Amelia Layne
September 23, 2020 10:54 PM
At Work by Amelia Layne
Working in Potions was often assumed to be a solitary sort of undertaking, perfect for the introverted, the silent, the grumpy, and the generally unsociable. Perhaps, in some places, that assumption was correct, but after a year’s apprenticeship under her uncle, Amelia had no evidence to that effect.“Amelia!”
After a year of working in close quarters with him, she could tell from Geoffrey’s tone alone that he was both confused and annoyed. That wasn’t good. In here, it was generally best if her uncle knew and understood everything going on at any given time, and it was also much pleasanter for his assorted minions (Amelia and the employees) if he was pleased with how it all was going.
“Ten seconds!” she called out, estimating from the amount of bright magenta sand left in the miniature hourglass in front of her. Estimating such things with a high degree of accuracy was one of the first skills she’d had to master here before she’d been allowed to do anything more interesting than sterilizing and labelling bottles for sale.
She spent those ten seconds in a silent, furious battle of wills and hand gestures with Michael the Cute A-Hole, who did not want to take over the next stage of the potion Amelia was working on. She couldn’t blame him for this, at least – it was a fiddly potion; she retained the right to blame him for any and everything else, but not that – but she didn’t have time for sympathy or fairness, and the implication finally that she would light something on fire and toss it straight into the space where he was dicing roots worked to pull him away from the mindlessness of the roots and over to the mindlessness of carefully counting out eight clockwise stirs, then turning the little hourglass over again, and then….
Well, as her uncle said – if it had been easy work, anyone could have done it.
“Here,” she said, ducking around a tall set of shelves full of filled bottles to find her uncle. “What’s up?”
Geoffrey Layne looked up from the log book in his hands, greyish-green eyes still narrowed in a frown. He was only in his mid-forties, but a liking for tinkering, experimenting to find the next new thing, had resulted in some premature greying; this was not the real reason Amelia had no interest in that kind of thing, not when there was plenty of money to be won just by selling what people needed after sourcing the components more cheaply than the nearest competitor, but it certainly didn’t help her opinion of the idea.
“The ceiling,” he said. “Look at this. Did you unpack this?”
Amelia took the book and frowned, too, at the relevant page. “I didn’t sign it,” she said. “And…it looks like nobody signed it, actually. So that definitely wasn’t me.”
She said this with confidence. She liked not being shouted at, and failing to document everything properly was a really good way to get shouted at around here – properly so. People in potions tended to be perfectionists, because if they weren’t, stuff blew up, and even if they didn’t, people could still get hurt. This was bad for ethics and bad for business.
“I remember you were unpacking some orders that day,” said Geoffrey. “And you did sign the page before this one.”
“Yeah,” said Amelia, checking the date – from a week previously – and thinking back as best she could. “Yeah, but I only did, like, half the unboxing that day before you sent me off with whatever it was, uh, that client ordered.” Amelia frankly thought it was a bit silly, the contortions they went to to avoid discussing customers and especially a customer who was related to them, but that was policy.
“Oh. Yes. Do you have any idea what the hell she does with any of this?”
Amelia suspected a test. “The correct answer is no,” she said. “But the true answer is also no. I don’t even know what she’s buying.”
“Wood and bark, this time. Populus tremula and Populus alba. From wand-quality trees, even – that costs extra. No idea what she’d be doing with either of those, I know a few uses in certain medical potions, but….”
“Maybe the mysterious kids are sick or something,” said Amelia, shrugging. She was not really too concerned with why Alicia wanted a bunch of aspen and white poplar barks. “As long as the gold shows up, right?”
“You’re entirely too mercenary sometimes,” said her uncle virtuously. “So you’re sure you didn’t see this box?”
Amelia frowned. “If I do, it’s – you know when you think you remember something just because someone is telling you that you might?”
“Yes. You’ll have to practice your memory drills more. It’s not helpful.”
Amelia made a face of reluctant agreement and looked again at the page. “Am I reading that right? Veela hair?” she asked. “Why did you order that? Planning one of your research projects?” asked Amelia with a half-smile.
“Not really, no. Too expensive. I just looked it up after I got that order request – new client, which makes this even more of a headache.”
Amelia glanced at the name on the form. Arthshosen, Percival. Not a regular. “He hasn’t signed either,” she noted. “Not delivered yet?”
“That’s the problem,” said Geoffrey irritably, and Amelia winced. Not good. Heads were going to roll when her uncle figured out who hadn’t signed the order properly. “I hope the stuff isn’t as volatile in a container as some people think it can be in work….”
“I’ve never heard of it being used in potions at all,” said Amelia.
“It’s not used often,” said Geoffrey. “Obviously it’s a bit, ehh, difficult procuring it – they’re considered Beings, or whatever the equivalent is in other countries, so it’s not legal to obtain it unless you can convince a random veela to donate some. There’s not a lot of research – what there is seems to have overlap between transfigurative potions and mind-altering potions, which makes sense, I suppose. Volatile, though. Veela have a way of setting things on fire when they do the transformation thing.”
“Another thing that probably makes it hard to procure,” observed Amelia, and she thought her uncle almost smiled, albeit only almost.
“No doubt,” he agreed. “Be grateful that I’d have to listen to my parents and possibly your mom if I sent you off in procurement. It’s a hard job, even when you’re not dealing with fire-wielding lizard-bird people.”
“Gratitude experienced,” said Amelia.
“Very good. Get back to work, then. Jason! Were you….” And with that, he went off to interrogate someone else, and Amelia went back to rescue Michael the Cute A-Hole from difficult work.
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Amelia Layne
At Work
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