Aeowyn's Story Pt. 01

A note: This is a restart of Aeowyn, a story I published a couple of weeks ago. I tried to do a lot with it, and it fell apart quite quickly. It definitely wasn't ready for publication, although I think a few people were very supportive.

This version has some fundamental changes and hopefully will come across better. I'm no longer trying to link it to other stories I have written, and am trying out writing in the third person rather than the first person.

I hope you enjoy it, all feedback is welcome.

******

At twenty-eight, Aeowyn's had packed a lot into her short life. Though saying her life was short at 28 would be discounting the fact that to Aeowyn, her life seemed long. In fact, 28 years of breathing was the longest she had ever committed to anything.

She looked at herself in her bathroom mirror, another Monday morning had come to pass, another day of commuting for far longer than she wanted to a job she had lost all desire for within three weeks of commencing.

Her hair, as it did every morning, appeared to have migrated to one side of her head. Her eyes looked tired despite getting a good five hours of sleep. Her blue eyes had lost the sparkle they had when she was back at university.

How she longed for those carefree days, getting to be with her friends, partying into the early hours of the following day. Days when all she had to do was flash a little cleavage, give a little wink, and show a little bit of leg, and she would know she was not paying for a drink all night.

"What the hell happened to you, woman?" she asked herself, her reflection looking back at her with a look of defeat.

She smeared some toothpaste onto her toothbrush and then, toothbrush in her mouth, she stepped onto her bathroom scales. Shocked, she tossed the toothbrush from her mouth, hoping it would lessen the blow by a few pounds.

"That's the last fucking pizza I eat," she said, stepping off the obviously faulty device that always brought her nothing but misery with its evil lies.

She walked from her bathroom, naked, she lived alone, and this was what she did. Her feet making soft padding sounds on the wooden floors of her small flat. She looked up at the clock that hung from the hallway wall.

"Shit, I'm gonna be fucking late again," she thought as she rushed to her bedroom.

She lamented her own disorganization. While she had sworn black and blue that she would start to prepare her work clothes the night before work from now on, she did not account for nights out with Carmel and Katie, possibly the worst influences a girl could have on their lives.

Her procrastination had got the better of her. She was going to have to break out the emergency knickers, the ones she usually saved for her monthly requirement for comfort over sexiness. There would be no sexy, barely tolerated by human resources dress today. Instead, it would be the leggings and white round neck t-shirt, the attire usually worn by the menopausal witches from accounts.

She left her flat and started the mad sprint to the tube station. As always, the streets of London did not forgive those who had spent their evenings out till two am drinking gin and tonic and lamenting the lack of quality men within the M25.

She managed to navigate her way past the mother herding her 40 children to school, past the people trying to shove copies of a substandard newspaper into your hands with the latest news of drunken politicians getting done for DUI, and found herself at the station.

She took out her mobile phone so that she could pass through the contactless gates of doom, she held her phone to the reader. The gates refused to open.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," she muttered to herself, looking at her phone. Noticing that the app had logged itself out in the 6 nanoseconds since she had logged it in.

"Get a move on love, some of us have jobs to get to," a male voice said from behind her.

"Yeah, I'm sure McDonald's can wait a bit longer for your burger flipping skills fucker,": Aeowyn shouted back, her patience thin.

"Fuck you!" the voice came back.

Finally, she was through the barriers, just in time to see the lift to the platform close its doors. Swearing loudly, she rushed to the stairs, the 189 steps that led down to the train. She looked down at her feet, today was a good day to wear flats.

She worked her way down the stairs, snarling at the foreigners who refused to walk on the left like anyone with a brain would surely do. She pushed her way through the crowd walking against her, wishing she knew Moses trick for parting seas.

Eventually, she found herself onboard a train. People pushing their way on, squeezing into the deep level tin cans that made up London's public transport infrastructure. It astounded her how, despite the train being so obviously full, people still tried to play human Tetris, squeezing into the tiniest of gaps. Even though in 90 seconds, another tin can would be at the platform.

She managed to work her hands into her handbag, pulling out her phone. She plugged in her headphones and placed them in her ears. She started her music playing and closed her eyes.

"Fucking Mondays," she thought to herself, letting a small smile appear on her face.

******

Aeowyn's office, well her companies office, a place of acceptance, a place where everyone treated each other like family, with love, respect, and acceptance.

"Nice of you to join us, Bandalora," the stern voice said as Aeowyn walked into the Information Technology department, "another exciting weekend."

David Stephenson, the manager of Aeowyn's department, a perennial moaner who's only joy seemed to be making her life as miserable as possible.

"Good morning David," Aeowyn replied, forcing herself to smile at the odious little man. She wondered why it was that he wore that brown suit, surely it was older than he was.

"Barely morning," he replied, sarcasm dripping through his words.

Aeowyn looked around the office. 'Hot Desking' as it was known had been introduced twelve months ago to the wild applause of nobody. Management said it was to allow for the free-flowing of information as people could quickly move about from desk to desk and exchange ideas. Most saw it for what it was, managements way of hindering communities from building in the workplace, stopping the personalization of desks by individuals, and ridding the office of any warmth.

She found a seat next to Martin, an older man, perhaps in his fifties, slightly effeminate, maybe gay. Aeowyn was surprised that people seemed to avoid sitting near him, but then in a department where she was the only female, and Martin represented the only person over forty, perhaps it was not such a surprise.

"Ah, the other outcast," he said as Aeowyn slumped into the chair beside him, "another big weekend?"

Aeowyn theatrically rolled her eyes back and let out a mock groan, before giving the man a smile.

"I think I wanna die," she said as she set up her laptop.

"Don't do that," Martin said, "Imagine how pleased that would make David.'

Aeowyn laughed, "it's the only thing keeping me alive, is knowing how much pleasure he would get from my death."

"Holy shit what a night," the Australian female accent said from Aeowyn's right.

"You tried to kill me again, Carmel," Aeowyn said, watching as her best friend parked her bum on her desk.

Carmel worked in finance, worked being a very loose definition of what it was she actually did. Almost everyone, Carmel included, believed that her combination of fantastic body, deep blue eyes, and legs that went forever had worked more in her favor than her limited resume.

"Katie dropped that bombshell that she had this week off pretty late in the piece, no wonder she was going so heavy on the shots," Aeowyn said as she continued to set up her work area.

"Yeah," Carmel responded, "and then went on about her and Tom were about to go on a week-long bonkathon that would possibly cause her difficulties in walking."

"She's in love, leave her alone you bully."

"Oh, I said nothing to her," Carmel said, a sinister smile suddenly appearing on her face, "and I said nothing to Tom either."

"What did you do?" Aeowyn asked, her ears pricking up, knowing how deadly her Australian friend could be.

"I may have slipped a little something in his drink before the night was through."

"Oh, shit, not Rohypnol?"

"No, Jesus fuck, you wanna keep your voice down on that," Carmel looked around, ensuring no one was listening, "I'm saving the roofies for when I have you cornered, you little horn bag."

"Then what?"

"Well," Carmel said, crouching down beside me, so she was no longer speaking over the office, "do you remember that liquid laxative that Margie gave us, the one she said we should slip a couple of drops of into Daves drink?"

I looked at her, horrified at the evil that came out of this innocent-looking sweet girl.

"For fuck's sake Carmel," she said, crouching lower, "that stuff is supposed to be potent, how much did you give him."

Carmel smiled evilly, then stood up.

"Your new manager arrives this afternoon," she said, putting on her business voice, "shouldn't you be doing some work."

With one more giggle, she walked off. I watched her wiggle her arse past all the boys in my department, as always there was the sound of things being knocked over, and shy horny little whispers.

My first inclination was to call Katie to make sure Tom was ok. But then I realized that doing that would see the finger of blame land on me. So I decided that silence was probably for the best at this time.

"I hear he is young," Martin said all of a sudden.

"Who?" Aeowyn asked, suddenly awoken from her thoughts of Katie.

"The new manager," Martin replied, shocked that Aeowyn had no idea what he was talking about, "I hear he is some go-getter from the finance industry."

"Oh," Aeowyn said, feigning interest at yet another manager starting in her department, "No wonder Dave was wearing his clean tie this morning."

Aeowyn was finally logged in to her laptop, she plugged her headphones in and started to work. Her choice of music for Mondays was always eighties pop. As Duran Duran filled her ears, she began to read through her emails, the 40 that David sent each morning, she highlighted them all, right-clicked, and selected 'Mark as Read,' before promptly deleting them all. She then read Martin's email that he sent to her each morning, the one that summarised all of David's emails into a succinct format that gave her all the information she needed.

******

Aeowyn sat on the roof terrace, her coffee beside her, along with her sandwich, her book open as she read.

"You don't see many of those nowadays," a male voice said from just near Aeowyn, friendly in tone. She looked up to see a face she knew from her work area, but not someone she had ever spoken to.

"What's that?" she asked, putting her book down for a moment.

"A book," he said, smiling and pointing, "everyone seems to have electronic devices nowadays, Kindles, iPads, and all that stuff."

"I know what you mean," Aeowyn replied, I feel like books will suffer the same fate as vinyl and camera film.

"You mean they will only be used by people with beards who sip pumpkin spiced lattes in coffee shops with fancy names."

Aeowyn laughed at the man's joke, she picked up her book again and started to read.

"You stand out a bit downstairs, "the man continued, seemingly ignoring the fact she had gone back to reading.

"How so?" she asked, putting her book down once more.

"Well," the man said, sitting down beside her, "you bring a level of femininity to the office that no one else does."

"Oh," Aeowyn said, "I don't know Martin puts in a fair effort."

The man laughed, obviously knowing who Martin was.

"I'm Scott," the man said, smiling and extending a hand.

"Aeowyn," Aeowyn said, shaking the man's hand.

"Oh, I know who you are," the man said, "but the look on your face when I spoke to you just now told me you had no idea who I was."

"I've seen you around," Aeowyn said, now giving up on her book, and picking up her sandwich, unwrapping it ready to eat, "you work with the Autistic team, the software testers. Wait, are you?"

"Am I Autistic," Scott said, "well when you look at the basic symptoms, a lack of understanding of social cues, a focus on the minutiae, an inability to understand ambiguity, I'd say aren't we all Autistic?"

"Suddenly, I think I am," Aeowyn said, laughing.

"No," Scott said, taking out a container of food, "I represent the management side of the team. I'm responsible for their well being, ensuring they have everything they need, and they continue to develop the skills required for the job."

"They look like they enjoy it."

"They do," Scott said, "how about you, what is your role in this large conglomerate?"

"I'm an engineer," Aeowyn said, "I code in Java and Python, and have started to do some development for the mobile phone apps."

"Not many women in that industry."

"I know, hopefully over time that will change, until then it's just me flying the flag."

They laughed and then silently ate their lunch. The sun was shining, the low hum of traffic from the streets ten floors below filling the air.

******

"Oh, my God Wyn, you lucky cow, your new boss is fucking dishy as all fuck," Carmel's message was displayed on Aeowyn's computer screen as she logged back in from lunch.

She looked across to the test team area, Scott was moving around, smiling, warmth emanating from him. She knew she had seen him before, but she had not felt a pull to him. Despite seemingly only being a few years older than her, he looked soft around the belly, a dad bod, one that had never seen a gym, and his youth had been stripped away by a receding hairline. But talking to him had been easy.

"He's management, the enemy," Aeowyn typed back to Carmel.

"I wanna fuck the enemy," Carmel responded back a few moments later, getting a guffaw from Aeowyn.

As Aeowyn looked up over her monitor, she saw a throng of people gathering.

"Meeting," David said as he marched past Aeowyn, "chop-chop, there's a good girl."

Aeowyn stood and followed people to the large conference room, all her colleagues from IT gathered and found seats. Aeowyn managed to find a place next to Martin, David then sat beside her, much to her chagrin.

"Time to meet our new head," David said, smiling like a child at Christmas.

"He won't let you sack me you know," Aeowyn said to him, Martin let out a snort as he overheard.

"We'll see about that," David said, rubbing his hands together gleefully.

The room filled up, and then she saw a man walk up on stage. Aeowyn realized that Carmel had not been exaggerating. Stood before them all on the stage was an adonis, a man with perfectly groomed hair, a thick, luxurious beard, a suit that was tailored in a way that showed off his chiseled body. That body that was probably chiseled from granite, his eyes steel blue, piercing. He was tall, tanned, his movements assured and deliberate.

Aeowyn felt something dabbing at her chin. She snapped out of her trance and saw that Martin was dabbing a napkin on her chin.

"You appear to be drooling old girl," he said, sniggering at her.

"Fuck off," Aeowyn said in a whispered tone.

Aeowyn went back into her trance, she was the only one in the room with him. Music started to play; was that the stripper song from Magic Mike? She imagined the man on the stage dancing, his body moving seductively. She was now sat at the front, alone, her boss doing an elaborate dance for her, ripping the clothes from his beautiful body.

"And so if anyone has any questions, my door is always open," the man said, as Aeowyn was once again snapped from her trance.

"Oh dear," Martin said, looking at her, giving her cheek a prod with his finger, "I think we've lost this one."