This chapter is part of my promise to write fanfics for NaNoWriMo! Expect more...but not too much, I'm very lazy and very human.
Margery - A Drink With Friends
If you know someone who tries to drown their sorrows, you might tell them sorrows know how to swim.
The large kitchens of the inn were filled with the scents of baking bread, pies, and pastries. Sitting alone at the massive island of a counter that rested in the center of the various ovens, sinks, and pantries, Margery heaved a quiet sigh and let the silence overtake her at last.
An entire village's worth of food had to be prepared somewhere, after all. While some of the townspeople had chosen to cook or bake their contributions at home, many simply did not have the space. The inn's multiple, massive ovens were used all day on such festivals as today's; Margery was grateful that the preparation for Hallow's Eve had begun days ago, else this would have been far more hectic than it was.
With the hustle and bustle over, she had only to occasionally stoke the fires and remove the last of the dishes as they became ready. Though this last leg took place during the ceremony, she had volunteered to stay. How many ceremonies has she seen in her life, anyway? Enough, certainly. It was enough to spend time with Aaron (when he wasn't being a total prat, that is). She didn't need all the pomp and circumstance; she got enough of that from the traveling merchants (businessmen, her ass) who stayed at the inn while on official business from other towns. Now, she wanted only simple things, like quiet time with friends.
She was up on her stepladder, groping blindly into the recesses of her tallest cupboard, when an expected knock sounded from the kitchen door. "Oh, get in here!" Margery called exasperatedly, rising up on her tiptoes and only succeeding in having her fingers just brush the desired object.
"Come on, MaMa," a sweet alto voice teased. "No need to get grouchy."
Margery accepted her defeat at the hands of heights once again and backed off her ladder. "Honestly, MiMi," she said to her friend, "If you'd been stuck in this kitchen all day, you'd be grouchy too."
Mina Mi laughed, giving Margery a quick hug before mounting the ladder herself. She hauled herself up each step as if she were ascending a summit ('Drama queen,' Margery thought affectionately), then thrust her hand into the cupboard with an anxious, "You did take care of that mu problem, didn't you?" While her friend giggled, Mina produced the flagon of cider that had so eluded her. Leaping from the ladder with a Selkie's grace, she landed easily and skipped out to the common room to sit at one of the many long trestle tables.
Margery checked each dish before fetching three cups. At Mina's pointed gaze from the kitchen door, she shrugged. "SaSa said she was coming too."
"Oh, good," Mina commented as she poured even amounts of the cooled cider into each mug. "I haven't seen her in a few days. She's been up to some experiment lately. Possibly something flammable? I heard a big banging noise coming from there house yesterday."
"Probably planning what they were going to do to Raithen when he got home," Margery quipped, and then froze for a moment. She shouldn't have said that! Shit, how insensitive! She didn't want to remind her friend of the caravan at all – tonight, such reminders would be inescapable, and she didn't want to be another one.
But Mina just laughed. Margery vowed to watch her tongue a little closer and took a sip of her cider, only to choke on it when Mina declared, "I thought he was walking funny when I saw him earlier!" She hooted with laughter, and soon Margery wasn't sure (and didn't really care) whether they were laughing about Raithen or their own silly antics.
A low, feminine, clearly unimpressed voice interrupted the merriment. "Really?" Salira asked, shaking her helmed head as she moved to take a seat, green robes sweeping behind her. "Whose sex lives should we really be laughing about here? My existing one or your…non-existing ones?"
Mina and Margery maintained cowed solemnity for about three seconds. Then Mina drawled in her best Fum accent, "Y'know, for such a smart Yuke ye sure use a lotta dumb werds." That set all three of them off, and they were still giggling when Salira unclasped her helm and set it aside, taking a long draught of her drink.
"Whoa, SaSa," Margery chipped in, "Aren't you only supposed to do that around friends?"
"Ha ha, oh you," Salira replied, gulping down some more before wiping her mouth with a red-furred paw and smiling at them. "You know, I do dearly love my partners, but sometimes it is wonderful to get away from them."
"I've long suspected that escaping with the caravan's the only way Raithen manages to deal with being wed to so many people," Mina offered.
"I'm starting to see why," Salira said. "I really do love them, you both know that, but Jules is so damn bossy and Nama's so passive… Harri gets emotionally wounded by everything and Rai acts like our problems are quick, simple solution sort of things to fix. It's enough to make me set the house afire sometimes, honestly."
Margery nodded sympathetically. Mina frowned and said "So that's what that explosion sound was!" and they were off laughing and teasing each other again. Checking her clockwork, Margery sprang to her feet and rushed into the kitchen, hauling open the last oven's doors. She seized a pair of mitts and quickly removed the golden crusted pie warming within. Tendrils of steam curled upward into the air from the slits in its top, the warm aroma ghosting into the common room where Salira inhaled them deeply. "Smells good, Margery," she called appreciatively. "Is that your own recipe?"
"It is," the Lilty in question called back, "And you well know it!"
"I think the last time I smelled anything that good was two months ago, staying here with you," Salira said. "Nothing Jules or Harri ever concocted in our kitchen has ever tasted as good as the stuff you whip up without a moment's thought."
"Truth," Mina agreed, appearing in the doorway, patting her stomach. "Your apple pies are the stuff of dreams."
Margery's cheeks heated up with a dark blush for the compliment. Neither of her two friends were the type to dole out flattery. "Thank you, oh, but Kellen's are the best in the village and you know it!" she protested, turning her face away slightly. Her hands were too full to wave the words away.
Fascinatingly, Mina's whole face lit red in a blush of her own, one she ineffectually tried to hide by turning around under the guise of some reason or other. It was too late, and by her actions Salira saw as well. The tall Yuke woman leaned back in her chair as Margery set the pie upon the counter and moved to the common room.
"So," Salira said, after the two of them had watched Mina's miserable face for a moment. "Kellen, hmm? What did he do, and where do you think is the best place to hide his body?"
Mina's grey eyes widened. She shook her head quickly, silver tresses loosening from where she had pinned then up and falling to join in the motion. "No, no, it wasn't like that. Kell didn't…all he did…he just held me."
Like the clap of a thunder spell, it hit Margery just what she was trying to say. "Do you like him?" she asked, watching and marveling as Mina's face heated red once more. It was strange to see her graceful friend so clearly discomfited. "Mina."
"You two were the first to know when I fell helm over heels for Rai and the rest," Salira announced warningly. "If I don't get to be the first to hear news like this, I will be very put out."
The Selkie made a choking noise that might have been a chuckle before her embarrassment had reached it. "He's always been so kind, SaSa. Every day he comes and waits for his girls, and Sherrill and Marina's kids too, and he always takes the time to talk to me about me, not just the kids and what they're learning. And he's so handsome, remember how I had that huge crush on him when I was thirteen? All he did was hold me to make me feel better and now it's all come back and I feel like some awkward, lovestruck girl!" Mina inhaled deeply, as if having expelled something from her that had been waiting a long time. She shook her head twice, then noticed the wayward strands of flyaway hair and laughed harshly. "I'm a fool."
"No," both of her friends objected. They looked at each other, then back at her. Margery took the lead. "I'm going to get us some pie," she told the other two. "Everything is better with pie."
Hurrying back into the kitchen, Margery fetched three plates from the cupboard and her knife. Cutting with the easy expertise of a longtime baker, she plopped a slice and a fork onto each of the plates. Covering the pie, she fetched a small bowl of cream from the cellar and ladled a dollop onto each slice of apple pie. 'Perfect,' she thought happily. She set one plate on her bent arm and the other two in her hands, then glided out into the common room and placed the treat before each of her seated friends on one side of the large table, who oohed and aahed appreciatively.
Though she wanted to let Mina eat in peace, the ceremony would be ending any time now, and she wanted to know all about what was going on with her and Kellen. "MiMi," she said coaxingly. "You're not a fool. You could have feelings for worse."
"Like me," Salira said, nudging her gently with her elbow. "Kellen's a good man. We are not trying to tease you. It just seemed sudden, since we'd both thought you'd gotten over that crush years ago." She looked to Margery for support; the Lilty nodded, reaching across the table to lay a hand across Mina's.
Mina still looked miserable, but she took a drink from her cup and tried to put on a smile. "I thought so too."
"What happened? Why was he holding you?" Salira pressed.
Their Selkie friend took a deep, shuddering breath (oh, no, all I'd wanted was not to remind her) and said, "I swear he's the only person who sees me in this town besides the two of you."
Salira drew back and Margery drew forward (please don't let me hurt her). It was how they had always worked. "Is it because of Hao?"
She blinked hard a few times. "Yes."
"All right, we're moving back in," Salira announced to Margery, wrapping a protective arm around Mina's shoulders. "Forget the ceremony. We've got pie, we've got alcohol, I'll sneak out a few nights to visit Rai and Aaron can come by to visit if he can promise not to be a jerk. We'll cancel school, or the Elders can take over again. We'll hole up here and emerge when everyone can stop being completely insensitive about it."
Margery laughed, unable to help herself, and Mina cracked a wide smile. Despite coming on the heels of the worst news they'd ever received, August had been a good month for them all. Rallying around their friend, Margery and Salira had hustled her off to stay at the inn for the entire time. Salira had packed both her own and Mina's things, temporarily moving in too. Though at first grief had held them all in its cold arms, their friendship held firmer and greater. By September they had returned to their regular lives, though Margery had sometimes wished they could have stayed forever.
"That would be lovely," Mina agreed, her lovely smile firming as she, too, remembered. "It hasn't been so bad, though. Just with the caravan returning today, and Sherrill…I understand why, I do. You two know me best, but Sherrill knew my sister. When she looked at me today, she wasn't looking at me. But Kellen came after me, when I ran away, and he listened to me, and then he held me, like it was the most natural thing in the world to do."
Margery squirmed a little. The most natural thing in the world to do… Aaron had said something like that, earlier, after he'd kissed her.
"...why did you do it?"
"Because it seemed like the natural thing to do."
He was always doing things like that, saying things like that. He knew she couldn't, knew she'd fought long and hard (too damn long and too damn hard) for her independence. And then he was always off, running away with the caravan again. Off to gallivant his way around the continent, in and out of various people's beds. He'd say he loved her, and maybe he believed it, but every year there were new lovers he'd left behind in Alfitaria, and Fum, and Shella. Aaron would bed a monster if he were attracted to it. And while Margery wasn't the jealous type, she certainly had no desire to be another notch in his bedpost either.
No, what Mina was saying about Kellen was sweet because of its sincerity, not its words. Aaron's were not because of the inherent lie in them. He loved her, maybe. But he didn't love her enough.
That was the hard truth of it. She had come to accept it, over the years, but that did not stop him from returning each year to rip the scar open anew, leaving her to mend it closed once again. Like a raw patch on her heart, this time it had only half-healed before he'd come back into her life today and royally ruined it. He was her closest friend, yes, even her oldest friend, but he would never be her lover.
Something grew heavy in Margery's chest and sank; her eyes prickled for a moment. She blinked a few times, willing it away. There was no point in being sad over something she had known for years. It was long past time that this dream died.
Salira had just finished with the love advice she had been telling a disbelieving Mina (advice used to ensnare four hearts was a little different than the advice you needed to just capture one) when Margery refocused on the conversation. "A toast," she said abruptly, raising her mug. The other women raised their cups obligingly.
"To sweet and kind men," Salira offered, nudging Mina once again.
Mina thought for a moment, then nodded sharply once. "To my sister," she said.
Margery nodded as well (if you can't run from it, meet it head on). "To our friendship."
They drank deeply, cleaned up, and moved to the kitchen just in time to help the revelers who came in to fetch the feast.