What in the world had she been thinking when she let Doug talk her into being a manager? Sure, out of those in the herd of programmers that called this office their home, she was the one most capable of directing people. And yes, the engineering team - along with the company - had grown too large for Doug to manage it by himself. But still, she should not have let herself be pushed into this role.

Reta sighed. More important now was the question: why is she still sitting in her car, ten minutes after reaching the office’s parking lot? She was procrastinating. No, calling her hesitance ‘procrastination’ was being unfair to herself. Despite having two months - Doug’s gift to her in exchange for her taking this position eight months prior - to spend in the forests that clad the surrounding mountains like a flowing dress, the stress and attendant anxiety of this position had been waiting for her the moment she drove into the parking lot. Reta knew herself well enough to recognize that she was no hart who could impose her own order upon the other developers, yet that is the role she is being forced to fill.

Yet, if Reta was being honest, it wasn’t the guiding and coaching of her colleagues which was the hard part. They were all very intelligent people, and it took only a light touch to guide them in the direction she needed them to move. A big chunk of her stress came instead from being the focal point for communication into and out of the engineering group. And the worst of it was… NO. She couldn’t think of that right now, lest she spend another hour in her car.

Four more months. She only had to endure it for another four months, at which point her agreement with Doug would be completed, and she could hand off the manager position to some other poor fool. Reta repeated “four months” under her breath like a mantra against fear as she opened the car door and walked into the office.

The office was almost exactly how she had left it, two months not a long enough time for the nature of software developers to change. The underlying scents were the same: carbohydrate laden snacks paired with caffeinated drinks warring against dehydrated fruits and carbonated water. The sounds were also familiar, the clacking of keyboards, strains of music restrained by headphones, and a jargon-laden conversation being held in low tones between two people who were trying to find a solution to what sounded like a sticky problem.

But the sight of the office revealed a change. There was a new guy. It turned out that he was one of the participants in the highly-technical discussion, and aside from a brief glance in her direction, he didn’t interrupted the conversation to really look at her. Reta found herself to be thankful, and a tiny bit peeved. But mostly thankful. Her heritage, combined with her little... magical extras... meant that she was considered to be exceptionally attractive by most men. She vastly preferred a prick to her ego to the ogling that was so much more common.

Reta quickly moved through the wide space filled with desks - they called it an open office plan - to a small office situated against the back wall. The one perk of being a manager was that she got her own room with a door, even if she rarely closed it. The office was small - just enough room for her, her desk, and a guest chair - but it meant that nobody was able to come up behind her. Her hearing and other senses were keen enough to keep this from being an issue most of the time, but there had been a few instances where she was so deeply immersed in the ‘flow’ of writing code that a touch on her shoulder had very nearly sent her flying.

It took Reta a few minutes to stoke her computer back to consciousness, and she got down to the business of catching up with two months of instant messages, emails, and paperwork. So. Much. Paperwork.