Prince Sam's POV
To Sam, one of the greatest joys in life was sleeping. Nothing, except maybe watching someone get pranked, was as good a way to spend his time. This obviously came with one problem. Jadie's relentless schedule would never let him stay in bed for an entire day.
"You want me to do what now?" asked Sam, scowling at Jadie as she calmly interrupted his breakfast of waffles and fruit. The women had come in only a few minutes earlier, greeting his parents with a smile and happily saying goodbye to them when they left for an early morning meeting, her neon pink skirt too bright for a time before high noon. She had proceeded to hand all three of the triplets thin packets with tiny, dense writing typed neatly all over them.
Jadie shook her head in exasperation and motioned for Fitz and Luke, who were both almost out the door, to continue on their way. "Help with the decorations for tonight. All you have to do is help string up a few lights, push a few tables around. It's not that hard," she said. Luke sent a last glance back at Sam before leaving, probably going to get ready for his date.
"But what about Luke's date? He'll be using the garden!" protested Sam. Jadie shook her head and gave him a small smile. "The volleyball court isn't going to be near where tonight's starlit garden party is," She replied, cutting off his only method of escape.
Sam made a face and knew he had lost. He scarfed down the last few bites of his waffle, then pushed in his chair and grabbed the small packet that he planned on shredding as soon as Jadie was out of sight. Two guards pushed open the doors for them, letting Jadie and Sam quickly travel to the gardens through the short hallway that separated an entrance from the royal dining room.
Walking down the hallway was possibly the first time in weeks that he was able to walk next to Jadie Flores without insulting or complaining to her, something she seemed to be thankful about. The two didn't talk for the minute they were moving in, and the taller women kept glancing down at her clipboard and would sometimes take out a pen and cross something off.
"I sent a few of the selected you seemed to get along with to help you. It's not a date, so you can't use it as one, but it might help you to not be bored out of your mind while you finish the task," said Jadie, causing Sam to abruptly stop nearly a foot away from the doors.
"Really? Who?" he asked. Finally, something that didn't seem like it was a punishment taken directly from a torture chamber. Hopefully the girls would be ones that had been cool. Sam knew this was one big trick on Jadie's part to help him actually do something for once, but it might work, depending on how smart her choices had been with which girls would be helping.
"Prince Sam!" called out a familiar voice, seeing him as soon as the doors were opened. Jadie silently slipped away without him realizing. Mae, her left leg in a knee brace, came rushing over with a big smile on her face, Alette Salem and Cila Naoumov following closely behind her with similar expressions.
"Mae! Alette, Cila, it's good to see all three of you!" Sam exclaimed. This proved that Jadie was a human being who might have been more intelligent than she was usually given credit for. Three girls who each had a distinct energy about them, from Cila's intense energy and Alette's lighthearted sense of humor. Jadie had obviously seen Sam with Mae, making that a no-brainer.
"And it's just Sam. So, what are we doing first?" He asked, looking at the large pile of craft supplies and unassembled tables that were waiting nearby. Sam also noticed that the girls were dressed a it more practically.
Alette wore a plain white t-shirt and jeans, her hair pulled back under a white baseball cap, looking ready to put some tables together and more like an actual human than a doll in a colorful dress. Jadie had been particularly nice in allowing the girls of this selection to wear normal clothes on occasions she deemed appropriate, if the maids went to her with the clothes they had made before the girls actually wore them. Alette stood with her arms crossed and looked over at Sam.
Cila, on the other hand, wore a jean skirt and a floppy sun hat to keep her face protected from the Angeles sun. It must have been hard for her maids to locate that. The selected girls were only allowed to wear things that the palace provided, even with Jadie being more lenient with some of the dress code, and he figured that the buyers had their hands full.
Mae was still seeming very similar to the girl he had met yesterday, wearing a cream colored blouse and a violet skirt with thin knee-height stockings in a way that would be perfectly suited for the job they had to do but not quite suited for any hard physical labor. At least the only lifting the four of them would have to do would be pushing tables into the correct places.
"Jadie said for some of us to start assembling the tables and for the others to start making the table decorations. I think Sam and I should do the tables, while Mae and Cila make the decorations," replied Alette.
Though all of the girls probably wanted to at least talk to him, Sam nodded along with the others as they started towards their projects. He knew that he shouldn't mention how horrible he was at putting things together even with a instruction manual that had pictures. Hopefully these wouldn't be the ones that came from that furniture store with roots in Swendaway, because those made his head hurt more than a lecture from Fitz did.
The first few things to open were the three tables that food would go on. Alette immediately tore open the cardboard boxes and motioned for Sam to get out the instruction manual, which was thicker than the packet of papers on Jadie's clipboard. It would have to work for all three tables, since he wasn't going to read through three different versions of this monster.
"Sam, I'm thinking that you should read me the instructions and that I should assemble the table. Does that work?" asked Alette, snapping him back from staring over at where Mae and Cila were currently putting flowers inside an old glass jar. Sam nodded. Alette grinned and flipped the manual to the right page for him and shook open the box of pieces.
"Okay. Start with connecting the A arrow to the B opening, the A arrow being on the piece called Red One and the B opening on Blue Seventy," he said. She plopped down on the ground and motioned for him to do the same, scavenging through the pile to find the right pieces and put them together.
Once she had found both of the wooden boards, Sam continued. "Locate Orange Twenty Five and connect it to Cerulean Eighty Seven. Do the same with Maroon Eleven and Burgundy Fifty Three," He was starting to get the feeling that anyone other than Alette would have already run away screaming from the not yet created table and gone as far away as possible.
"Did that. Wow, this is already coming together really well!" She said, grinning and adjusting the parts of the table to be more steady. Sam felt himself smile in return before looking to see what most of the instruction booklet was, given that it seemed to include way too much stuff that wasn't necessary to the creation of the table. It turned out to be various other ways it could be put together, some even into different things.
"It is. It says here that the last step is to connect Beige Thirty One to Ruby Ninety Four," replied Sam. Miraculously, the table became a table with the last two pieces, and Alette easily turned it upright and began to check to see if everything was going to stay in the right place. She fiddled with one of the legs before running a hand over the circular top, then proclaimed it done.
"And to the next one! That wasn't that bad, was it?" Alette laughed, fixing her baseball cap so it blocked the sun from her eyes.
"Yeah, it wasn't. I'm not sure that you even need me to help you with this," he responded. She shook her head, and he sighed, but turned back to the beginning of the instruction manual so they could put the next two tables together.
It went quickly, with Sam telling Alette instructions that she had already started to do before he had even started talking, the tables done and checked by her within twenty minutes of their completion of the first one. Across the small stretch of land where the party would be held, Mae and Cila were casually wrapping ribbon around jars and making a framed chalkboard with artsy white letters in the middle. He watched them attach a fabric flower to a corner and wave over at him and Alette.
"We discussed earlier that me and you would also do the table clothes and move the tables over to where they needed to go before you did the banners and light strings with Mae, while Cila and I worked on setting up and putting together the couches," remarked Alette, jumping to her feet and offering Sam and hand to help him up, which he gratefully took.
A few pastel colored clothes waited for them in rolls near where some of the other supplies were being held. It was easy enough for Sam to rip open the plastic packaging and hand the clothes to Alette, who draped them over the tables and used double sided tape to make they stick. She was really much more crafty than he was, but almost everyone could say that when Sam was in the equation.
Pushing the tables was a little harder, since Alette could only do one at a time and he had to at least try to move one to the correct spot. Mae and Cila were already done with their crafts and were coming over to help direct them. Sam had a feeling that this could be embarrassing.
"Left, Sam, left! No, not that left, the other left!" called Cila, trying to keep from laughing at his terrible pushing. "Move forward! In a straight line, not in a zig-zag! Okay, now back to the right, wait, wrong right!"
By the time the table was in the right place, Alette and Mae had already gotten the other one in it's spot and were coming over to laugh with him and Cila. Cila, as the one who was calling out the directions, had already started to break down in a fit of giggles over the epic fail that it had been, her floppy hat sliding over her face and almost falling off until she pushed it back up and began to laugh once more.
"I haven't laughed this much in ages! Should we start the rest?" said Mae, beaming over at Sam while the two other girls tried to compose themselves. He nodded. It took another minute for the others to calm down, and then Mae and Sam went over to grab the strands of twinkly white lights to hang in the trees that leaned over the grassy area.
"How're you feeling? Is your leg okay?" asked Sam. He wound a few strings over his left arm and turned to Mae with concern on his face. She had looped the lights over the back of her neck and was wearing them as a shawl, tucking her blonde hair back over so it wasn't in a weird position. Mae looked down at her knee brace and back at him with a small smile.
"No, no, it's fine. I only have to wear this until tomorrow, and I'm already cleared for rehearsals," she replied, taking one end of her lights and twisting it around a large tree branch before tightly knotting it and picking the free end up off of the grass.
He still felt horrible for being the one that had caused the injury, and didn't know whether she was being honest or was just saying what she thought he wanted to hear. If she was going to rehearsals, he would have to wait to make sure she was actually healed before doing anything, and they could possibly hurt her even more. Sam felt like he was a large idiot. Mae probably hated him.
"That's good. We don't Knee-ed you to be hurt," he replied. Puns seemed to come easier to him when Mae was around, and her laugh made him feel a little better about his accident and possibly hurting her. Mae absentmindedly adjusted her knee wrap and started to string the lights around the tree, Sam beginning to do the same on the neighboring tree he had gone to so he could talk with her while they worked.
"Very funny," Mae told him, a bright smile on her face. She reached down to check that the mobile plug was working for the lights. The tree lit up and twinkled, the tiny lights flashing on and off in a slow rhythm. Sam quickly finished his tree, just so he could keep talking to her, and the two moved to the next pair, repeating the process as they talked.
"Just for you, milady," replied Sam. The nickname caused her to giggle and him to do another mock bow, then hoist himself up into a branch of the tree so he could sit and twine the lights through better. He looked down at Mae through the foliage. "Hello down there!" He grinned.
She waved in reply, but started to move to another tree, making him scramble to try to get down. Sam may have forgotten that he didn't usually climb trees for a very important reason, one that would now keep him from talking to Mae. He really wasn't able to get out of them. He twisted around and tried to slid down, only resulting in him slipping further down into the tree's fork between two large branches. Now Sam was really stuck.
"Ah, shit. Um, Mae?" After muttering some curses, Sam was forced to yell out to Mae, seeing that Alette and Cila had gone back inside to talk to Jadie about something that was probably less problematic than him being stuck in a tree.
She looked up at him and giggled before circling the tree to find a way to get him down without breaking anything major. "If you can use your arms to lift yourself out of the fork, like you do sometimes in a chair, and only use your arms to get yourself into a standing position, I can tell you how to get down without hurting yourself!" Mae called up to him, seeming more worried than she had a few minutes ago.
"Okay, I'll try!" Sam wriggled his arms out and put them up on the branches to try and get himself up. This would take arm strength he might not have. "And here goes nothing!" he muttered.
With a push, Sam found his behind wrenched out of it's position inside the tree fork and hovering over it, his arms supporting most of his body weight. He quickly swung his legs back and forth, trying to get them up and back so he could get into a standing position, and managed it after five tries. His arms were starting to hurt, but he didn't want to fall out of the tree, so he kept them supporting him in place. Sam's feet didn't have the best grip on tree, with his sneakers being pretty worn down, and he could feel himself slipping. "Mae!" he yelped, afraid.
"I need you to jump out and roll to the ground. Try not to hit it too hard, and don't hit your head on a branch!" replied Mae. Not concerned with how she knew this, Sam braced himself to jump and a weird feeling started to consume his stomach. He was actually very terrified.
He forced himself to jump. Sam was weightless for a second that felt like an eternity, twisting his head so he wouldn't get a concussion from a branch, and made himself curl up at the last possible second, hitting the ground and rolling like a very large, very oddly shaped, and definitely not armored armadillo with some very questionable daytime activities.
Mae was running over to him as soon as he was on the ground, lights forgotten, bending down to make sure he was okay. "Sam! Oh, I'm so sorry, you're not hurt, are you?" She asked, seeing him still curled up with his arms over his neck. Sam sat up, feeling a little bruised and embarrassed, but shook his head with an abashed grin on his face as he did so.
"Nothing hurt but my pride, and I'm a little bruised, but I'm not dead and I'm out of the tree. Thank you, milady," he replied, standing up and falling into the cursed tree that he'd been stuck in. "By the way, how on earth did you know what to do?" Sam was confused. She really didn't seem like she would have been in that position before, ever.
Mae laughed and helped him stand up. "My sister, Riley, got stuck once. We had to figure out how to get her out of it, though I improvised it a bit for this," she replied. Sam nodded, and mentally thanked whatever higher power was up their for Mae's little sister liking to climb trees and for Mae's quick thinking. Without it, he'd be either stuck in the tree or have more broken bones than he could count.
"Well, thanks. I'm thinking that I probably shouldn't be doing anything involving lights, right?" said Sam, laughing and smiling over at Mae. She had dropped her remaining string on the grass, and he had left his dangling out of the tree, but he really didn't want to try to get it and end up getting himself stuck again.
Suddenly, an idea popped into Sam's head. "Hey, Mae, do you want to go on a date in a few days? Like, bowling and food or something?" asked Sam, nervously looking over at her. It took what felt like way too long for Mae to process what she said, and when she finally did, she hesitated for longer than Sam would have liked her to do. Her face finally broke into a smile.
"Yes, I'd love to. Thank you," she replied, smiling and looking at least a little excited. Sam smiled back, relived she had said yes and hadn't made things awkward by declining. "Great!" he said, not sure what he was doing.
Jadie was being lead by Alette and Cila back outside, probably after they'd seen him get out of the tree. He turned back to Mae, and smiled. "I'll see you then, Milady!" Sam said. Mae smiled again and walked over to them.
Author's Note: Sam is going on his first date in a few chapters! Since we've got Luke's date with Abrielle next chapter, and I want to let you see rehearsals before we do anything else, it might be a few POV rotations.
I'd like to ask everyone who submitted a character to check the unfinished casting list that I've been working on that's posted on my profile. I have it mostly done, but I want to make sure everyone is okay with what their characters are doing before they see the casting lists in the chapter after the next. Some girls have much more to do than others, but I can always adjust things, and most of the backstage positions haven't been posted yet. I would also like if the girls who have solos to have songs chosen by then, just so I can get started on the choreography for rehearsals.
Thanks for reading! If you liked this chapter, or have constructive critism, please leave a review! I love reading them and they sometimes help me figure out what to do with the story. (But don't actually tell me what you want to do, it just helps me see what you like)