"Hello fellow co-worker! I'm your new office neighbor! Looking forward to working with you," Vanta Dreen Orblud said happily, offering her hand in a big grin. Internally, she was dying inside for a positive side from this mopey-looking teenager. Her last coworkers took her positivity and used it to exclude her, so she was desperately wishing for a better response. Nervously, she pulled at the collar of her "I Love Type B People. Hugs & Bites!"
He looked up at her blankly, putting down a miniature tree he had been messing with.
'Oh shoot. Here we go again...' she thought. 'Perhaps they've got a good bathroom for crying like last job."
His unidentifiably colorful eyes took on a pink hue, and he immediately gave a huge, friendly smile. "Hello! Nice to meet you! Put it there?" he said, sticking out his hand, before quickly retracting it before she could shake it.
'The too slow trick!? Nooooo!' she bemoaned.
"Ah sorry," he said sheepishly, breaking her out of her internal panic. He brushed sand off his hands, before pointing his thumb at the tree. Its roots crumbled into sand, which trickled up the table up to the branches, growing out the tree. "My ancient verdant growth of the witch dunes could drive you insane with its sand. Safety first!" he said genially, throwing a thumbs up.
Before literally throwing a thumbs-up... onto the floor under his desk.
They looked as one of his hands rolled down his lap, still stuck in thumbs-up.
How one search for a one ageless witch's hand ended with a fight against an army of oversized person-sized dust bunnies, fending off a spider huntsman with a box opener, and an unbreakable bond of friendship forged between two coworkers in the void under his desk... well, she would probably never know.
