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Another "Crowd Hoot" Story

Kyle couldn't help but stare at the leader.

She wasn't anything spectaular:  medium height, brown hair cut in an almost boyish fashion (a "fauxhawk," she realized).

It was the outfit.  She wore a huge baggy sweatshirt over a knee-length dress, and jeans undernieth that.

Her name was L J -- well "Captian" L J, but no one called her that because they thought it sound

And the others were even stranger than that.  The girl with long blond hair wore ascarlet cotton shirt ornamented with glass beads, and matching wool trousers.

Another girl, with very short black hair was dressed in a long-sleeved forest green linen tunic embellished with white lace, and matching brocade kilt.

The third, the oldest, had onelong-sleeved shirt of baby-blue velvet embroidered with leaves and vines with a burgundy silk cape.

One thing was sure.  Kyle was dressed compleatly wrong for the job.  She'd known that they had a weird rule about wearing shirts with long sleeves and never wearing shorts, but she'd kind of expected that everyone just wore jeans and a sweatshirt.

Well, L J was, but whoever heard of wearing a dress at the same time?

"My name is Hannah," the blond said.  "I'll be your tour guide.  That's L J, of course, in the hoodie, and Charley, the second in command is the one with short hair.  And Cassandra is the one who is in forest camoflauge."

She gestured to the huge room around them.  "This is the 'Condo.'"

It really was huge, almost like a wearhouse.  Four work stations were in the middle, and four tables around them.  The tables were like ones from science labs, with a high top and storage space beneath.  There was one real table, a kitchen table, on the far side on the room.

There was a staircase on one side, made of black metal.  It lead to a short walkway.  There were three doors along the wall.  Kyle wondered where they lead.

"This one is your work station," Hannah said, pointing to the one closest to the stairs.

It was just like the ones she'd used in practice.  There were several large monitors, some showing live feed, but more showing maps with strange dots of coloring.  They were used to track where elves might be moving.  How they worked, Kyle wasn't sure.  They picked up things that were unique to elves, like their incredibly fast heart beats, traces of elvin magic.

"We work every day of the week.  Even weekends.  But we get just about every conceivable holiday off, per the Center.  So we hardly work at all in December."

Kyle hardly heard the words and she looked around the Condo.

This was going to be exciting.  That was for sure.