#bazzledazzle

Patience’s hoof jumped nervously as she sat on a bench outside BigFeet’s Adventureland waiting for the shuttle that was about to take her and a few other mascots into town to pass out flyers. The idea had come from her co-worker, Becky, who thought it would be a great idea to draw in business during the holiday season. But was Becky going to be walking around in a sweaty smelly squonk costume all day? No. Fuck you, Becky. And the broomstick you flew in on. It was just going to be Patience, Angie, Randy, and creepy fucking Daryl, dressed in the Moleman costume, who always like to stick his snout in Patience’s back, and joke about how sweet she smelled. She shuddered at the thought.

Beep. Beep. The horn caught her attention as she watched her co-workers file onto the bus, purposefully waiting until Daryl got on and sat down. And then Patience made her entrance, awkwardly moving up the steps as the too small squonk costume rode up her ass giving her the most awkward wedgie, “Daryl I swear to fucking Bigfoot if you touch me with that stupid snout, I’m going to rip it off your face.”

The driver, not waiting for her to sit down, quickly shut the door, and began pulling forward causing Patience to stumble towards the back of the small shuttle and into the side of one of the seats knocking the wind out of her, before she sat down and moaned in pain. I hate my life.

“Okay, off the Magic Fucking School Bus, Kids. We got money to make.” The driver’s voice was husky like he’d smoked and drank his way to a shitty job at an even shittier theme park. Patience could sympathize with him, despite his urgency to get them into Wicked’s Rest proper. And one by one, they stood up and left the bus; Daryl purposefully waiting on Patience to go before him, “Daryl I swear…if you fucking stick that thing near me…” She glared at him, but her threats had gone from one ear and out the other, and when she felt the snout run into her, she quickly turned around, ripped his mascot head off, and started beating him with it.

I hate my life. “Don’t have any plans for the holidays? Come to BigFeet’s Adventureland! Your kids will thank you!” Her raspy voice was shaky as she forced out the words. People were not her thing, and the crowds that were out and about shopping all the holiday deals were making her even more nervous than standing at the park letting kids come up and hug her, cuss her, kick her, and a number of other unpleasant things that normally took place. I swear. We better get overtime for this.

—

One of the things Baz most enjoyed about Wicked’s Rest was the way there always seemed to be something happening. There were often big events that drew decently-sized crowds — the bonfire, the masquerade ball, and others like them — but there were smaller-scale oddities, too. Drive-in specials, festivals and carnivals, strange contests whose end goal never made any more sense than the nonsensical prizes awarded to the participants did… Wicked’s Rest was bursting with experiences Baz didn’t think they could have gotten anyplace else.

Case in point: a group of people getting off the bus in odd costumes. Naturally, the first assumption Baz jumped to was furries. There were bound to be a whole slew of them in Wicked’s Rest, given the shifter population. But… these furries weren’t like any Baz had seen before. They’d never known anyone whose fursona was a squonk, after all. They couldn’t stop themself from moving closer, curiosity carrying them towards the oddly-dressed people.

It was… an advertisement? For the amusement park? Baz was almost disappointed. Amusement parks, after all, had never really been their thing. They’d thought about offering to go with Joel one day, both to see his reaction to it and to perhaps earn the bugbear a meal off anyone who might have been genuinely terrified of the rides, but they’d forgotten the notion as quickly as they’d thought of it. Baz was never really good at holding on to things like that, after all. This also meant they’d mostly lost interest in the costumed amusement park employees as they got close to them. At least, until they got a bit closer to the squonk.

The feeling fluttered in their stomach, like butterflies; their mother always described it as the body’s way of saying hello before the mouth had room to speak. Baz had loved it as a child; as an adult, they’d grown a bit more jaded. Other fae were fine. They didn’t dislike other fae on principle or anything. They just… didn’t immediately love them, either. Still, a fae in a squonk costume piqued their interest enough to draw them close, their brows shooting up. “This is a bit of an odd job,” they commented. “How’d you land it?”

—

People of all shapes and sizes shuffled by Patience. Some gave her a look that wanted to make her drop dead. Others were smiling from ear-to-ear. Those were the ones she liked. They seemed friendly enough and didn’t make her as nervous. There had even been a kid or two that had latched onto her legs while their parents took photos without asking. Thank you, oh great Faun God, for this squonk head I'm wearing. Though she had beaten creepy fucking Daryl with his – which left him looking like a jacked up pug dog instead of a mole, she was grateful to have been in a position to stay anonymous. Until she almost wasn’t.

“Uh-Uh…what?” Was this random person talking to her? She was a squonk. She couldn’t talk back right? The number one rule of Club Cryptid, even though she wasn’t a cryptid, was don’t talk back. She knew Mike would rip her a new one and fire her on the spot, if she had been back at Big Feet’s, but this wasn’t Big Feet’s, and her other mascot buddies were positioned strategically on other streets, “How is it odd, exactly? I work at a theme park, so is it really so much of a stretch that I would be thrown to the wolves, no offense, to pass out flyers to help bring business to said theme park?” Patience shifted her squonk head towards them, before whispering the answer to the second half of their question, “My mom found it…” Without hesitating, she shoved a flyer in their direction.

It was odd. Patience was pretty sure she had never met this person before, but there was something so familiar about them. The way her body automatically felt with them around. Like they were her people. But who had been her people exactly? Her family? She was nothing like them. They had been outgoing and longed for social stimulation. Patience, on the other hand, had longed to create and to be tucked away in her bedroom with her gliders reading, writing, or listening to Green Day, “H-Have we met? Do I know you from somewhere?”

—

The voice that came out of the squonk costume wasn’t quite what Baz had expected it to be. It sounded timid and uncertain, which did sort of suit a squonk the more they thought of it. But somehow, Baz thought that this was the sort of job a person got because they liked talking to people. It was the sort of position where you faced the public in your own way, interacted with them. Who wouldn’t assume the orange furry bloke from Pennsylvania was an extrovert? This girl, though, seemed quite the opposite. If anything, she seemed horrified that someone was speaking to her. It was hard to know if she recognized Baz as fae — she must have, given the tingling feeling, right? — but she certainly didn’t seem comfortable. 

“Just not the sort of job many people work,” they replied with a shrug. “It’s not a bad thing. I like odd jobs. Always preferred them myself.” Not that they’d had many jobs throughout their life. They’d picked up work whenever and wherever they could after leaving their father’s house in London, but never anything concrete or set. And before that, they hadn’t needed to work, not really; they’d done what their father told them to do, but it wasn’t something they’d ever considered a job. They weren’t paid for it, after all. 

They didn’t find the idea of this girl’s mother getting her a job odd, though there was a quiet twinge of jealousy at the thought. (Their mum wouldn’t have gotten them a job, even if they’d asked! That didn’t seem fair, did it?) They pushed it aside, shrugging at the question. “How would I know?” They asked. “I don’t know what you look like, do I? Unless you’re always dressed as a squonk.”

—

Odd jobs suited for an odd little faun. It both made her smile and repulsed her at the same time. Being the odd one out had become Patience’s identity and with each passing year, she just sort of grew into it, like she had grown into her antlers. But it still wasn’t anything special or exciting like her siblings. Not like Declan or Cassidy had done. Or even Archer having her own family. Even Owen, still beat her in what defined a successful job, and he was a mechanic. But he had owned his own business. Patience had big dreams of owning her own business one day; The Brushed Grape. She had already established an audience…Soccer moms who needed an escape from their monotonous lives of children, apple slices, and the occasional romp in the bed with their business men husbands. But that was all speculated, until she was able to put pen to paper and have a brick and mortar at her finger tips.

“Do you know of any that actually breed success, because I’m not having much luck.” The words were more under her breath, but when she realized she had said them out loud, Patience nearly melted into her squonk costume, “That…um…uh…Did you get a flyer yet? We’re hiring! All positions!” She was never going to take her head off now. She could already picture it! They took the flyer. Applied for a job. Got said job. Worked at the park. Used the same breakroom. Got off at the same time. Patience was doomed to be a squonk for the rest of her life. A hot, sweaty, smelly…Squonk.

“No. I mean…well, I don’t know. I have a life outside of this. Maybe we passed each other in the store. Or I don’t know. Maybe sat beside each other at a restaurant. But I can’t take this head off, because if I do, my boss will fire me, and I can’t lose this job. I have big dreams, and they’re not getting squashed, because you do or don’t know what I look like.” Her mouth was going dry. She needed air or water or something.

—

“Well, that depends on your definition of success, doesn’t it?” The way Baz defined success didn’t often fit in with how other people considered it, really; most people thought Baz’s definition odd. (They would not say that most people thought it wrong, even if wrong might be the better word. Baz didn’t like thinking of themself as wrong, regardless of whether or not it was an accurate descriptor.) “If you think success is making loads of money, I suppose odd jobs aren’t what you ought to be after. If you think it’s having a good time, odd jobs are the only thing you should be after. There’s no fun in sitting in an office and wearing pencil skirts, is there?” They paused. “Well, maybe the skirts. Depends on the style. The gray ones are a bit boring.”

They wrinkled their nose because despite enjoying odd jobs, they had little desire to take one that would require they hide their face all day. For someone who liked to be seen, a job where you spent all day under a mask was something of a nightmare scenario. “Oh, not for me, love. Happier in my current position. But if I need to take a flyer for you to be able to chat without getting into trouble, I’m happy enough to pretend to be interested.” She didn’t seem like she was having much fun talking to everyone, and Baz liked it much better when everyone was having a decent time.

“Good to know you’re not always a giant squonk, then. But I still can’t say for certain if I know you if I don’t know what you look like when you’re not a squonk, yeah?” They shrugged, not really bothered by it. Either they’d seen her before or they hadn’t; it made little difference to Baz. “Oh, what are the big dreams? I’m not looking to squash anything, for the record. I think everyone ought to get to live their dreams, don’t you?” Because that meant Baz would get a turn to live theirs eventually.

—

Patience nodded in the costume, quickly realizing they probably couldn’t tell what she was doing, “I-I guess so…” The young faun paused and thought for a moment. Did Patience want a life full of riches or just to be happy? Her parents had only wanted what was best for her, but Patience had wanted happiness more than anything. Not to feel so awkward all the time or to feel like the family failure, “I don’t need loads of money or pencil skirts. I don’t even like skirts that much. I just want to be happy.” Her shoulders fell making the squonk look even sadder. Shake it off, Ants. You gotta job to do.

Pulling another flyer from the stack, she handed it to someone passing by despite their protest to take it, “I don’t want to do this forever. I just need to save up enough to get my idea off the ground.” She shifted her huge squonk head back in the other person’s direction, “I go on break in like…” Raising her wrist up, she tried to peer at her watch through the eye holes, finally spotting what time it was, “Actually. Now, and it’s hot as balls in this thing.” It probably wasn’t the most appropriate thing to say to someone you were talking to while on the job, but at this point they seemed cool enough.

“Can you hold these?” Without giving them time to answer, Patience shoved the flyers in their direction as she pulled off the head and took in a deep breath, revealing a mess of shoulder length light brown hair, a freckled face, and bright blue eyes, “Thanks.” She hadn’t forgotten their question. She just wanted somewhere quieter to talk.

Taking the flyers back and latching onto the rim of the squonk head with her free hand, she glanced around for somewhere to eat, “What’s good around here?” Humans eating food and enjoying themselves would give her a tiny taste, which would suffice since she had already gotten her fill for a while at Big Feet’s from the regulars who came to the park every week despite what time of year it was. But Patience had come to appreciate the taste of human fare over the course of her short lifetime, especially after moving into society at a younger age.

—

She just wanted to be happy, and Baz figured anyone would understand that sort of desire. Baz wanted to be happy, too, more than anything. It was why they had stalled out in their father’s house, why they had been unable to accept a life of luxury despite developing a taste for all the finer things that came with it. “Then you look for what makes you happy,” they replied with a shrug. For Baz, it was that simple. They’d never felt bound by their father’s expectations, though their father had certainly wanted them to be. Baz cared little for the ‘duty’ their father set aside for them, cared little for the fact that their leaving made it more difficult for their family to eat. Baz wanted to be happy and, at the end of the day, that was the biggest thing. At the end of the day, that might as well have been the only thing.

They clapped their hands together as she announced her break, nodding their head. They always liked things like this, talking to strangers out on the street. Baz was a social person; they were at their happiest when they had someone to yap to. “I’m sure it doesn’t smell particularly wonderful, either,” they added helpfully, though they had no real frame of reference. They’d never been inside a mascot costume, nor did they have any real desire to, but they could only imagine it stank a little.

Baz took the flyers as they were shoved against their chest, absently folding a few as the squonk woman pulled her mascot head off. “No problem,” they replied. “Oh, I like you much better without the head, I think!” They grinned, offering the flyers back to her. They certainly didn’t want to hold them any longer.