I am back at work, and so is Freya! In fact, she has hardly returned to her house at all this week. She went to visit her mother, Kara, and George, volunteered at both the women’s shelter and the local SPCA, and has now returned to working full time at the office. It is this last that is giving her a problem.
When Freya’s friend Nancy left the office, another woman was hired to take her place. Before they began to work from home, Freya did not really have a chance to meet the newcomer more than a handful of times. She knew only that the woman’s name was Alysse, and that she’s rather reserved and a bit sarcastic. Now that they are back in the office together, however, Alysse has not warmed up out of that first politeness that people use to protect themselves from strangers. What little Freya has learned about her has been from hearsay, as she will talk with pretty much everyone except Freya.
“She’s just off-putting to me,” Freya was telling her friend Sylvie this morning. “Whenever it’s just the two of us she’s a statue, but then someone comes in and she’s laughing and chatting—but it’s always like with this aura of ‘not you, Cobb’.”
Sylvie laughed. “I don’t think it’s that bad. Weren’t you two just talking about the Ndola manuscript?”
“Yeah, because I needed to ask her about it, and she answered me in monosyllables and waved me away when we were done. Like literally,” and Freya demonstrated a wave that did look rather dismissive.
“Huh. She’s always been really nice to me. You didn’t spit on her or anything when you met, did you?”
“I mean, I don’t think I did. I didn’t mean to.”
I went to take a look at this woman myself and found a small dark-haired woman with sharp fingers dancing over her keyboard. Her focus on her task was so absolute that it formed something of a wall around her thoughts, but the impression I got from her aura was of a reserved, pensive spirit. No reason that there should be conflict between her and Freya.
Later in the day, though, I did witness an exchange between the two of them. Alysse came to the door of Freya’s office and knocked, holding up a file. “Were you the one who put together the forms for Jen Spaulding?” Her tone was not quite accusatory.
Freya looked up, surprised. “Yeah. It turned out I still had a couple of them on my computer, so I printed them and got the rest of them while I was at it.”
“Okay, but I asked you to just send what was needed to me so I could look them over before printing them out.”
“I’m sorry,” Freya said, puzzled as to why she was apologizing. “I just thought I’d save you some time. But everything’s there.”
“I know, but…” Alysse stopped and shook her head. “Never mind. I’ll take care of the rest of it. Thanks.” She turned and walked away, leaving Freya bristling with resentment.
“Serves me right for trying to help her,” Freya muttered to herself as she tried to go back to her own tasks. “She doesn’t want my help, I won’t help her anymore.”
“Maybe she just likes to know what she’s responsible for and what she isn’t,” I murmured to her. “And I’m certain she doesn’t realize how abrupt her tone is.”
Freya only sniffed and went back to work, but a little kernel of that resentment stayed burning in the back of her mind for the rest of the day.
It worries me. I know how a small miscommunication can get worse over time, as each side stacks up misunderstandings like bricks in a wall between them. And while it may seem like a small thing for a Guardian to worry about, I don’t want Freya to be stressed or feel attacked in her place of work—whether that antipathy is genuine or not. So I will try and see if I can help. After all, this is Freya, and there is little that I would not do for her.