Is Kat doing okay?”

“I think so.  She was mad, though, because Leah kept asking to see her instead of me.”

“Oh.”  They made a face.  “Okay, yeah, I can see her point.  And yours, too, don’t worry.  I know how you feel about it.”

The clock chimed and I heard some voices down the hall, signaling that the people who didn’t arrive early – aka everyone else – were starting to arrive and the offices would be open soon.

Still, Elanius and I were often able to talk some while we completed forms, if we weren’t directly helping someone.  Elanius was fluent in German and I was interested in learning, so they kept giving me more vocabulary words and verb conjugations and so on to help me start mastering the language while I worked.  Or sometimes they’d just talk about random facts – they were full of random facts and honestly it kind of fascinated me how they knew bits and pieces about everything – or we’d talk math, knitting, cooking, or even cleaning.  Okay, that was more my passion than theirs, but at least they listened when I enthused about how my power washer had cleaned the bricks on the back of the townhouse and hadn’t seemed so amused at my random interest as Kat had.

My first customer of the day turned out to be a repeat offender.  Elanius offered me a sympathetic glance when the man reached my desk and I had to mask a tiny sigh of impending frustration as I greeted him.

“Good morning.  What are you filing today?”  Whatever it is, it’ll be a mess, I remarked wryly in my head.

He glared at me, apparently still incapable – after nearly four months in his new job – of understanding that making enemies with the clerk was not the way to go.  I could stall his filings permanently if I felt like because he always made mistakes and I was totally justified in rejecting it.  Oh, and I didn’t even have to explain why I rejected it.  Him being all upset with me wasn’t doing him any favors and he still seemed unable to comprehend this.

“Got to get this response in by noon today.”  He slapped a document on my counter, then watched impatiently as I pulled it over to me with a pen and started carefully flipping through it.  “Can’t you just stamp it and let me go?  I have to prepare for court.”

I stopped on page 6, then reached for my reject stamp, stamped it firmly across the front page, and then handed it back with a smile.  “I’d suggest double-checking your formatting,” I told him with a fake smile.  “Might want to do that before noon?”

The man groaned extra loudly just to let me know how annoying I was being.  “What, is this the only thing you have power over in your life?  Going on a little power trip by denying a perfectly good filing?”  He grabbed the document, crumpling it up in his fist.  “You’re just a lowly clerk, stop trying to pretend like you’re more than that!  What even is wrong with it?  Just tell me that so I can fix it!”

Elanius sat back in their chair, trying to mask a smile but not even bothering to hide their interest.

Ooh, idiot’s going to get a telling-off, Kat announced in a gossipy tone, happy about the dressing-down this idiot was about to get.

I leveled the man with a stare.  “There are specific standards for every document filed with the court or with the city.  Those standards are provided to you, in detail, both in writing and on our website.  They were chosen by the people of this city through their elected officials.  I do not have any control over the standards set, but I was hired specifically to enforce them.  That is my job.  It is my job to make sure that anything filed with the court or city follows the standards set, and if something doesn’t comply with those standards, it is rejected.  It is your job to read the standards and comply with them.  I am not a teacher, I am not your mentor.  I am hired by the city to make sure that anything filed is only approved when it complies with the standards set by the city and its laws and regulations.”  I gave him an icy smile.  “It is not my job to educate you or to read those standards to you when they are already provided.  Now,” I added, but still in the same tone, “you might discover that being polite to a city or court clerk will get you further because maybe then I would tell you what’s wrong with it.  Maybe I’d tell you how you can fix it.  But I’m under no obligation to do so and because you have repeatedly refused to be civil to any of us, I see no reason to hinder your learning process by giving you the information for free instead of having you learn how to actually look for what you need to know.  If you can’t manage to be civil to the people just doing their jobs, don’t expect us to bend over backwards to help you do your job more efficiently.  It’s your responsibility to learn how to do that, not ours to teach you.  But might I suggest that you check the rules listed on our website?  They will give you all the information you need, and then just make sure you comply with those rules, and I’m sure you’ll be fine.”  I smiled one more time.  “Please have a good day.”

He had not enjoyed my lecture, but the other clerks all had and were making no secret about it.  He glanced at them, then back at me, clearly fuming.  He might have even been willing to argue further, but there was a bailiff standing a few feet away from him and already had her hand on her weapon, eyeing him like she was just waiting for him to cause a scene.

The bailiffs worked with us on a daily basis.  They were our allies and they weren’t about to let an idiot like him start something and put any of us in danger, and not just because it was their job to keep us safe but because we were essentially their coworkers, all trying to keep this place running efficiently.  If this guy didn’t figure out to be nice to the court staff soon, he was going to see it start to affect his career, because I’d already heard a judge grumble about how he treated the judge’s personal clerk and some of the other courtroom staff.

He finally decided retreat was the best option here and stormed off, still clearly angry, but at least he wasn’t stupid enough to get himself thrown out of the courthouse a few hours before whatever he had to be in court for.  Yeah, that wouldn’t go over well.  I suspected he was headed down that road eventually, but at least he managed to avoid it for now.

“Nice one,” Elanius whispered as their next customer stepped up.  “Remind me to buy you a donut later.”

I shook my head a little, amused, then turned my attention back to filling out a form the city needed for some new traffic light.

Ah, I like it when you get feisty, Kat observed affectionately.  It’s nice to see you standing up to people and telling them off.  Especially people who dismiss you like that and think that you’re not ‘good enough’ to talk to them because you’re a clerk and he’s a fancy lawyer.  You’re probably smarter than him and could be a lawyer if you wanted, you just keep refusing to try.

I rolled my eyes.  I like this job, and I don’t really want to do the courtroom stuff.  I’ve gotten enough of a look at it from doing this to know I don’t want to do that, so no thank you.

I knew she felt like I wasn’t living up to my potential because I had the brains, according to her, to go to college and even get an advanced degree, but I just didn’t feel like it was necessary.

I didn’t need a super well-paying job.  I had a decent one I liked and I happened to think that enjoying my job was more important than getting a job that paid a lot but I hated.  Besides, we already had two incomes anyway, so if we wanted to buy a house or something expensive someday, it shouldn’t be a huge problem.  I didn’t need fancy cars or stuff and while Kat had nicer dresses and shoes and purses and things like that to wear to the club, she paid for it herself and our incomes easily covered rent, bills, food, clothes for both of us, gas for the car when needed, and anything else we might want, with enough left over to save.  I simply didn’t see a point in trying to go to school to get a degree for a job that might pay better.  I didn’t need something that paid better.