Toby writes ...

Dear Grandmama,

Salutations and obeisances, as is meet in addressing the most elegant and puissant of my progenitors!

It wasn’t a great week at work -- at least partly my fault again, I’m afraid. I ate one of our clients on Tuesday.

I didn’t mean to, really, but he was being so annoying. I was just going to sigh, and when I opened my mouth for that deep breath that you need for the dramatic exhalation, I wasn’t careful about direction. After said (in fact, hasn’t stopped saying) that when you accidentally inhale someone, you simply blow them out again. I tried to tell him that swallowing was a reflex, but he was just more unkind –- said it was a reflex of the immature and death resistant, and us nestlings should be kept on a nursery plane until we learned basic manners. He has been so vexing and difficult since it happened, but I’ve managed to maintain respect without grovelling in the face of his scoldings.

In fact, if I did learn something useful in the week, it was how to maintain respect without grovelling. It annoyed him a lot, so I’ll try to make it my dominant response from now on.

The other partners were upset too, because it’s bad for business and because when the Old Man found out he scolded them as well as me. Happy got into one of her moods, stamping and shouting and waving her old pickaxe, and cursing me and the Old Man in turn (she didn't curse After, no one curses After, possibly because they can't quite think of anything worse than he already is). Ever reamed me out in Old Elvish, which I pretend not to understand. My clerk fell to shouting curses in dead languages, or that’s what he said they were; gibberish to me. Then he laughed and laughed, until he went transparent around the edges. So the office was subject to peals of uncanny laughter at the most inconvenient moments all week. Just another example of After's sense of humour – assigning the poltergeist to be my clerk.

Then, of course, the paperwork arrived from the Law Society of Über Cellestia: forms in triplicate, forms in quadruplicate, forms in so many copies that even a dwarven accountant would lose track. I had to write letters of apology, letters justifying my continued “good character”, letters explaining why it happened, and letters undertaking to put in place client protection systems to ensure it never happened again. Even the client – recovered and resurrected at our expense, of course – had to fill out forms and write letters.

We sat together in the library for most of the day putting check marks on lists, filling in blanks, drafting and re-drafting letters, and writing profound explanations of what images we saw in pictures of spilled ink. At one point I heard him muttering that he wished we’d never brought him back. Apparently he had found a warm and comfortable nook in one of the nether-hells, and the demons there were singularly nicer than the LSÜC officials who kept on asking him how he felt and whether he wanted to sue us.

The client had been happy as a tree-cat in a celery patch when we brought him back and explained we’d handle his defence for free. Only LSÜC would think that it improved matters, or protected the public, to drop enough paperwork on the poor man to make him long to return to an eternity in hell. And for this wonderful service, as Happy later reminded me, we lawyers pay handsomely.

By Thursday I had to get out, in spite of the piles of waiting work, so I joined the gang at Allo Jo’s for lunch.

Jo was cursing up a storm because a table of werewolves had reverted to wolf when the dumb waiter brought the just barely dead cow they had ordered. Jo’s such a stickler for staying human in her place, though she pretends it isn’t a species thing.

“Language,” she says, “if you want to eat here, I want you in a form where we can understand each other. You get a room full of weres in their non-primate forms, and I don’t care how cuddly they look or feel, if they can’t communicate with us or each other. You’ve heard that there’s going to be a public safety law – about time, after that fire at Upstairs Al’s –- some fool of a were-salamander reverted to red-hot form to enjoy the flambéd sea-cucumber up close and personal, without untying his napkin."

"Poof! lots of smoke and confusion, lots of panic because nobody can understand Al’s directions, lots of barbeque that isn’t on the menu. Not much left of the building, either –- it’ll be Basement Al’s when he reopens. Well, law or no law, that’s not going to happen here. You want to eat here, you got to be able to speak good Briarish.”

So Polly and McLaren and Pearl came in human, Broad switched from bear to big-foot, and McLaren dropped Minsky into her purse. (Don't get me started on McLaren's purse.) Jo doesn’t mind me, because of course I speak Briarish, and because I’m so beautiful. Maybe it has something to do with the last run-in she had with the Old Man, too – nobody wants to listen to another of his lectures on respecting other species if they can help it. He’s so long-winded and he has such wonderful teeth!

We settled down to decide what to eat. For me it was easy -– I just pointed to the werewolf table (they were all back in primate form, looking quite elegant and subdued) and said that I’d have what they were having. McLaren and Pearl argued over ordering sushi. Pearl was afraid she’d revert to selkie when the wasabi fumes went up her nose; McLaren was just hungry for non-fired fish, and she has no trouble staying primate. At least, most of the time; and she refuses to tell us what it is that would trip her. Broad and Polly ordered the fruit and nuts tub.

Then we got to talking . . .

[more to come here]

With greatest love and respect,

Yours, Toby