Roman, the Hardworking Wolf
#5 of Slices of Life
A Slice of Life written for SeasWouldRise.
The Slice of Life is a commission experiment aimed at capturing a glimpse of someone's character in action. The idea is to see if a quality piece of writing can be made in a short length of time, and if someone would be amenable to paying for such a thing. They involve four prompts, ten minutes of writing, and five to ten additional minutes of finalization.
The prompts for this story were
Name: Roman
Species: Grey wolf
Descriptor: Goofy, weird hard-working, creative, sarcastic, slightly annoying, etc. Take your pick.
Setting: High school setting
Roman, the Hardworking Wolf By Finn Panther
''And that's basically all I have for Auzusterberg the Great.''
Roman gave a quirky smile and a dinky bow, not sure how else to end the presentation. He smiled a little at the obligatory clap. Sure everyone got one, but it still made him feel like he'd done a good job. He was actually fairly proud of it, to be honest. He probably spent twice as long on it than anyone else did - nobody else was nearly as prepared as he was - but there was a certain pride in that.
Not that it mattered, though. He probably wouldn't get any better a grade than they did. But now that he was done all he had to do was relax. Time to zone out and pretend to pay attention. Of course, he did try to NOT pay attention to the incessant nagging of future homework - he and Rocky had plans for after school today, and he tried to focus on that. He tried so much, in fact, that he seemed to have missed some sort of class activity. Before he knew it everyone was standing around and mingling - but the clock claimed fifteen minutes left in the period. Were they done for the day?
Roman leaned over to his neighbor.
''Hey, I wasn't paying attention. What are we doing?''
Naturally the cat next to him was talking to another cat, and they both turned to him. ''Making partners dude. Sounds like the final project is going to be big.''
Roman nodded as though that made perfect sense. And it did, sure. But he seriously hated working in groups. It might as well be code for I-get-to-do-all-the-work. Maybe if he hurried and got to one of the few good students in the class...
... no, Stacy was out. Shoot, Rob was out too. He was talking with, hang on, is that Gwen? Shoot! Those were the only other options!
In fact, almost everyone seemed to have paired with someone. And what, nobody wanted to work with me? Fine, whatever. Sheesh.
Roman stood and looked to see who was left. Probably not much. Guarantee it was some slacker who was still sitting, waiting for someone to come to them instead of the other way around. Someone who would, as usual, make Roman do all the work. And heck, if that's what it took to get a good grade around here, then that's what he'd do. But he swore, every single time...
... and not even the slackers were free. Most of them seemed to have found each other, which actually made Roman laugh. Hope that they had fun with that. And the only person left was...
Oh great.
Roman was sure that the new exchange student was a perfectly nice girl. But it'd also be nice if his lab partner spoke even a lick of English. He sighed and walked over.
''Hi,'' he said, extending his paw. ''I'm Roman.''
The foreign cat stood, grateful at least to have been acknowledged. ''Frances,'' she said. ''Enchante.''
Here Roman noticed the expression on her face. The cat looked sad, but hopeful. Almost as though she was trying not to be disheartened by the new country, the new town - and by all of the friends that she didn't have. She truly did seem grateful that at least someone approached her. And her eyes were apologetic, too, as though she too knew Roman would have to do most of the work.
And he was still a little bit frustrated about that. But at least he wasn't paired with a douchebag. And who knows? Maybe working with Frances could be interesting.
Just maybe.