Hunnydew (Cassie), Female, Green nymph, Second year attending,

Cassie stood watching the light flash back and forth from inside the ancient photocopier. The decrepit, dying machine chugged along at the fastest pace it could… something just short of glacial. She didn’t dare look at the clock. It wouldn’t have changed much since she last glanced at it 30 seconds ago. Fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes till she could dump this last load of forms on her desk to worry about on Monday, grab her bag and leave this whole, drab world behind.

Michael came out of the break room carrying a cracked mug of something that might count as coffee. He had to politely cough twice to wake Cass up enough to let him pass. This whole damn office was so small and cramped, yet she barely recognised half the people she worked with. Take Michael for instance… She knew his name. Had probably signed a communal birthday card or two over the years. Had even vaguely acknowledged that there was quite a muscular frame under those dull, beige shirts and thick-rimmed glasses. He must go to the gym after work a lot. There was just no time or space for any of them to get to know each other… No motivation left after each day’s monotonous, repetitive tasks to do anything but drag yourself home and switch off your brain.

Nothing in Cassie’s life had given her any sense of satisfaction or fulfilment. Not her years of study and graft to get this job, not her two pure-breed cats waiting at home, nor the three pedestrian relationships she’d fallen out of on apathetically amicable terms. Nothing… until she’d found that digital flyer last year and signed herself up on a whim. ‘Staves and Dripping Caverns’, an atrociously, obvious name for the sort of event that every preacher, doctor, parental figure and moral panic had warned her to stay far, far away from. She’d found it advertised on one of the many nerdy, little erotica and fanfic sites she drifted off to sleep reading every night. She’d booked the long weekend, thrown an outfit together and driven off into the wilderness.

That first experience still seemed like a blur to her, 360 days later. She could hardly believe all the things she’d seen… All the things she’d done. It was so far removed from anything she could tell her mother about on their weekly catch-up call. So impossible to even approach describing to her old school friends and distant work colleagues. Yet here she was, a whole year later… practically frothing at the bit to go back and do it all again.

Finally, the copier was done. The clock struck 5 and Cassie was out the door. Her bag was already packed and waiting in the back of the car, only a few hundred miles lay between her and everything she'd been obsessively dreaming of the last few months.