Author's note: I absolutely adored writing about the frying pan...
Chapter 14.
Dawn arrived as it usually did over the mountains of Japan, light pouring over the countryside filling in the cracks where night reluctantly let loose it's tenuous grip on the morning. At the inn, the peaceful morning was getting off to a wonderful start. At least as far Henrietta was concerned.
"Just a little lower, Saito." The breathless queen pleaded.
"If I do, Louise is going to kill me." Saito said desperately trying to hold back a nosebleed.
"It's not like we're really having sex, it just feels really good when you rub me down there." Henrietta begged.
"Look, I've got the basic idea. I know you think I need to be prepared for Louise, but she'll seriously freak out if I put my hand on your...yo... yo..." Saito stammered as his will began to break under the soft moans of his queen and technically, his wife.
"Yes, she will." Siesta replied smugly from the door. "That's why I'm next."
Saito looked up pitifully from where his wandering hands were now kneading the soft supple skin of Henrietta's back... or rather her backside. "You're early." Henrietta noted with a deadpan.
"Since mistress has been going to her research early in the mornings, she thought I might want to keep an eye on you two." The smug little maid said as she casually sat down on the bed next to Saito as he was straddling Henrietta's legs looking like he'd just been caught with a mistress instead of his wife. "I won't tell, but that looks like it'd be awfully nice."
"You should have waited about thirty more minutes then." Henrietta grumbled as she turned over. Saito rolled off to the side as she sat up and demurely covered her bare chest.
"You were seducing me?" Saito said tearfully.
Both young women looked at him curiously, and then went back to talking as if they seemed to forget he was there. "Oh, so it's the 'get his hands in the vicinity and then roll over slowly' technique is it?" Siesta inquired.
"No, I just figured if I let him massage long enough nature would run its course when the blanket slipped a little lower." Henrietta replied offhandedly.
"Nice." The maid said appreciatively.
Henrietta was suddenly seized and thrown down to the bed roughly with Siesta joining her in short order. Saito's arms spread wide to capture the girls between his hands spread out on the bed as he hovered over the two of them. "I know two naughty little girls that are about to have a lot more they're going to want kept from Louise." Saito said dangerously with a wicked gleam in his eye that had Henrietta's heart fluttering.
"Oh yes master, Siesta has been really naughty. She needs to be punished." The maid cried as she blushed madly and flipped over to present her own bottom.
Not so bad yourself. Henrietta thought as Saito prepared to discipline his flirtatious servant in ways Henrietta could only vaguely fantasize about. Then he was gone.
Henrietta looked over to see Louise standing at the door to the room with her arm outstretched. Saito lay in the floor next to the bed unconscious with a large knot on his head and a large skillet lying next to him. "You're early." Henrietta and Siesta deadpanned in unison.
"I never should have trusted the maid." Louise said between heaving breaths. After all it probably had taken a lot to run back in a shrine maiden outfit, stop at the kitchen, grab the biggest skillet she could find, run up to the room, and brain her witless familiar once she'd realized her error in entrusting the prey to a fellow huntress.
It was almost like a real family arguing around the breakfast table... almost. "Well, I am his wife."
"Well, I'm his master." Louise grated out at her queen.
"As long as I'm still his maid." Siesta said happily as she gingerly fed the bandaged object of everyone's lust.
The only one not really into the middle of the fight was Tabitha, who ate quietly and then set back out again for the temple to study. Grandfather Hiraga watched the three girls fussing over his grandson and sighed. It was like watching one of the daytime melodramas his wife had become addicted to after coming to their world. Young people always seemed to leave behind messes that needed cleaning up he supposed.
The elderly ex-familiar wandered down toward the temple quietly, taking his time. Tabitha needed a shoulder to cry on, but the introverted little girl needed to be alone for at least a moment or two to realize how alone she was. Children could be so silly.
The patriarch of the Hiraga family paused at the door to the temple until he heard the sniffle, that told him she was ready. The old man stepped in and waited. She knew he was there. It was now her turn to move. "I was curious. I was studying some of your culture. Saito's mother is your daughter, and yet she didn't take the name of her husband; Saito's father."
"Saito's father was a young man from the city who came out here while he was wandering around Japan. I gave him a job here at the inn and for a while he stayed. it was here he met Saito's mother and they fell in love." The old man said with a chuckle as he joined the quiet girl in admiring a portrait of he and his elderly wife holding a baby Saito not long before she died. He wondered briefly if the girl realized she was looking at a picture of herself in another fifty years. "He reminded me so much of myself that Amelia would laugh and say that he was more like my son than my own daughter was like my daughter. Our name is well respected in this village, so he decided to take our family name when they married. I don't think you're that interested in where his name came from though, are you?"
"Did she hate us?"
Gramps nodded to himself, they were getting warmer. "It would be hard for her to hate her own kin." The old man said sitting down on one of the cushions.
"Not really. Believe me." Tabitha said bitterly.
"You weren't there that night child. Neither is anyone still living in all likelihood. I daresay no one who was old enough to have planned the attack could be." The aged man said wearily. Why did she have to be so much like her? He could already guess what she would say next. Seventy years at someone's side could give you all kinds of insights.
"I'll be there for the next one though." Tabitha murmured. "My relatives will never let Saito live in peace if they know a fraction of what we've discovered." The young sorceress said looking around at the books and scrolls that littered one of the foremost scholars of the history of their two worlds and magic.
"And I'm sure you'll defend him beautifully." The old man whispered, as he held out his hand to guide the hurting young woman to sit next to him in the study of his late wife. "I know because she would have. You're more like her than you know. Now how about we talk about what's really bothering you." He said looking at her over the top of the rim of his glasses.
Tabitha nearly crumbled at his words as skills honed for seventy years loving a woman just like this one allowed him to bring out the hurt so she could find comfort. The small girl sniffled a little as a stray tear fell from her eye. "All of them have ties to him except for me. Whether it's Henrietta his lawful wife, Louise his master, or Siesta his property. You don't know how much I envy her belonging to him. At least she has something that ties her to him."
"And love doesn't count?" The elder asked her gently.
"Love? How could he love me? My family attacked his, I've attacked him, I don't know how to show emotion as well as the other girls. How can I possibly hope to ever have him love me as I am? I'll only ever be his friend." Tabitha bemoaned.
"I suppose fighting off the whole country of Gallia and defying my queen to save you doesn't count?" Saito said as he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and propped his head against the back of hers.
The elderly man looked back to see the girls looking ashamed that they hadn't noticed their friend's distress that morning. They had apparently noticed their departure from the breakfast table and finally come to investigate. Tabitha still just pressed on. "Louise is right, you just don't know when to give up; just like in the story books. you should know better than to try to save... someone like me."
Saito floundered for something to say. The old man's heart ached as he remembered all the years he'd been unable to soothe Amelia's pain at losing her home and family. These two looked now just like they had looked back then. A young reticent girl unable to deal with her own pain and a young man too inexperienced in love to help her. He wasn't about to let it happen to two more people when he stood ready to end it. He would simply have to deal with his own pain.
"You're right." The old man said standing. "Tabitha you will never know peace, from the sins of your own past and that of your family until you can atone."
"How could I possibly..."
"With your life." The old man said fiercely.
"Now Gramps! That's enough!" Saito shouted said standing up to face his patriarch head on.
"Silence boy!" The elder Hiraga barked bringing him up short just like he had his mother so many times before.
"I will pay whatever price if it means making up for the turmoil I've brought into Saito's life." Tabitha said formally. "I will accept any punishment."
"Then it is agreed." The elder said with mock force. His hand trembled as he reached into his tunic and removed the small chain he had worn around his neck for more than fourteen years. His voice quivered only slightly as he tilted his head to the side and softly looked down at the girl that reminded him so much of his Amelia. "Then will you marry my grandson?"
The girls were all stunned as they drew in sudden breaths, and Tabitha stared at him agape as he held out his arm with two golden wedding bands dangling from the end of the chain he'd always worn around his neck after his wife died. "But Gramps, I'm already married to..."
"This is Japan son, and you are Japanese. I don't recall the government of Japan ever recognizing the laws from the other side as valid and binding here." The old man said defensively. Granted, wedding rings were a Gallian and western custom that Amelia had insisted upon but as long as the youngsters didn't think about it too much... "Besides, it was the custom in our land not so long ago for a young man's elders to decide whom it was he would marry. In your own lands as well too I believe."
Henrietta nodded sadly. It seemed she was willing to admit defeat.
"But we're hoping to return home." Louise interjected.
"And then you will be bound by the laws there, but here, in this land, Tabitha will be your wife." Gramps pressed on. "So child, was it all talk? Are you really prepared to spend your life by his side, loving him, supporting him, and bearing everything with him?"
Tabitha was now openly crying with happy tears that threatened to pull the tears from an old man's own aching heart. "I belong to him now and forever just as surely as Siesta."
"Wives don't 'belong' to their husbands, Tabitha." Henrietta said pulling her to her feet. "I'm beginning to understand it runs... much, much deeper than that."
"Then it's decided. I'll have a priest who's a friend of mine come by and we'll have a traditional Japanese wedding." Gramps said holding back a tear as he let go of something precious he'd held onto for fourteen years.
Saito bowed to his grandfather as Siesta hustled Tabitha out to what was sure to be a really big party that night in the inn. Gramps decided he'd call his daughter and son-in-law to see if they could make it.
"And yet another woman marries the man I love." Louise sniffed as she watched her friends and rivals depart.
Gramps patted the girl's shoulder softly. "Do not worry child, Saito's heart will always be yours. With this Tabitha will have the tie that binds her to Saito she was missing, and her heart might finally know peace. So how goes the search for a way home?"
"I think I might have found your wife's..."
"Call her 'grandmother' or 'granny' if you like child. She would welcome you as a daughter." The old man corrected.
"Okay. I think I found grandmother's notes on the portal. I don't think it's going to do us much good though. Without a properly enchanted wand I'd never be able to focus enough of my power into the spell to open the portal, even if this place does have a connection to our world." Louise said with a melancholy sigh.
"I see." The old man said watching his grandson waiting outside for the woman he loves holding the wedding bands that had started it all and staring at them with wonder. "Well, no time to worry about that now. Let's go get Saito hitched before some sort of childhood friend shows up to complicate your love story any more shall we?"
Louise laughed a little which made him feel better and Gramps turned out the light in the study and closed the door. As he turned, watching Saito and Louise walk hand in hand towards the inn, he thought he could smell a familiar fragrance on the chilly autumn wind. He looked towards Amelia's grave and breathed in the autumn air and swore for just a moment, he could smell her perfume once more.
A/N: This was the chapter I was writing a few weeks ago when I made the comment about drama that was misplaced. I just had to sigh at this one. I better get busy, I still have a couple of chapters to write before next week to finish up this story.