Éamonn Row
November 22, 2020 4:57 PM
To whom it may concern. [Ema] by Éamonn Row
OOC: Enjoy a periph to a periph. Because that's what's up. BIC:
The letter was written on formal stationary with departmental heading, as it ought to be, although Éamonn did worry a bit that he was being pompous by doing so. After all, he didn't know this woman, and he didn't know how she was going take this. Still, with the sort of recommendation he'd received, he'd be foolish not to at least try to reach out. Besides, after they'd had to fire Ray and Dakota the previous month, the entire department had been struggling to keep up and if this woman was everything he'd heard about, then he was sure she'd be an excellent addition to the team.
Ms. Ema Skies,
My name is Éamonn Row, and I am writing to you upon the suggestion of Biddy Row. She wrote an absolutely glowing recommendation on your behalf and if half of it is true, I wanted to take the opportunity to introduce myself. I am an official for MACUSA, within the Department of International Magical Cooperation. Most recently, we've been working on a reexamination of the Statute of Secrecy, which is where my aunt's recommendation comes in. My understanding is that you have experience with exactly the sort of grassroot organizations we are hoping to make connections with. Our aim is to survey magical and muggle communities and conduct a study of how blended communities - that is, communities where magical and muggle individuals live in mixed residential areas - function and how the Statute of Secrecy may best be updated or adapted to suit their needs.
We were recently in the unfortunate position of needing to let go of a few staff members, and we are currently in need of a liaison to our partnering organizations. The ideal candidate would be someone with managerial and clerical skills sufficient to lead and oversee various related projects, as well as communications, with these organizations, and someone who is willing and able to travel at times to visit them. Additionally, a critical mind capable of conducting some of the survey work themselves is key. If Biddy's recommendation is true, you may be exactly the person we've been looking for. If you are interested, I'd love to find a time that we can sit down together for an informational interview, giving us each the opportunity to ask the other some questions and see whether we'd like to further proceed with the possible hiring process.
Éamonn listed some dates and times he would be available, as well as his Floo extension. He selected dates far enough out that Ms. Skies would be able to both receive and reply to his letter, as he was a busy man with little interest in sitting in his office hoping to be called upon.
I understand that you are currently living in Laos, and that scheduling may be challenging. Please let me know either way whether you are interested and available so that I may be best prepared and available at those times.
I recognize that this approach is unconventional, and I hope you don't mind my unsolicited contact. In all the years I have worked with MACUSA, and all the years my aunt worked in government relations before retiring, I've never seen her recommend anyone, even her own sons, and Killian in particular would make an outstanding state worker if he chose to. I'm not sure how you and Biddy came to know each other, but she does seem to think highly of you, and I hope for the pleasure of meeting you myself.
Sincerely,
Éamonn Row
Department of International Magical Cooperation
Law and Policy Division
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Éamonn Row
To whom it may concern. [Ema]
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Éamonn Row
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Ema Skies
November 25, 2020 9:29 PM
Wrong person by Ema Skies
Today was not a good day. It had started being a bad day the night before, when - after lying awake worrying about things with Killian for half the night - Ema had eventually fallen asleep only to have the same recurring stress dream she’d had for the last two years. She kept trying to tell herself that she was over that. And in many ways she was. She had closed that book, moved on and regarded herself as well shot of the jerk. She just resented the fact that, if that was so, why had her subconscious not got the memo? Why did it continue to think that this was the greatest fuel it could provide for her stress? She wasn’t sure she really wanted it to throw out new and interesting variations featuring Killian, of course, but why did it actually have to do this at all? Like, hey, I see you’re worried – wanna worry in your sleep too? Why did it want to fuel her stress, the wretched traitor? Anyway, starting her day off tired and resentful of a certain person’s ability to still creep into her thoughts was not the best, and that was before she’d run into his best friend in the supermarket during her lunchbreak. Well, ‘run into’ was perhaps a strong word. She had seen Chris without him seeing her, and so had done what any sensible and mature adult who was over their issues would do, and hidden in the cookie aisle until he’d moved out of sight.Now she was sitting in the restroom at work, trying not to cry in frustration with herself for being such a failure. She was pretty sure that a solid ninety percent of these emotions were PMS. In some ways, it did help to know that. It let her know that she wasn’t completely pathetic or actually losing her mind, and it made it easier to tell herself that everything she was feeling was going to go away soon. It just didn’t mean she wasn’t actually feeling it right now though. She was debating calling Killian a few days early, because getting out of her own head would help, and after their last call she was more and more able to trust that her worries didn’t match up to reality.
She was interrupted from her moping by a sharp tap at the window. Seriously? She knew owls were supposed to deliver right to the person addressed but some of them took that way, way too literally. But sure enough, she peered out from the stall to find one insistently tapping on the glass.
“Jeez, chill,” she muttered, opening the window for it. It nudged at her fingers expectantly whilst she untied the letter. “I don’t have treats. I’m in the restroom,” she pointed out, though it only seemed to understand the non-treat-having part of that sentence, and gave a rather ruffled and huffity hoot in her face before flapping off.
She unfurled the letter, hoping for some distraction even though she could see it was not from Killian. It was awfully weight and official looking, and indeed the headed paper confirmed this. Her immediate reaction was the same as any decent and law abiding person’s upon seeing an official piece of government paper, in that her stomach dropped out as she panickedly considered whether she might have accidentally broken several laws without realising it.
She had not (that anyone knew of).
She read the letter three times. It had not made much sense the first time and it continued not to do so. In fact, the first wave of confusion was turning into mounting dread instead. What was this?? What???? This could not be real or happening. She thought back to the conversation with Killian. I told her about you… She already loves you… But she couldn’t know enough about her to recommend her for any kind of job. Heck, Killian didn’t know enough about her to do that. Which was presumably part of why someone was writing to her with something that sounded way, way above her paygrade - whoever had recommended Ema for anything that include the words ‘managerial’ and ‘lead’ and ‘oversee’ clearly didn’t know the first thing about where she was in her career.
Somewhere along the line, one of more people had got the wrong ends of several different sticks and now… Now there were all these people who thought she was someone she absolutely wasn’t, and that would have been a crushing enough look in the mirror if it was just a random mistake, but it was someone whose good impression of her actually mattered a great deal. Killian’s mother was going to be so very disappointed in the reality of her.
She gave into the rising urge she’d had all day and burst into tears. Maybe if she just cried out all her emotions, the stupid letter would start making sense or disappear. She wondered if she could actually really lose control so thoroughly that that would happen… Unfortunately, even if it did, it was unlikely to take these problems away with it. Which of them had started it? Had Killian talked her up too much or had his mother just got some random idea to… she hesitated to use the word ‘interfere’ but it was interfering. She felt a slight stab of anger. She hadn’t asked any of them to do any of this. Mrs. Row hadn’t needed to stick her neck out for Ema or interfere in her life, and create this situation where one or more of them was going to end up embarrassed by the results. She had been just fine being a big mess of a semi-adult, and quite happy to stay that way. Except now it wasn’t going to be good enough. Whose side was Killian going to be on here? Would he be mad her? She didn’t want to make him end up stuck in the middle, that was awful…
She fiddled with her watch, switching it to show her the time in Arizona. It was late enough that Killian should be done with class, but probably not so late that he would be asleep. Part of her just wanted to curl up into a ball in a corner and cry and not have to talk to anyone, and her brain was whispering that this was not a state in which she should inflict her company on anyone, let alone someone she wanted to continue liking her. But she also knew that if Killian was feeling like this, she would want him to call her, even if the problem was nothing to do with her. She suspected the letter was not going to start making sense by itself, and the thought of sitting alone with it, knowing he was asleep and unreachable, was more scary than trying to get him to make it make sense. Or to at least reassure her that he wasn’t mad, even if his mother was going to retract her good opinion.
She flicked her watch back to her own timezone. There was a call booked for one-thirty. She knew this, because she had written up the Floo schedule for the week (because that was the sort of thing she did round here, not ‘lead teams’). That was twenty minutes away. It wouldn’t be a long chat, but hopefully she should get some sense out of the situation.
“Homenum revelio,” she whispered, managing to get the words out between sniffles, and focussing on the floor she was on – the route between her and the Floo room. No one. Thank Merlin. She moved quickly nonetheless, not wanting to be caught with a tearstained face.
She wiped her eyes, even though they still wanted to cry. Properly speaking, she should calm all the way down before attempting to make a floo call, but time was of the essence, and she’d managed a spell alright… And she knew Killian’s extension number, and she wasn’t crying that hard and- and she just needed to talk to him. Now. Still with her breath somewhat catching, still with the occasional sniffle escaping, she chucked a pinch of floo into the fireplace, and stuck her head in…
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Ema Skies
Wrong person
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Ema Skies
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5