Chapter 23
Chara and Natalie stared hard at the three candles Catti had placed on the bar.
Chara rubbed his forehead, headache incoming. "Please tell me some other adult knows about this."
"Dr. Whitman," Catti supplied. "She told us to ask Miss Bridges about it."
Natalie picked up the white candle, turning it over. "And you did this yourself? Did you look up a recipe on the internet?"
"I just threw the petals in with the wax."
Natalie's jaw dropped. "Never do that again. Magical experimentation can blow up in your face very quickly."
"What do you make of it?" Chara asked.
She held up the white candle looking at the white petals protruding from the wax. "This will purify an area of magical corruption." She put it down. "The red one will definitely boost your magical power and physical strength." She picked up the pink candle. "This one will make anyone in the area of the candle's light act kindly to each other. So, great for family gatherings."
"Can you use them in food?" Susie asked.
"Always thinking with your stomach," Parker chided.
Susie threw up her hands. "She makes magic food! It's the whole reason Dr. Whitman said to talk to her!"
"These are dahlias, right?" Natalie asked.
"Yes," Noelle answered.
"Dahlias are edible. You could use them in food, but you need to be careful to pair them with the correct ingredients."
"What do you mean?" Frisk asked.
"All food can be used magically. But making magic food requires keying into the food's natural properties. Mixing the wrong ones will negate the effect at best and do something crazy at worst. It's why most healing foods are made from baked sweets. Glam burgers and other Mettaton brand foods aside, sugar, butter, eggs, and flour are just programmed for happiness and warmth. It makes them good for healing foods."
"Is North Star around?" Catti asked.
"He was out by the back deck last," Frisk answered.
"Go see if he'll give you some flowers."
Frisk hopped down from her seat and ran to the back door. North Star stood among the trees, hooves tamping down the snow while nibbling at the mushrooms that grew under the deck. Frisk ran back to the kitchen, grabbing an apple from the basket of fruit near the stove. She pulled her boots on and went out the door, snow crunching under her feet. North Star lifted his head and trotted over.
"Hey, Boy." She touched the flowers in his antlers: blue, purple, and burgundy. "Your flowers changed color." She frowned. "May I have some of your flowers?"
He snorted and let his head fall low, presenting his antlers.
She picked one of each, hand lingering over the burgundy one for a moment before snatching it while looking the other way. She offered him the apple. He took the fruit gulping it after a few sloppy bites. He lifted his head, snuffing at her hair.
"My antlers?" Frisk reached up and touched her head, feeling nothing. "But I don't have flowers like you."
North Star knocked his nose against her head before going back to foraging for mushrooms.
"Point taken. I guess." Frisk headed back inside, leaving her boots in the mudroom. She laid the three flowers on the bar, eyes anywhere but on the burgundy one. "His flowers changed color."
"And?" Catti asked.
"And what?"
"You have a weird look. Well, weirder than normal."
Frisk's shoulders sank. "Thanks."
"What she means is," Noelle jumped in, "that you look like more than gathering flowers happened."
Frisk climbed back into her seat, eyes avoiding the burgundy bloom. "He kept knocking his snout against my head."
"Do you grow flowers?" Addison asked.
"We've never seen flowers," Parker said.
"Maybe because she's not in her fae form long enough for them to appear," Susie said. She patted Frisk on the back. "Come on. Give it a go."
Frisk gave her a sour frown. "I can't just do it on command." She sighed. "I honestly don't know how to trigger it." She looked up at Chara. "And I'm not supposed to be doing that, right?"
"Not generally," Chara said. "Let's work with what we've got."
Catti scrolled on her phone. "Blue dahlias represent a new start and significant opportunities. Purple is for royalty and dignity. Burgundy is for betrayal and sadness."
"Why would North Star have flowers that represent betrayal?" Noelle asked.
Natalie lifted the burgundy flower and placed it in Frisk's hands. "What does it feel like to you?"
Frisk froze solid. "Uh…" She looked down at the flower. I was just a flower, wasn't it? Her eyes turned white, tears pooling in the corners. An explosion went off in her ears and she squeezed her eyes shut, huddling against Professor Norham as the woman half dragged her to the stables and away from the main buildings. She dropped the flower and sobbed.
Chara put his arms around her, hugging her close. "You aren't at Marble Hills. You're in your home. You're safe."
Frisk grabbed Chara's sweater, gasping for air. She moaned, crying against his chest.
Chara pet Frisk's head. "We'll be back in a minute." He guided upstairs, holding her while she sobbed.
"Marble Hills? What's Marble Hills?" Natalie asked softly.
"Frisk's boarding school in Andorini," Susie explained.
"It was shelled during the attempted coup," Parker added.
Natalie pulled out her phone searching for Marble Hills while Noelle retrieved the fallen flower. The private school's website listed the institution as closed until further notice, but all of the splash images were available. Burgundy and other dark dahlias made up the majority of the flower beds in every outdoor photo. She dropped her phone on the counter and ran to the back door, stepping out into the snow in just her socks.
"North Star!"
The elk looked up from it's mushroom gathering and trotted over.
Ignoring the cold sinking into her feet she took the elk's face in her hands. "You can't have dark flowers in your antlers." She grabbed one, holding it in front of his eyes. "Frisk can't see these. Not yet. Maybe not ever. It hurts her."
North Star shook himself, pulling away from Natalie, the dark flowers turning white.
"Do you know what's going on with Frisk?" Noelle asked from the door.
The flower in Natalie's hand dried up and crumbled to nothing as North Star turned away. She stared at the dust. "I know what PTSD looks like."
She turned around and saw the Wolves crowded into the doorway. With a flick of her hand, the dust hit the snow. "Frisk has always been in Nightrest."
"Frisk has always been in Nightrest," Wolves repeated.
"Let's go see if we can turn the blue flower petals into luck pops."
The Wolves backed up to let Natalie in the house. She stopped in the mudroom to peel off her wet socks, dropping them in the hamper, grimacing at how cold her feet felt. Once back in the kitchen, she stared at the burgundy bloom sitting on the counter. Picking it up, she put it in a plastic baggie and tossed it in the freezer.
"Uh… Why are you freezing the flower?" Parker asked.
"To save it for Muf- a member of the royal guard who can put it to use."
"What about the purple flower?" Addison asked, poking it.
Natalie lifted it. "It feels… medicinal? Hmm. Unexpected. Or maybe the fae think of royalty differently than we do." She put it aside. "We'll work with the blue one since I'm sure of the properties."
"Are we making lollipops or cake pops?" Noelle asked.
"Depends on what I find in the pantry." Natalie opened the door and looked over the neatly arranged food inside. Spying a jar of light corn syrup, she checked the date on it. Old, but still within shelf life. "Light corn syrup and sugar. Hard candy it is." She grabbed both, leaving them on the counter, and picking up the blue dahlia. She pulled a petal and ate it. "Light. Not much on flavor. I'll be back in a minute. I need to get my flavorings and gel color."
As Natalie pulled on her shoes and stepped out the front door, Chara came back down the stairs.
"Is Frisk okay?" Susie asked. The rest of the Wolves watched him.
"She'll be all right. The doggos are snuggling her right now. Where's Miss Bridges?"
"She said she needed to get flavoring and gel color," Noelle said. She grabbed Susie's and Addison's hands. "Come on. Let's go see Frisk."
The Wolves tromped up the stairs before Chara could stop them.
He sighed. "It's probably for the best. The wolf's strength is the pack."
Natalie came back in with a bag in her hand and candy trays under her arm. She stepped out of her boots, padding barefoot across the floor.
"What happened to your socks?" Chara asked.
"They got wet. How's Frisk?"
"She'll be all right."
Natalie frowned. "I didn't mean to set her off-"
Chara held up both hands. "Don't apologize. I didn't know the flowers would be a trigger either." His hands dropped. "This is going to make being around North Star an issue for her."
"It won't. I told him he had to change the dark flowers. That Frisk couldn't see them."
Chara stared at her for a moment. "Thank you."
Natalie pushed her hair back behind one ear with a small smile. "It's nothing. I saved the flower. It's in the freezer. I'll give it to Muffet. In the meantime, we're going to work with the petals of the blue flower and make some candy."
Chara crossed his arms over his chest and gave her a wry smile. "Sweetening me up?"
"With the chocolate kolachi, yes." She set the bag down, pulling out a pot, candy thermometer, candy flavorings, and gel color. "We can turn the blue flower petals into luck bombs. The purple petals seem more medicinal. They'll take some research and a bit of experimentation to figure out what they'll do."
Chara lifted one of the flavoring bottles. "Can you use any flavor or is that part of programming the recipe?"
"It's part of the programming. Different flavors have different uses in magical food. For this, I'm going with orange, which is good for fortune and motivation, blueberry, which is already a potent luck flavor, and cherry, which is good for clarity and insight."
Natalie slipped the bands off a rolled up silicone mat and rolled it out. Embedded in the silicone was a blank circle. She pulled out an edible pigment pen and wrote the recipe in it, filling symbols between the lines.
Chara leaned over the counter, resting his elbows on the top to prop himself up, watching her work. "This is nothing like the casting I learned."
"Like I said earlier, it's all about programming." Natalie place the pot on top of the recipe and measured out her ingredients, pouring them in the pot. After attaching the candy thermometer, she set the pot on the stove. Going through the candy trays, she selected one filled with stars and put it on top of the recipe.
The Wolves came back down the stairs, Frisk draped over Susie's back like a rag doll.
"What are you doing?" Chara asked.
"Frisk said she didn't want to come down, but we weren't having that," Parker said.
Frisk slid off of Susie's back and climbed back up on her chair. "Sorry."
"You aren't allowed to apologize. You didn't do anything wrong," Chara said.
"I made a scene."
"Your Aunt Chrissy losing it on a guy who kept harassing one of her friends and shoving him out the window in the throne room during a function is making a scene," Chara said.
"I remember that!" Natalie chuckled. "Talk show news couldn't get enough of it. Princess Astelle turned it into a campaign designed to shed light on sexual harassment."
"One of Astelle's many talents is turning Chrissy's faux pas into features."
"Why didn't you do anything to stop the harassment?" Frisk asked.
The rest of the wolves watched him intently, disappointment at the ready.
Chara gave them a smirk. "I was teaching a firearms course at my late wife's school. And honestly, it was better that Chrissy shoved him out a window. Captain Undyne was about to put a spear through him."
Natalie pulled the thermometer out of the boiling mixture on the stove and added flavoring before carefully pouring the blue-purple mixture into the star molds.
"Nobody touch. This stuff is lava hot."
"How long until it cools?" Catti asked.
Natalie snapped her fingers. The air around the candy turned blue and shattered into tiny crystals that hit the counter top in a little sprinkle of water.
"Now." She flipped the mold out onto the mat and popped a candy in her mouth, sucking on it. "That's nice and blueberry."
"Why blueberry?" Addison asked.
"Blueberries are used for luck, legal help, and prosperity."
"How will we know if it's working?" Frisk asked.
Natalie shrugged. "We'll have to wait and see."