About my work ...

[alchemy_brat]

Took the idea from one of the  prompts 'Tell us about your work'. Unofficially, of course. I'm not allowed on there yet. *crosses fingers*

Anyway. 648 words about my jobs. *grin*
 

My Work.

*bounces* Nobody minds if I ramble, right? Because I could talk forever about what I do.

For starters, I have three jobs. Well, one official job, that's Librarian. Then there's the part-time job with the forensics team. And finally my craftwork, which would probably count as a hobby if I didn't make most of my money off of it. *grin* I make good stuff.

The Librarian job is the one I've had longest. Pretty much since I completed college, and probably even before that, since I could usually be found helping out there anyway. The Grand Alchemist's Library is the single largest collection of manuscripts and simulacra pertaining to the field of alchemy in the world. It goes back millennia. It's awesome! The simulacra in particular are fascinating. Some of the oldest ones are made of really weird materials, and the data they hold has become sort of corrupted by them, so figuring out what's data and what's material is a fun job. It's my main one, as it happens. I've a backlog of a couple of thousands that should keep me busy for a long while yet.

Then there's the forensic alchemy. That's very new, and sort of complicated. It happened largely by accident, actually. Whistler, a friend of mine, has been working with the police for a while now, and this thing is mostly his fault. He's a vivimancer, you see, with an affinity for Trace, or the pieces of personality and magic that people leave behind wherever they go. He's good at tracking, too, which makes him useful in finding murderers and criminals. He's freelanced for the police for a few years now. Then there was this one case, they couldn't figure out how the man had been killed, and they didn't want to go up against a mage of unknown power. Which was only sensible. So John called me in. And it got back to Gregori, the head of the Alchemist's Guild, and then I was in trouble, and then it had to be 'official', and now here I am. Still in trouble.

The work itself it pretty fascinating, though. It's not like simulacra. It's happening real-time, in corrupted circumstances, and that makes tracking the magic tricky. *grin* It's so much fun! I've got to track single traces of magic to their materials, then single out the materials, then get a sample, then identify it and its purpose so we know what the hell we're up against, then preserve it so it can be used as evidence. All the while with various contemptuous mages leaning over my shoulder asking me to hurry the hell up. It's the best challenge I've had in a long while.

Finally, there's my craftwork. This is how I relax, usually. I just love making things. I make glass objects, mostly, since my first love is glass, but I do some work with metals and liquids, too. I make fixings and objects of intent, and some just plain pretty stuff. Some of it's useful, helping shape out physically what I think some magic trace would look like, but most of the time it's just fantasy, whatever takes my whim at the time. I do commissions, too, provided the customer realises it could take me a while to finish. It's the most soothing of all my work, and the most profitable too! Better than the Library salary, and the pittance we get for the forensic work, anyway.

Between the three of those jobs, I'm a very, very busy alchemist, and a pretty well-off one too. Short on time, long on cash. Not bad, in my books. If I ever get a girlfriend, that might be a problem, but I don't think that's an issue. I'm 32 and decently rich. If I haven't gotten one by now, I'm probably not going to.

Hmm. That's the basics, anyway. Probably I should stop at that, yes? *grin* For now, anyway.