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Irina Mladen knows how to throw her authority around when she chooses. Which is precisely why she prefers floral sundresses to the jeans and blazer favored by her predecessor: normally, it’s hard to be too intimidating in a sundress. On multiple occasions, she’s caught an unnerved flash of thought from her wizards, wondering how is she that scary in a sundress , I’m never looking at them the same again! Privately, she likes the idea of being a champion for intimidating sundresses. She’s never been much for looking “like the big boys” even though she’s probably considered to be playing with them. (She does own a pantsuit, largely because she figures if her everyday wear is a dress, she should wear something different when she needs to “dress up”.)
She’s a single mother--of her child, her canary, and her planet. Sometimes one or the other feels incredibly lonely, but usually they’re anything but. After all, she has a team of Seniors and Advisories helping her mother the Earth, and a team of the same (as well as a handful of friends) more than willing to help her mother Sasha. It may take a village to raise a child, but sometimes the village feels incredibly judgmental . She knows the wizardly politics are unavoidable--she’s a Planetary of an inhabited world, after all, and is regularly criticized for everything from the way she handles her hotheaded younger wizards to the way she handles her hotheaded Continentals. (Sometimes the two feel remarkably similar.) She just wishes people would let her raise her child in peace . Yes, she regularly brings Sasha to wizardly functions. Have you tried to find a sitter on the inevitably short notice she’s given (if any) that she’ll have to leave? If she had to find a sitter every time she needed to pop out for a consultation, she’d never be able to afford it and she’d never be able to spend time with her child. The typical Planetary does not have great odds on a long life, so even though she’s bound and determined that she will be there to see her child grow, she’ll be damned if she’ll let anyone begrudge her as much time with him as possible. Yes, soon he’ll be old enough to have opinions on being whisked off halfway around the world, but for now he’s a very well-behaved child and rarely causes disruptions. They’ll cross that bridge when they come to it. Don’t even get her started on bringing a nonwizardly child to such things on a sevarfrith planet. He’s barely a year old! Who are we to predict his wizardly tendencies? Some wizards are incredibly snobbish about their secrecy, she thinks.
It’s a rare quiet afternoon, and Sasha is in his playpen across the room while she’s tucked into a sunny corner with her laptop, tap-tap-tapping away. After talking to everything from the planet on down, it’s soothing to talk to plain old nonwizardly computers--as long as you couch your requests in terms they understand, they won’t talk back or take offense. She pats her laptop fondly, running a finger over the biteless apple. It took some work, both purely mechanical as well as wizardly, to convince her manual functions that no, they didn’t need to interfere with the nonwizardly partition of her hard drive. That was there on purpose. She needs to be able to be sure that any successes or failures as a software developer are purely her own, and have nothing whatever to do with the spirit of wizardry that occasionally decides to inhabit the rest of her computer. She finishes commenting her latest additions and hits ‘run’, grinning a little to herself. Sometimes when she’s let her consciousness drift, she’s caught flashes of thought from a few of her various charges complaining about the Spirit of Wizardry’s snark. She doesn’t often hear from the peridexis--Planetary or not, she’s too far past latency for its comfort, usually--but occasionally when she boots into her WizBook partition the message center pops up with a cheeky “System is not being utilized to its full potential! Upgrades available. Click for more info.” She can’t imagine what it must be like for her younger practitioners.
The program executes without throwing any of the errors it’s thrown before. Across the room, Sasha coos, and the yellow canary chirps back at him. Sasha giggles and burbles, and the bird whistles approvingly. They continue on in this manner for a full minute. Irina watches this with half a smile, wondering about connections that not even the Speech can help interpret.
The terminal chimes softly and produces a string of gibberish. Something’s not right, still. Her phone beeps a reminder from where it’s plugged in next to her desk and she sighs. She adds a note to the top page of her legal pad (half-filled with tiny printing) and restarts the computer. There’ll be time for troubleshooting tomorrow.
She sighs again, running her hands through her almost-too-long hair. (She should probably get that trimmed again soon, before it gets long enough to be actively a nuisance instead of just hint at being one.) She stops her fingers right at the ends of her hair and allows herself one sharp noise of frustration. Two of her most promising practitioners--a mentor and mentee in the Invitational, no less--would shortly be appearing on her doorstep. Just the memory of their “duel” the night before is enough to make her roll her eyes. Though admittedly it had been an impressive show of power, “showy” was about all that could be said for it. A duel like that, over such an inane thing, and in a public place , no less…! She privately hopes (despite the increase in entropy it might cause) that Nita will ream both of them a new one, even after Irina is done with them. She deserves it, after being subjected to such a ridiculous display of what happens when teenage ignore their brains in favor of...other organs. Irina is just glad she never had to fight that particular battle herself. ‘Asexual’ is a rather recently popular development in the English language, but she’s had the words in the Speech for far longer: she went looking for them. Her battle or no, the last thing she wants to do right now is have to deal with hormonal teenage boys instead of sensible young wizards.
She rubs her temples briefly in a vain effort to ease the building pressure there. As Planetary, she is often asked to do things she’d rather not do. It comes with the territory. She presses her palms to the sides of her head, takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly, considering. She needs to handle them firmly enough that they understand the gravity of their choices (and god, how stupid they’ve been), but diplomatically enough that they don’t feel the need to make matters worse with yet another misguided attempt to prove their worth.
Her phone buzzes a warning as her local gating nexus registers two incoming transits. She straightens in her chair, clicks fresh lead into her mechanical pencil, and arranges her face into her best businesslike expression. It’s going to be a long afternoon, but probably nowhere near as long for her as it will be for the two wizards currently trying to look as apologetic as possible in front of her desk.