Arkadin stood by the window, watching the traffic beneath him. Various vehicles had come to a standstill, slowly inching forward in one lane, while moving somewhat normally in the other lane. The reason for the traffic was pretty simple. There was a school down the road, and all the kids were just finishing up for the day. Of course, this meant that a lot of parents had driven by and parked around the school to pick up their children, and this had caused the traffic towards the school.
The whole thing about adults and children hadn’t really occurred to Arkadin before. As long as he had existed, he had almost always considered himself a single adult, even back when he was young. He always looked after himself. Sure, Arkadin had siblings in the past and in previous lives, but the whole concept of being a parent was very foreign to him. And the idea of having children almost disgusted the former deity.
Below, the traffic was slowly clearing up. Part of what made the traffic worse was that it turned into a t-junction onto a busy road where the school was, and most people wanted to turn right, meaning they needed both ways to be clear. Not that common on a busy road, and it was made worse by the various kids trying to cross. Some of the kids lived nearby and Arkadin could see them walking home, but most required pickup from parents.
The more Arkadin watched, the more the traffic began to fade. However, the constant rumble of various vehicles, all in different shapes and sizes, was beginning to annoy Arkadin. Back when he lived with Kallis, the home they stayed in was rather quiet, despite being in a weirdly mostly indoors area. There were no passing vehicles, no roads, just corridors to walk down. Arkadin admittedly missed that quietness, that silence. Now, while there were still bouts of silence in Arkadin’s new home, there was always still the odd car going by. And, rather annoyingly, sometimes vehicles would go by that were loud enough to overcome the sounds from Arkadin’s devices.
Speaking of devices, Arkadin backed away from the window and headed back to his computer. He swore he heard the sound of an incoming email, but as he checked his email program, there was nothing there. Arkadin checked again, and an email popped up. He scanned it quickly, then sighed. Someone wanted some complicated changes on some work Arkadin had done. Stuff that would have been a lot easier to do had they mentioned it in the first place.
Arkadin however decided not to start work on these changes though. He didn’t want to. Instead, he went back to the window and started watching the road again. Things had finally calmed down, and traffic was now moving normally. This made Arkadin feel a bit better. It seemed that the badness had passed, and things were definitely calmer. The lack in volume now meant that Arkadin could concentrate better.
That being said, Arkadin didn’t need to do that work straight away. He was lucky, it wasn’t urgent. So he could take his time and stay by the window. After all, watching the world go by was quite nice, now the roads weren’t fully backed up.