Chaos Denizens Love Kindergartens

20251104

Prompt from DailyPrompt.com

Honestly, when Audrey first started working as a kindergarten teacher, she’d been a bit… uncomfortable? With how many fey chose the profession. Of course they were all vetted, and had appropriate qualifications, and everything, she just… something like half the team were fey, despite all the children being human. It took getting used to.
She’d assumed this was due to the known issues fey had with conceiving (apparently an unfortunate necessary side-effect when your race was immortal), leaving many of them craving children. And that was certainly a factor.
But after settling in and learning the ropes, she realised another, perhaps more fundamental reason; fey tended to handle chaos swimmingly.
Tommy wants to be an elephant today? Well, he’d better be a toilet-trained elephant, or he’d get turned into a human! (A threat which led to Tommy being a very polite elephant all day.)
Susie’s learned a flying spell? Manifest disembodied hands to catch her whenever she dropped the casting, without batting an eye.
The entire 3B group was throwing a tantrum because they’d been told they couldn’t adopt a slug? Enchant the slug so it could talk, and let it explain to the children that it didn’t understand what was happening and it’d much rather be outside.
Not only did such happenings not wear the fey team members down, it seemed to energise them.
“Never a dull day!” They’d cheerily crow to each other whenever yet another incident kicked off.
And it clearly didn’t fade when they were off the clock - in the break room they were always chatting about their latest wild adventure or quirky hobby. It made Audrey feel terribly boring and self-conscious. Especially since they always tried to include any staff members who were around.
Then one day, when she was tired and fed-up (not at her coworkers, but it meant she couldn’t manage the polite sidestepping she usually did) she answered the question about her weekend with the brutally honest “I didn’t do anything. Just sat around both days.”
Carol blinked, her dreamy amber eyes narrowing as her perfect, angular brows furrowed. “You just… sat?”
“Yeah. Put on a TV series I’ve watched a million times and half-dozed.” Audrey tried not to sound embarrassed, and overshot into defiant.
But Carol didn’t look offended. No, her expression was… fascinated? “How?”
“How… what?”
“How did you manage two whole days of nothing new?” Carol elaborated, her tone not only sincere but admiring. “Is this that… ‘zen’ thing? A ‘meditative practice’?”
“Errr…” Audrey sat poleaxed, clutching the remains of her sandwich for moral support as she fumbled for an answer. “I… sup… pose? I mean, I was really tired, I needed to rest, so I just… didn’t do anything exciting.”
“Amazing.” Carol murmured.
Confused and flustered, Audrey took an unmannerly large bite of her sandwich and scrutinised her lunchbox.
“That’s why she’s so good at handling nap time.” Percy said sagely. “I’ve seen her sit there just watching the littles the whole half hour!”
“With nothing to listen to?” Carol marvelled.
“W-well, there’s the soundscapes we put on…” Audrey mumbled around the last mouthful of bread.
Both fey shot her bemused, forbearing glances, as if she was being painfully modest.
Audrey washed the sandwich down with the rest of her tea and said “Honestly, by the time we get to the nap slot, I’m usually about at my limit for excitement. So being able to sit there with peaceful music going and zone out is bliss.”
She wasn’t sure which concept perturbed Carol more - having a ‘limit for excitement’ or finding boredom blissful. Either way the fey’s baffled fascination looked a match for how Audrey often felt watching her fey coworkers, which was… deeply comforting.
Imagine someone being awed by your capacity to be boring! If she’d only known sooner, perhaps she’d have had friends in school.
Now emboldened by their attention, she asked “Do you never just… feel overwhelmed and worn out and need to do nothing for a while?”
“No.” Every fey in the room chorused firmly, some going so far as “Queen no!”
“I think if I needed to sit quietly for the whole half-hour I’d be ripping my own face off.” Carol said matter-of-factly. “Especially if I didn’t have anything exciting to listen to!”
Percy wryly added “That old joke about cold iron being fey’s second deadliest weakness, is… barely a joke, honestly. We can build up a resistance to celestial metals, but boredom… it’s the soul-killer. It eats you alive from the inside out.”
“Oh.” Audrey digested this, then shrewdly mused “I suppose that explains why none of you are on the admin team. All that strict routine and templates and-”
She politely trailed off, since everyone was already shuddering like she’d gorily described torture methods.
With friendly impishness Audrey decided that not only was she going to start being entirely honest about her life outside of work, she was going to take mental notes so she could better tell her coworkers exactly what kinds of boring she was being.

Prompt was “Write a story in the perspective of someone who thrives in chaos.”