Alcohol
Summary: Coming to live into the castle, Sofia had never experienced anyone who coped with their emotions with beer, whiskey and what had you until she met Cedric.
Miranda never drink. Roland never drink. Not even the amiable steward Baileywick drink.
Yet the castle sorcerer did. Sofia could smell it on his breath after their conversation the first night.
It smelled foul. It smelled of beer. Sofia knew what beer was from summer nights in the village when the men would make a toast to the fall and winter seasons.
Then Miranda would ask her to come back inside. Sofia had often wondered why until she thought back to the smell of Cedric's breath.
Days went into weeks that later went into months. By then Sofia was used to the smell of Cedric and beer. She could now tell that whenever he spoke, beer was the smell that came out.
Except for Wassailia. And her birthday. Those were the only two days in the three hundred and sixty five days that she didn't smell beer.
"I only drink when the world is against me," Cedric said once when Sofia had asked him why he drink.
"Which is a lot?" Sofia guessed, seeing a new drink replace the beer she had been used to. "What's that Mr. Cedric?"
"Whiskey. But you're to never drink alcohol Sofia. I don't want you too."
And she never did.
But whiskey was a new smell to get used to. Sofia was used to the beer that once she mastered the disappearance spell, she tried to make just the whiskey disappear.
But instead made all of the whiskey and beer disappear by accident. Cedric gave her a split lip for doing that.
Yet she never told anyone that he did it for she didn't want her friend fired. He was abusive without the alcohol so she kept in mind never to anger him.
Yet until recently Sofia didn't smell beer or whiskey in Cedric's breath for sometime. The world wasn't against him it seemed.
That was until the Prisma incident. That was when Sofia saw him clug down a bottle of beer.
She sighed sadly, cursing Wormwood with some of the words she knew from Cedric's drunken rages under her breath.
But Sofia was used to alcohol by now. Especially when it came to the smell of beer.
She had once wondered back in her first few days as a princess how Cedric managed to function with beer or whiskey or any other type of alcohol in his system. Until the night of the Prisma incident.
She learned that he never drank more than two bottles depending on the events of the day.
Alcohol was Cedric's second best friend next to her yet Sofia was so used to the smell that if he asked her one day out of the blue while she cleaned up after their lessons if he should quit, Sofia would have a difficult time saying yes.