June 4, 10:20 a.m.

Daphne wasn't always a good person. She was aware of this, and sought to be better than she naturally was, which often led her to meddle in others' affairs. Sure, that might not always be a good thing, either, but if it was helping someone -- they might be annoyed, but if there was an improvement of a situation, she was happy! That's why, as soon as she saw that Joe was busy talking to one of the trainers that morning after her yoga class, Daph slipped into his office and pulled the door up just far enough that she wouldn't be easily visible.

She looked around the office, then. Hmmm. Yes, there was a lot of negative energy here; she was fairly certain that he must spend a lot of his time in here -- well, sulking wasn't exactly a good word to use about one's boss, but she was pretty sure he wasn't happy most of the time he was here. Maybe? The energy was muddled, much like his aura, the poor guy; all the more reason for her to do some cleaning. Once she got her hands on the right herbs, she'd have to smudge the entire gym. It could do with a good airing out.

She put a reed diffuser on his desk; she'd already filled it with a good mixture of oils for positive energy, happiness, and calm. A very gentle scent of lemon, spearmint, and just a touch of cedarwood and cypress began to suffuse the air. Yes! That would help; it was a start, anyway. She fingered the chunk of yellow quartz, next. Yellow for joy, for wisdom, for enlightenment. Everything the poor boy needed. But where...?

After a moment of inspection, pacing from window to wall and back behind his desk, she found the perfect place on a shelf; there. The crystal's energies would resonate best through the office from that point, and have the strongest effect on him as he sat at his desk. She smiled to herself, looking around, before she began to hum a steady, low "Om." As she did so, she moved around to the four corners of the room, clapping her hands together sharply to start breaking up the negative energy that had built up in the office. Yes, she'd purify this room and encourage the accumulation of good energy -- she didn't know her boss that well, but she did know he was a kind man (even if he was terribly unenlightened about many things), and he'd just gone through a hard divorce. It was the least she could do, really.

Joe was trying so hard not to let his personal life get in the way of work, but it was hard. Everyone at the gym knew Kate, she had worked there as a massage therapist, and now she wasn't there anymore, he wasn't wearing a ring and he was sad. There was no way of hiding from his staff what he was dealing with, and while it was embarrassing and heartbreaking, it was just something that he had to deal with right now. She had been gone long enough for people to get suspicious, and now that the divorce had officially gone through, well, he was single, and he absolutely hated it. He wasn't the kind of guy that wanted to play around, that wanted to meet and sleep with tons of women. He had been in love, all that he had wanted was Kate, and she was gone now.

He sighed as he finished up talking to Gideon. He was discussing Gideon's taking on of more hours and clients during the summer, and he was glad for it. They were always busier in the summer anyways, as it got too hot sometimes for people to work out outside. He was sure that Gideon could tell something was off, but Gideon was a man of few words as it is, so he didn't let on if he did. Joe sighed, stopping by the water fountain and splashing some of the cool water in his face. He hadn't been getting much sleep, which had greatly diminished his normally plentiful energy, but even with sleep, he was too sad from the loss of Kate to really be able to do much of anything anyways. He wasn't himself right now, not at all, and while he hated it, he didn't really know how to fix it, either.

Joe walked back into his office, noticing almost instantly that there was someone else in there. "Hello," he stated. Daphne was someone that he had talked to, but really only at staff meetings and passing. He didn't notice the oil on his desk or the crystal on the shelf, he was too far inside of himself, worrying about his life, moping, really, to notice it. He wasn't himself at all these days, he was lagging, dragging and completely unfunny. Normally he loved to run, to jump, to goof around, but he just wasn't feeling it at all lately, and he hoped that it wasn't gone for good. "Can I help you with something? Did you not get your paycheck?" Usually that was what employees wanted from him - a paycheck, and sometimes payroll forgot to cut one or two of the newer ones, but that was never really hard to deal with.

Daphne didn't notice the arrival of her boss at first; it wasn't until he spoke that she was even aware that he was there. She jumped a little and turned, a sheepish smile on her face, though that quickly gave way to a more genuine expression. "Joe!" she greeted him in her typical tone, equal parts cheer and an attempt at conveying ethereal calm (which, let's be honest here, Daphne didn't always feel). She straightened, tugging on the hem of her tunic as she turned to face him fully.

The poor man... his aura really was awfully clouded by pain, wasn't it? It was practically leeching out of him. Daphne wanted to give him a big old hug, but wasn't sure how he'd take that; she'd learned, over the years, that not everyone had as small a 'personal space bubble' as she did, and not everyone enjoyed having other people close by. Daphne, for her part, savored human physical contact; it was healing to her, and she was convinced that if people opened themselves up to the power of auras, it could be healing for everyone. But still, there was no accounting for taste, and she didn't want to offend her boss or anything -- especially since he'd just caught her poking around his office.

"No... I got my paycheck just fine. I was just..." Well now. How to explain this? Honesty, Daphne thought, might be the best policy in this case; she didn't want to compound the negative energy by adding lies on top of it, after all. "You seem so sad lately, Joe. So I thought I'd... try to do what I could to improve your mood." She motioned to the reed diffuser on the desk and the crystals on the shelf. "The aromatherapy should help lift your spirits and create a more welcoming, joyful atmosphere... and the crystal will help filter out the negative energy from your aura," she explained. "It won't fix things, but... I thought it might help?" She looked at the younger man a little sheepishly, not sure how he'd react to catching her red-handed in the act of trying to manipulate his personal energies.

Joe was more than a little bit confused. He hadn't had a lot of interaction with Daphne before, but as far as he knew she was perfectly nice. She seemed a bit weird, but everyone had their quirks, so who was he to judge anyone? Joe had more than a few oddities of his own, and right now he was too down in the dumps to really display them, but they were there. Right now, he missed his wife, he missed the life that they had together, and he didn't really understand why it had ended. He wanted to be with her, but she hadn't wanted him. It was as simple as that, and he hated it.

"Oh...uh..." He gulped. Was it that obvious that he was going through a rough time? If someone he didn't see all that often, or at least someone he didn't talk too all that often knew that things weren't going well with him, it must be pretty damned obvious. He was going to have to work on that, it was unprofessional to be moping around the work place, and he knew that he had to figure out a way to stop that. "I'm uh...I'm fine," he lied, almost certain that she would see right through him. Joe wasn't much of a liar, to be honest. He had other skills, but not that one.

He frowned when she started talking and gesturing at things. Crystals? A reed diffuser? What the hell was this stuff? He didn't know anything about new agey stuff, or even really herbal stuff. He let her do her thing, and he did his thing, but here was her stuff, in his office, and he didn't really understand. "Aroma what?" he asked, tipping his head to the side, arching an eyebrow in confusion, hoping that an explanation was going to come along. This stuff all seemed a little, well, witchy to him...had he hired a witch!? That would be interesting. She didn't seem like a bad witch, though, so unless she started black magicking about, he wasn't going to fire her for witchcraft.

Oh, the poor boy. He just seemed so upset. Daphne had the sudden and rather inexplicable urge to reach out and hug him; maybe her time spent thus far as a stepmother was starting to inform her instincts. She'd never really been the maternal type, but that was slowly changing as she found herself needing to factor in Zoe's needs and desires on a daily basis. Still, her fledgling "earth mother" instincts were enough to make her want to comfort him as much as she was able to; but that had been her purpose in coming in here in the first place, hadn't it? To soothe, to comfort, to heal his poor bruised soul.

Her face took on a sympathetic expression, her blue eyes serious and concerned. "You don't have to be strong around me, Joe. You can't change the color of your aura anyway, so I'll know if you're lying about being okay. I've never, you know, been through what you're going through... but if you do need anyone to talk to, ever, I'm around, all right?" she said, her voice soft. Then again, her voice was always soft; it was just the way she was made, apparently.

She couldn't help but smile a little when he expressed confusion about aromatherapy, though; somehow, she wasn't surprised that he didn't know what it was. Joe Bailor hardly seemed like the type to be into the more mystical side of life. "Aromatherapy. Smell is the sense tied most strongly to memory and emotion -- so aromatherapy uses certain smells, from plants with certain mystical and healing abilities, to affect your mood. The diffuser -- " she pointed at the little glass vase with the reeds sticking out of it " -- should help with that. It's got lemon, spearmint, and cedarwood. Good smells. And the crystal -- " she motioned to that, too " -- will act sort of like... well, like a water filter. If energy is water, negativity is dirt and silt and leaves and everything you don't want to drink, that can make you sick. The crystal will filter all that out and leave you with just pure water." Hopefully, that would make more sense.

Joe didn't like losing face in front of people, especially in front of his employees, but he also wasn't crazy about lying to people, and it seemed like she had him, like she knew what was up with him, and wasn't going to let it go. It was one of those situations that he had gotten himself into somehow where there was no way out without a truth that he didn't want to be revealed getting revealed. He let out a deep sigh and flopped into his desk chair, wondering if he just should have called in sick toady and taken some time to wallow in his misery and self-obsessed pain before coming back to work and trying to power through everything that was wrong with his life. He didn't want to burden Daphne with all of his problems, but she was making it very difficult for him not to.

She offered to listen to him talk, but if he did talk to her, well what the hell would he say? He wasn't crazy about the idea of just spilling his heart to a random stranger, but he didn't really want to spill it to his friends, either. To lose face and let them know exactly how much of a failure his life had been would be devastating to him...but they were going to find out sooner or later. Hell, Joe Bailor couldn't hang on to his wife, that was what everyone was going to think, that he was some loser, washed up gymnast that couldn't get the woman he loved to stay with him...or maybe even that he didn't care enough to try. Fuck, this was hard. "I don't...I wouldn't know what to say," he admitted. "I haven't quite...figured all of this out quite yet." Maybe that sounded stupid or weak, but it was true.

When she started to talk about the aromatherapy and the crystal, he became more than confused. She was saying things that didn't make sense, very...new-agey things, and he didn't get them one bit, but maybe that was the point, maybe she was trying to confuse. No, that was stupid, she seemed nice, why would she be trying to do that? Maybe...no...well....MAYBE she was a witch! That would make sense. Well, it wouldn't make sense, really, but it was the only thing that really clicked in Joe's head right now, and he decided that he would rather be safe than sorry. This whole thing did seem very...potion-y. "Are you a witch?" he asked, raising his eyebrow. "Not that I"m like, against witches or anything, just want to know, you know...because I'm curious." he shrugged, eyeing the crystal, making a mental note to pour dirty water on it and see if that whole filter business actually worked. He doubted it. It was a rock.

Oh dear. Was she making things worse? The look on his face, the way he was talking, seemed to imply that. Daphne wasn't always the best at picking up on emotional cues from other people but it was kind of hard not to notice that Joe was considerably distraught lately. She gave him a smile that was intended to be kind of maternal and sympathetic, and really just ended up looking more sheepish with a side of compassion. "It's okay," she said, fiddling with one of the elastic bands she kept around her wrist to tie her hair back for yoga. "I mean, you've kind of been through a lot..."

He was young, too, wasn't he? He looked like a baby, barely out of his teenage years, though she knew that he had to be older than that if he'd already been married, divorced, and owned his own business. But even though his inexperience was probably making everything a lot harder right now, just because he'd never been through it before (or so she assumed), maybe that youth would serve him well once he actually started to recover. After all, children tended to bounce back from physical things; it made sense in her head that the younger one was, the better they'd handle the aftermath of emotional wounds, too. At least, that's what she hoped would happen.

She blinked when he asked if she was a witch. Oh boy. Well, she had been asked that before, and in much more accusatory tones, without the quick reassurance that the asker didn't mean anything bad by it. She gave a little laugh and waved her hands in a gesture of rebuttal. "Oh, no no no; no, I'm not a witch," she said quickly. "I just -- know things. It's, um. It's mystical, not magickal." Not that that explanation would help much, she was afraid. Still, maybe it was time to beat a hasty retreat before his kind reassurances started to wane.

She hesitated a moment, though, and took her necklace off, pushing it into his hand; on the thin chain hung a raw, unprocessed and untreated piece of rose quartz. "It'll help with your broken heart," she said, giving him another sheepish little smile. "And help you sleep better too. Rose quartz; it's a powerful healer. Just... keep it in your pocket for a few days. See if it helps." With that and one last tentative smile, Daphne fled her boss' office, just hoping that he wasn't taking those witchcraft suspicions too seriously. Something told her that a witch would not be a popular figure in this small town.

Mystical, not magickal? What the fucking hell did that mean? Were they not one in the same? Joe didn't know anything about this kind of thing - hell, there were a lot of things that Joe didn't know anything about, and this whole new age, mysticism stuff, well, it really fell into that category. He had had so many years where he just lived and breathed gymnastics, and that meant that he didn't really have any focus anywhere else, including learning what herbs made you feel less sad and which rocks were just rocks and which rocks could filter your water...or your emotional water, whatever the hell that meant, really. He didn't get any of this, but he did suppose that it was a nice gesture.

Another thing that Joe decided to admit that he didn't get was women. If he had gotten Kate, she wouldn't have left, and if he had gotten Daphne, well, then he might understand why there was a diffuser full of random stuff on his desk, and why there was some crystal thing on his shelf. He didn't understand why Kate had left, he hadn't even noticed that she wasn't happy, which...in all honesty, was probably a huge part of the problem, but he didn't understand why she didn't just talk to him about it, because then maybe they could have fixed things, and he wouldn't be here right now, slumped at his desk, trying to figure out if crystals actually helped.

He sighed, putting his head down and letting his sign turn into something of a wounded moan. He hated this, being like this. It wasn't him, it wasn't him at all, and he didn't understand why he had to feel so...well, so fucking low. He knew himself well, and he knew that this was anything but who he was. He wasn't dejected, he wasn't low energy, and he definitely wasn't a whiner, but right now, he didn't have the energy to care. Maybe he should just stay in his office for a bit and let the crystal do it's filtering. If that even worked.

((end))