Water heated to a boil in the copper kettle. The cup and saucer came from the top shelf- lilac patterned – Remilia was in a dour mood today, and the color was calming. The tea leaves were her own blend, carefully selected for freshness, and also for their mundanity. Remilia could taste the magic in supernatural breeds, and would complain that it ruined the flavor.
The oven dinged. Sakuya went on arranging the tea tray for another ten seconds before realizing that no one had handled the oven. She cleared her throat loudly.
The fairy chef, currently examining her reflection in the back of a ladle, yelped and turned. "Sorry, Boss."
The fairy opened the oven, releasing a burst of heat into the already steamy kitchen. She tried to take the baking tray, only to yelp again as she burned her hand.
"Oven mitts!" Sakuya snapped. She hadn't stopped arranging, but her free hand was toying with her pocket watch. If this took any longer, she was going to just do it herself, and damn the maid.
Surprisingly though, the fairy found her mitts and withdrew the tray before it burned. The scent of warm cookies filled the room, rich ginger and spices. The fairy even remembered to turn off the oven before she began icing the cookies with quick dabs of buttercream.
Sakuya allowed herself to look away and pour the first cup of tea. The tea was a rich black, and earthy, to compliment the sweetness of the cookies. It would steep for the four minutes it took Sakuya to get to Remilia, just in time to reach the ideal temperature and flavor.
She turned just as the fairy reached for a cookie, drooling slightly.
"Are you done?"
Another yelp, and the chef nearly flipped the cookie sheet with her flinch. "S-sorry, Boss! I just- they smelled really good, and I've never seen these before, and- and-"
Sakuya gave her a long, flat look. "Don't be here when I return."
The maid was already trembling as Sakuya did her final preparations. The teapot went on one side of the tray, wrapped in a cozy to keep it warm. The cup and saucer were in the middle, both for stability and temperature. Too close to the kettle and it would stay too hot. Six cookies, arranged in a neat circle on a plate, went on the far left, away from any heat that might melt the icing. The napkin was the final piece, accenting the tea cup with a crisp, triangular fold.
She lifted the tray and left the kitchen. The room was adjacent to the main dining room, but Remilia had decided to take her tea on the west veranda today. Sakuya thought she might be watching the moonrise, though the Lady had said little since she awoke.
The hallways in the mansion were not always the same, or even logically consistent with the dimensions of the house. The Kirisame girl had complained loudly on numerous occasions that the mazelike nature of the mansion was Patchouli's way to keep her out. Kirisame was, as always, mistaken. The spell was of Koakuma's invention, powered by a matrix Remilia had written.
It was their way of protecting Patchouli from undue exertion, and though it warped the halls and rooms at random, some features were static. Remilia's bedroom was always deep in the mansion, and Flandre's door was always at the end of a long, remote hallway. The trick to getting anywhere, especially when you had a tray full of steaming tea and cookies, was not to try.
Sakuya took a left at the first junction, another left, and paused to glare at a maid she'd caught shirking behind a suit of armor. A third left, then a right, and, instead of finding herself back at the kitchens, she turned into an entirely new colonnaded room, one side lined with windows. The doors to the west veranda were ahead, one ajar, letting in wisps of cool night air.
She moved steadily, heels clacking on the tile. The mental clock that had begun when she poured the tea was ticking towards zero. Just in time. She-
"Boss Maid! Boss Maid!"
Long practice kept her irritation from showing as she turned to face the interloper.
Sakuya frowned.
The maid was a mess. Cerulean hair singed, one sleeve of her uniform was torn away entirely, and the skirt had a clean hole through the center, like someone had fired a danmaku bullet between the fairy's legs.
"Yes?"
"Boss, I just came from downstairs! It was like, super dark down there, and there's all those bones and stuff, and it's scary, even though you always make me go anyway, and-"
"What do you need?" Sakuya said coolly. The timer for teatime was coming dangerously close to 'now.'
"Oh!" The maid blinked, seeming to remember why she was upset. "I was supposed to get Lady Flandre's dresses for the laundry, but she was awake, and she was soooo grumpy! But she uh- she said that she wanted to see you."
"You mean she wished to speak to her sister?"
Sakuya's frown deepened as the maid shook her head in response.
"Nuh-uh! She said 'Send me the Boss Maid, or I'll come get her myself.'" The maid gestured toward her ruined dress and hair. "She's really grumpy tonight."
"I see. Put that dress in the trash, and you are dismissed for the night. Fix your hair before tomorrow."
She strode towards the veranda, already preparing her apologies for the delay, when the maid called after her.
"But Lady Flandre said, 'Do it in five minutes!' And that was like forever ago because I couldn't find you."
Sakuya stopped. The words took an instant to set in, and then she had a hand on her watch.
Click.
The world went still and quiet, all the colors turning to inverted monochrome. Sakuya took flight. Half a second to drop the tray onto the table beside a frozen Remilia.
Click.
The eldest Scarlet was long-used to Sakuya's appearances, and didn't even twitch at her arrival.
"Milady, I apologize for my lateness, but something urgent with your sister seems to have come up."
Remilia tilted her head slightly. "Is that so? She's not rampaging again, is she?"
"No, Milady." She relayed what the maid had said to her, as fast as she could.
"Ah." Remilia yawned and waved a hand. "I slept poorly. I trust you can take care of it, Sakuya?"
"Yes, Milady."
She waited just long enough for Remilia to give an affirming nod before she touched her watch again.
Sakuya moved. She had all the time in the world, yes, but Flandre demanded urgency. She hadn't ever made a request like this, actually sending a messenger to relay it. If she wanted something, she'd usually just stand at her door and yell until someone heard her. Or, on bad days, kick down the door and come get what she wanted.
But sending a messenger? That was the kind of thing Remilia would do, and showed a degree of restraint that Flandre just didn't have. When Flandre Scarlet wanted something, she'd go get it herself, regardless of the consequences.
The air was stale, in Sakuya's timeless world, and flying without a breeze never failed to be an odd sensation. The spell matrix that warped the hallways had a distorting effect on time and space, and the mansion interior was always blurred and unfocused, the details nebulous when she stopped time.
It took her nearly ten minutes to locate the hallway leading to Flandre's domain. Today, it was sandwiched between two moonlit gardens, almost a mirror of the windowed colonnade that led to Remilia.
Time resumed as she touched down.
Flandre's door was open just a hair. Sakuya's initial thought that the maid had left it open was replaced by a more disquieting one: Flandre had left it open for her. Another degree of restraint that she'd rarely shown.
Sakuya pulled it fully open. The basement staircase yawned before her, the stench of old blood and death wafting up from the stones.
"Lady Scarlet, I'm here," she called. Her voice echoed down the stairs and vanished into the gloom.
There was no response from below.
She descended.
Flandre's realm was exempt from the space-changing magic that affected most of the house, but taking the stairs always held a degree of risk. Flandre's tantrums had left clawmarks gouged into the walls, and the stairs were not always whole. Sakuya opted to just hover a few inches off the pitted stones rather than risk tripping over loose rubble.
It was pitch black below. Sakuya whispered a cantrip as she went. It was something from the days before her life as Head Maid, when she'd had other reasons to need to see in the dark. The shadows flickered and then clarified, details looming up around her as the darkvision engaged.
The stairs came to a landing and then turned at a right angle, descending ten more yards before meeting the stone floor of the basement.
Sakuya continued hovering, her heels brushing over the scattered bones and mess that carpeted the room. Though, room didn't do it justice. The basement ran the full length and width of the mansion, and even with her spell, Sakuya couldn't penetrate far into the darkness. It was more like a cave. It smelled like a cave, all dampness and stale death.
"Lady Scarlet? You wished to see me?" Her voice was calm and steady. Another old habit. Vampires were predators, and responded to perceived weakness with aggression. It helped that she wasn't frightened of Flandre. The girl was dangerous, yes, but also fragile and childlike.
Sakuya was more worried about what had happened to trigger this change in Flandre's behavior than of what Flandre was actually doing with it.
She hovered aimlessly, crossing a long expanse of stone and bones.
"Sa-ku-yaaa." Flandre's voice sang from all around her.
Sakuya stopped.
Two eyes opened just at the edge of Sakuya's vision. Red, bright enough to shine through the dark.
"Milady. You called?"
The sound of small footsteps, of things crunching underfoot answered her. Flandre materialized from the shadows, wings chiming like bells on every step.
Her dress was crimson trimmed with white, her stockings pale against mary-janes. Her usual mobcap was absent, though her hair was neater than the usual blood-clotted tangle. And…
Sakuya's frown returned. It wasn't just Flandre's hair that was cleaner. Her dress was unstained, with none of the tears she accumulated playing in the basement. She often just went nude, with no one to see her, but here she was, fully dressed and groomed, and… smiling.
"Took you long enough," Flandre said, pouting playfully. "I bet Big Sis was being boring again, wasn't she?"
"The maid was tardy. I apologize for my delay though, Lady Scarlet."
"Doesn't matter." Flandre rolled her blazing eyes and kept walking, padding toward Sakuya. Sakuya stayed still, letting Flandre circle her, drawing ever inward until she spoke from just beside Sakuya's ear.
"You know what today is, Sakuya?"
"Thursday, January 5th, Milady. The year is-"
"Nope!" Flandre shook her head hard enough to send her wings ringing. "Don't care! What's next week?"
Sakuya paused for a moment, examining a mental calendar. Coming-Of-Age-Day was on the 11th, but the Scarlets didn't celebrate the Japanese holidays most of Gensokyo did, and Flandre was much too old for… Flandre was too old for…
Oh dear.
"Your birthday is January 15th."
"Yes!" Flandre darted around her and caught Sakuya's hands in a grip bordering on crushing. "My birthday! I'm going to be 500 this year, and I started thinking. I have nothing else to do down here but think. But maybe it's time I started being a little more grown up."
"I confess that your age had slipped my mind, Milady," Sakuya said, bowing her head apologetically. "Did you want to have a party this year?"
Now that she thought of it, she didn't think Remilia had ever actually celebrated a birthday in the time that she had known her. The numbers probably lost meaning after a couple centuries. Where in the hell had Flandre even come up with this idea?
"If you want." Flandre looked unenthused with the idea, floating listlessly a few feet away from Sakuya now.
"I would have to ask your sister. She would be in charge of the preparations, after all." And in charge of denying it, because a party would be overstimulating for Flandre, and likely deadly for everyone involved.
"Would there be gifts at a party? I thought- that's what I wanted to ask you about. I'm going to be more of a grownup now." Flandre gestured at her dress. "Doing grownup stuff, helping Remi with things."
Sakuya controlled her eye twitch. Where had Flandre gotten this notion from? Had the fairies said something to her? Fairies always had lots of stupid notions in their heads, and Flandre was just so impressionable. She was sheltered!
"But what I really wanted…" She was hesitating now, her words faltering. "Cuz you and Remi always do it, and I'm kinda… jealous, because all I have is the dumb food the maids bring, but…" Flandre trailed off, twiddling her fingers. If she'd been able to blush, she would have been.
"Yes, Milady?"
"I wanna… I wanna drink your blood, Sakuya."