st. mungo's welcome desk | the answer man | self para
The morning was jittery or perhaps that was just Octavius. The first day of a new adventure was always s w e e t and fresh. Again, there was honey on his tongue that could not be stirred into mere words. So, no words did Gus form to express how he felt. No words did he form at all in the first half hour but a short good morning and a brief exchange of introductions with Lady Combs {whose name was honey in its own right}. She showed him the oughts and ought nots of the job in elegant efficiency. He listened in quiet content. Octavius heard yet he retained more than just instruction. Lady Combs herself quickly became an object of heartfelt interest. She took her job seriously, a persona of bloom and summer shone through her like a winking sun betwixt cloud and cloud again. She was the light at the desk of suffering and despair, not that everyone wanted a cheery welcome when they were missing limbs or growing new ones. That was something he quickly discovered. The troubled and the troublesome came through those doors on his first day at the welcome desk. Some, it would seem, were regulars to St. Mungo's by all fault of their own. A man that could not keep his hands away from his neighbors garden of the poisonous and the carnivorous entered to call Lady Combs by name. He needed no direction, he had been pointed many times afore. There were sorts of all kind and all kinds of sorts. Accidents both tragic and comical. Domestic disputes ending in oddities of magic. Those with dangerous jobs suffering overdue results. Then there was the incurables. The ones there to be told how to live slightly longer. Octavius could smell the sickness on them. But no matter the who or the what there was one thing that was constant {aside from Lady Comb and her cheerful glad tidings}. It was simply this: One and all came to St. Mungo's for answers. Directions, remedies, or treatments...they were all answers of a sort. Gus was at the Welcome Desk to provide the first of many answers. The most mundane of answers, the harmless facts that would shift only slightly with each case. Level, department, ward. They needed a where and he had the answer.
Octavius Pratchett preformed his task that first day. He was not, perhaps, as chipper as his Lady director but he put on a smile, more genuine in nature. They came to Gus but never saw him. Not like he saw them. He observed their panic or their resignation, content to keep the gates of Healers.