Emoji Patronum?
A tale of nightmarish misfortune in the mystical world of texting out of formality by Tithi Chakravorty, Copy Supervisor
On a night that blended perfectly with her phone’s Dark Mode setting, a member of the coven Introverteus sat ensconced in the shadows of her den.
While the world had Twitter, The Lady had Kawkers — an AI crow that would apprise her of the trending omens and make predictions about her day. And today’s news was rather troubling for The Lady.
‘Unending misery’ it said.
‘Tell me more.’ She urgently asked the voice assistant.
‘You have exhausted your daily limit of 1 omen. For more, please subscribe to our –’ The AI crow squawked and was interrupted by The Lady exiting the app, annoyed and worried.
She never believed in the omens before, but the latest update that accounted for all sorts of celestial and behavioural events left nothing to chance. They liked to call them predictions to let people believe in the illusion of privacy, but they might as well call them guarantees.
She shivered a little and decided to order something special for herself from The Calldron.
‘This is The Calldron, this is The Calldron. Just call, order, and your concoction is all done!’ The familiar caller incantation of her favourite food delivery app brought some semblance of comfort to her.
Once she placed her order, she was back to feeling dreadful.
Just then, she heard her phone chime. She was impressed, thinking her order had arrived already. But she soon saw that that wasn’t the case.
‘Oh my. I am spook.’ The Lady said out loud, wondering how magical her acquaintance must be feeling to use 14 sparkles. She would’ve liked a sip of whatever brew Jinxie had.
The Lady didn’t respond, and her phone chimed again.
At first The Lady winced, and then paled when she reached the end of Jinxie’s sentence.
She quickly tried to respond to avert the crisis, but was at a loss for words.
While she wasn’t as enthusiastic about talking to Jinxie, she didn’t want to sound rude either. She counted the number of exclamation marks that would be appropriate for her response and settled on zero.
The Lady narrowed her eyes to decipher what G meant. She would’ve assumed it’s ‘great’, or could it be ‘gloomy’ or ‘grumpy’?
‘Your runes will be my ruin.’ The Lady muttered as she tried to think of a reply.
The Lady texted back in a bid to let the duration of the small talk live up to its name.
The Lady stared at the screen, nearly blinded by all those sparkles. If only they could throw some light on what Jinxie meant.
The Lady prodded, deciding to stay in the dark when it came to understanding Jinxie’s idea.
After 15 minutes, she shared everything Jinxie asked for, and immediately got a response.
‘Is that a good thing or bad?’ The Lady wondered and drew a conclusion from the emojis to type out her next text.
Again with the sparkles. The Lady racked her brain for a response that would end the conversation on a polite note.
The Lady texted back with half a mind to point out that those were shrimps, then better sense prevailed in the other half of her mind. She went with the half that made complete sense and stayed mum.
The Lady summoned some help from Awoo — the sorcerer’s engine to search for spells that could end the conversation nicely. But the results on ‘Hoo To’ seemed like a hoot, so she decided to deal with it herself.
It was against her ideals but she realised she might need to use an emoji in a manner that isn’t joking.
Not cold, yet not encouraging further discussion either.
The Lady let out a big sigh of relief.
‘Should be done right about now.’ were the famous last thoughts of The Lady.
There was no The End to this, just like it was prophesied by Kawkers.
If only The Lady had taken its premium subscription.
