Life in The City Morning (1)

The first in an irregular series of posts that will coalesce into a short story set in The City Morning, which is a setting I’m building for role-playing games to be inside of. 

The alarm clock went off at the usual time: too early. I really wanted to throw it across the room, but the last time I did that the Quicksilver battery inside it broke, leaking the magical fluid all over my rug. The rug which to this day requires feeding. At least it’s a pretty good guard for my apartment, when I’m not home. Nobody really expects a guard rug, but they probably should. She eats two things: corn flakes and blood. Usually not at the same time, which is convenient; she gets the corn flakes I bring home and the blood from intruders. Most of the time, the intruders are mice and little whatevers, but I live far enough down from the Lighted Streets that we occasionally get an intruder from deeper below, some kind of otherworldly creature or maybe just an unfortunate case of too much chaos magic. Ruggy gets them all, drains them dry, and leaves a little dessicated thing for me to find when I get home. Yay.

Living in the shaded zone is like that. We’re far enough down from the sun that there’s plenty of raw magic, Arcanum they call it, just ambient in the air that Ruggy keeps herself animated and I don’t need to replace batteries on my stuff all that often. So, cheap rent, low cost of living, but the usual problems that come from living somewhere you can just get eaten by a goblin or something on the streets. Not a ton of City Guards down here in the shades, but we take care of each other the best we can.

Right. Morning in the City Morning. My head hurt, my ears were still ringing from last nights show. I’m the drummer, we’re going to make it big someday and then I’ll quit my 9 to 5, but for now: my day job is supporting me, Squid (guitars) and Tre (bass, vocals). We don’t have a real producer yet, but we do have a pretty great sound. How many bands these days have real drums? Not bloody many, I’ll tell you- the drum devices and synths sound pretty good on the radio, but in person? Nothing beats a real drummer. I hope, at least. So: I work, and I let Squid and Tre split the merch sales and gig money.

They live together deeper down, and don’t have a guard rug or anything. They’ve got each other though, too cute honestly. Punk band X love triangle is probably the second oldest story in the book. Boy meets boy, boy loves boy, boy starts a band with boy and other boy. Other boy steals boy away from first boy. Fine, whatever, me and Squid were never all that serious, and I could tell as soon as he met Tre that sparks were going to fly. I’ve got Ruggy.

Shower, shave, put on my civvies. It feels like I’m dressing up, pretending to fit in, probably because I am. Yeah, I grew up in the Lighted Streets, with parents who make more money than I do; went to a good school, and have all kinds of potential, according to Mom, but I just never really fit in. First time on a drum kit, I knew what I really wanted to do with my life. She probably regrets buying it for me. I mean, we had an isolation charm, so I could bang away and practice without bugging anyone else in the condo (or the neighbors), so I don’t think she really understood how far into it I was getting, until too late. She figured it was just another hobby, until I dropped out of college (technically on leave from the school, but that’s just to keep Mom happy- I’m never going back) to really get into the band. If you’re keeping score, Dad isn’t really in the picture. I get birthday cards.

So here I am, half of a college degree in thaumato-finance (just as boring as it sounds- moving money around with spells, a career that somehow takes the awesomeness of magic and sucks the fun out of it like Ruggy sucks blood out of wandering chaos blobs), a day life with a job that keeps me and Ruggy fed, and a night life as a rock and roll drummer. At work, in the sunlight they call me Thomas, and in the band and with my real friends, I’m Fern.

Two lives, both taking full time attention, and only four hours of sleep a night most nights. Thank fuck for drugs. A couple of drops of Focus and I’ll be fine. Rock and roll, right?

Day job is putting some of that magical career training to use. Big finance company, I’m basically a plumber, but for money. Keep track of different accounts, which bonds and equities are owned by which partner or on what account, add up numbers and make reports every week. I saw this computer thing last month that would make my job so much easier, it’s wild. I probably should learn how to use it, when management figures out that one person with a computer can do the job of ten regular guys, they’ll buy the computer and fire everyone. I guess that’d be the sign that I need to really focus on the music, hey?