the snake encounter portion of your mayoral campaign [Kap]

[WT]

"If you want a tour, spiders are in here," Tamarack says, rapping one knuckle of eir free hand gently on the door frame. "Snakes are across. Or we can just skip to the turtles if you're skeeved, I guess. But the snakes are good."

Ugh.

Things in Tamarack's purview:

• Schedules. Organizing them, following them—feeding schedules, medicine schedules, equipment maintenance schedules, prayer schedules, everything that keeps this place running.
• Recognizing when something has gone wrong enough to call for veterinary care.
• Training interns. Sometimes.
• Socializing hatchlings, which as far as Tamarack has learned is the only easy type of socializing because it's the only sensible type of socializing.
• Once in a while, if absolutely nobody else is available, giving visitors The Tour.

Things Tamarack's moms should be handling:

• A mayoral candidate showing up on their doorstep.

But Mom Isi got called out on delivery and Mom Arum is caught on a conference call—what's new—so here Tamarack is, blundering through an introduction and defaulting to The Tour when all ey really wants is for Castle Ruined to buy a lizard or something and let em get back to a normal work day. Not that she doesn't seem nice enough, but she was not on eir schedule.

Ey taps two fingers against the head of eir cane—the good one, the snake from the Ratmas Markets; let no one say ey doesn't at least try to make a nice impression, even if ey doesn't bother to change out of eir work clothes when someone fancy shows up in the middle of the day—and shrugs. "Look, I can tell you about crawly things all day long, but I don't really know what you're looking for here."



title is a vague allusion to "The 'Snake Fight' Portion of Your Thesis Defense" by Luke Burns.

[kap]

Castle Ruined

Miss Ruined had been going door to door in District Five pretty much all day so far, pamphlets in hand, ready to spiel to the community about her campaign. The problem was, many people didn't seem to want to hear it. When she arrived at her next stop, someone answered the door and immediately, the topic of spiders arose. Snakes, turtles, all sorts of 'crawly things' as they were described.

The individual who'd answered the door had initially offered a tour, and despite the fact that Castle had initially had a bit of a schedule planned to get through a good portion of the District today, she figured the perhaps taking this tour could bring things in her favor. If ey wanted to give her a tour, perhaps she could gain eir favor during it.

"My name's Castle Ruined," she explained. "I'm running for mayor, so I was here to tell you about that, but perhaps you can take me on the tour and tell me a bit about your... crawly friends?"

[WT]

"Yeah, we've heard your name a little." Perhaps you can take me on the tour loosened Tamarack's shoulders a little. The politics of small businesses or whatever are over eir head, but if all the schmoozing ey needs to do here is eir usual job, ey can handle that. "Don't know what I can do for your campaign," ey says, "but if this is where you want to spend your time, sure. Snakes it is."

The serpentarium welcomes them both the way it always does: with glances from any snakes in the closest terrariums that happen to notice their arrival, and total disinterest otherwise. Tamarack softens a little and offers one of the nearby boas a tiny wave before turning back to Castle. "We've got your usual pet species in here—boas, corn snakes, the little pythons. Some fancier types, but nothing endangered and nothing venomous. And no mutts. We're not a Capitol outfit, my great-grandparents got started when animals were Five's thing." Back on familiar ground, ey warms a little to eir task. "There's still a bigger market than you would expect, but it's more cross-District now, especially since travel opened up. Capitolites occasionally, but Mom Arum—Arum Loosestrife, she runs the place—she basically doesn't trust any of them to look after an animal that's not engineered to not need food." Ey pauses, blinks, considers. "If you meet her and she asks, I didn't repeat that. Anyway, you want to hold one or just hear about what we do?"