"I'm scared and uncertain all the time, but damn it Mattie, if I die, I'm going out making jam." - Pansy Parkinson, age 26, suggestively wiggling a pair lemons at her bodyguard.
Pansy Parkinson pushed her dark bangs out of her face as she made eggs and toast for herself and her bodyguard, Gerald 'Gerry' Kessler. A mountain of a man with Nordic ancestry that made him perfectly apt at looming threateningly.
A perfect quality for a bodyguard, in Pansy's humble opinion.
Even better, he had the kind of eyes that saw everything, took everything in, without missing a beat. Hawk eyes. It made her feel safe from the moment she hired him at age 18, fingers still recovering after turning to stone.
Gerry stood tall and silently by her back door, a double wide sliding glass that looked out into her heavily shaded and fenced in backyard. The glass was a lie. Nothing like what she worked with on a daily basis, nothing like what she created. But while it looked like everyday regular glass, they were in fact more solid and durable than steel plates.
Steel plates magicked to be indestructible. Nothing, magic or mundane, could penetrate those windows. The front door, guarded by her other bodyguard, Wayne Fry, had the same protections. As did all her stained glass.
Nothing but the best, or so the contractor had assured her. A word he used abundantly and with great zeal for her benefit.
The glass? The best. The spellwork? The best. The labor? The best!
Well it better be the best, because she shelled out a hellish amount of gold for the work to be done.
"Just keep me safe," she muttered under her breath as she pulled out the homemade jar of blackberry jam from her cupboard.
"What's that boss?" Gerry asked her from across the kitchen, his voice deep and gruff. She often wondered if that was standard for all bodyguards. Tall. Mean looking. Rough sounding voice.
The ability to loom.
"Nothing," she smiled to reassure him. "Jam or butter?"
"Is that the homemade stuff you like to make?"
"Possibly," she teased, but happy to feed her bodyguards. Sure, she paid them massive amounts of money to watch and protect her and her home, but that didn't mean they weren't friends. Pansy had grown quite close all three of her guards over the years.
"Definitely jam then," Gerry didn't smile but she heard the tiniest hint of warmth in his voice. It was good enough.
She wasn't the type that needed gentling. Too much had happened since she left school years ago, and sad as it was, she didn't much trust a smiling face like she used to.
Wayne came from the foyer into her open kitchen, checking the windows that lined the entirety of that side of the house as he did, before sitting down at the marbled island in the middle of the room. "I heard jam, did you make another batch? My wife loves the stuff."
"Yes, another batch. Would you prefer that or butter?"
"Is that even a question?"
A bit taller than Gerry, Wayne hailed from across the ocean, his Latin American mixed with the American South accent romantic to her ears. He paused by the island, practically casting a shadow across her stove top.
"Yes, blackberries are in season. I picked them from my garden," she informed them both as she pulled her wand out and sent three plates and three sets of silverware to the bar stools at the island while she checked on the eggs.
They sizzled pleasantly in their butter, smelling of breakfast as the sun streamed into the room from the plethora of windows in her home. Over the stove the light danced with reds and blues and golds from the stained glass window she constructed years ago. Shifting glass plates created a garden of flowers with sunbursts that pulsed gently between. Whenever a panic attack came on, she would breathe in time with the slow expansion of the golden bursts and releasing the breath as it disappeared.
It had cost an arm and a leg to get the same magical glass in those giant windows, but worth it.
She lived like a prisoner, but that didn't mean she wanted to feel like one.