Promotion to People

“Feathers, Ish, what is wrong with you?” 

Ish looked up from the color-coded schematics, plot point comparisons, and a record amount of other life data.

“Promotion my silver-plated halo.” The overwhelmed guardian grumbled back. Barry winced at the term and handed one of the two steaming mugs to Ish over the paperwork.

“It can’t be that bad, it’s just one human. I mean, some guardians are working with three or four.” Barry was trying to be helpful, trying to work that guardian angel magic for a clearly inundated comrade.

On the wall was a very large life map marked with an above average location turn over and quite a few circular paths. Ish was glaring at it despite there having been much more complicated maps for previous assignees.

Ish caught Barry staring at the map and sighed before taking a long, slow swig from the mug.

 “The movement isn’t the issue here, Barry.”

“Okay, so what’s the issue?” 

Ish flicked a transparency of color up to the wall and expanded it to fit corner to corner.

“This is the issue. You see this color here?” Ish said waving over the purplish hue, “this is what is termed as logical fallacies. This one,” and up came one colored overlay, and then another, and another, “this is moral reasoning, and this one” Ish sighed as another color stretched across the wall, “is emotional reasoning—not to be confused with emotional intelligence or emotional intelligence of origin.”

“Um, I can see how this is daunting, Ish, but you’ve got this. Just a learning curve is all. It’s why we’ve got wings.” Barry had meant to be supportive, had meant to be uplifting, had meant to be funny. Judging from Ish’s glare from over the now empty mug, it had been an attempt in futility.

“So, what species did they promote you to, again?” 

“Humans.” Ish replied. “And this isn’t even a tenth of what they’re going to be processing.”

That much was obvious from the boxes and boxes of paperwork all around the office that hadn’t even been opened yet.

“Wanna swap assignments?” Ish sighed out as the empty cup hit the desk.

“I’ll… just grab you another cup.” Barry said with a chuckle.