Lucky Rabbit

The Dragon had her duck, so the next order of business was providing her with food before she ate something that wasn’t meant to be edible. Isidor and Eleanor also had to be wondering what was taking so long, so Pandy turned what was meant to be a chastising glare on the Dragon perched on her shoulder. From the look on Hazel’s scaly snout, it fell short, but that was Pandy’s life summed up in a single interaction.

“You’re going to have to meet everyone else,” Pandy told the elemental, and when Hazel just gave her a beady red-eyed look, she added, “so we can eat.”

Those seemed to be the magic words, because Hazel leaped from Pandy’s shoulder, back onto the desk, where she tenderly scooped her duck into her jaws. Since the toy was almost half the size of the Dragon, this made Hazel look like a kitten proudly toting around a full-grown rat, but Pandy wasn’t going to say a word.

When they reached the stairs, Hazel shifted to her toddler shape, apparently purely for the convenience of longer legs and thumbs, so when Pandy opened the door to the downstairs sitting room, it was with a very small and adorable – albeit slightly scaly – child on her heels.

While Lord Winston turned toward the door immediately, Eleanor and Isidor didn’t even look up. They were bent over a table Pandy hadn’t seen before – one that was about the size of a foldable card table from Pandy’s old world – staring intently at the tiles arrayed there. This didn’t look like any of the games they’d played in the past, since the tiles were stacked to precarious heights, and the children were taking it Very Seriously.

Finally, Isidor took a single tile from those arrayed around the base of the closest tower, and slid it over until it touched Eleanor’s tower. “Negated,” he said, looking smug.

The princess, however, switched from a poker face to a grin like the sun coming from behind the clouds. Taking the top three tiles from her tower, she placed them on Isidor’s tile and said, “Amplification; Light, Earth, Water, Nature.”

Isidor groaned, but didn’t look at all unhappy to have lost. Nodding to the princess, he said, “Fairly done. I forgot you almost had a set.”

Her grin settled into a shy, but still beaming, smile, and she nodded back, noticing Pandy as she did so. Sending a startled glance toward the window, as if it might already be full dark outside, she said, “Are you done already? Can I see my room?” As she got up, she saw Hazel for the first time. The Dragon had stopped at the door, not out of any sense of timidity, as far as Pandy could tell, but because she was busy examining the two humans with narrowed eyes.

Pandy stepped to the side, revealing the silver-haired toddler in her full adorability, and said, “This is Hazel. She’s going to be living with us, too, and, um-” How did she explain that the little girl wasn’t human? The butter-yellow scales along her cheeks and the little wings should be enough to tell them everything they needed to know, but did they even see the tell-tale signs? As far as Pandy knew, most people saw Professor Beeswick as an eccentric but unremarkable old man, but was that something he learned to do as he grew older, or had he been born with the ability?

Hazel solved the problem – if it could be described as a problem – by poofing into her Dragon shape so she could fly up onto the table, knocking down tiles like she was Godzilla stomping through Tokyo. She hauled her duck with her, but abandoned it temporarily so she could savage a tile with her teeth instead.

Eleanor and Isidor stared at this miniature monster, and then Eleanor hurriedly began gathering up the tiles Hazel wasn’t attempting to eat while Isidor turned a Look on Pandy. This Look was very much a ‘What Now?’ sort of Look, and Pandy shrugged lamely back at him.

“Hazel is an elemental, and no Air mages can know she’s here,” she said, giving up on explaining and just laying out the most important bits.

Isidor gave her another Look, this one in the ‘Duh’ family, which Pandy felt was unfair. None of what she’d said had been obvious to her, at least not at first. This time she Looked right back at him, and said, “We need food. How do we get it?” This got everyone’s attention, including that of the princess, who was still a growing child in spite of her grace and intelligence. Pandy could practically see all three of them drooling.

“We have food delivered every morning,” Eleanor offered. “The Head Chef tells the vendors what we’ll need the next day, and they bring it by.”

“I doubt if we’ll need that much,” Isidor said, this time turning a Look onto the princess, though he quickly realized what he was doing and coughed uncomfortably into his fist. “It’s standard practice for a member of the household to do the shopping once or twice a week, and have the goods delivered if they can’t carry them home. Things like milk and eggs might be delivered daily, though, if they use a lot.” This last was probably an attempt to placate Eleanor, but she didn’t even seem to notice.

Pandy looked out of the window. It wasn’t dark yet, but given how long it took to get here, and the fact that she only had about half an hour left on Shifting Faces, it was probably sometime after noon. While Pandy was used to twenty-four-hour grocery superstores, she’d also been to several Farmers’ Markets, so she knew one very important thing about them: you had to get there early. “Will there even be anything left at this time?”

Isidor grimaced. “We may need to buy cooked meals from a restaurant or inn, for tonight at least.”

That would be more expensive than getting ingredients and making something themselves, but did any of them even know how to cook? Given a recipe book and modern appliances, Pandy could avoid burning most food, though she made no promises about its edibility beyond that. Eleanor was a princess, so she almost certainly didn’t have any experience, and Isidor-

“That’s what I’m here for, my dear,” Nyssa said, poking her head through the wall beside Pandy. Which was fair, because Pandy was pretty much blocking the doorway, but still. If Pandy could have a heart attack, she probably would have.

“You… cook?” Pandy asked, thinking of the Terrible Tea and Sickening Sucrose. True, she didn’t think it would have killed anyone, but there was a large and uncomfortable gap between Tasty and Deadly.

Nyssa smiled, apparently still unaware that there was anything wrong with what she’d provided them when they arrived. “I can use anything in the pantry to prepare meals.”

Ahh, that explained it, then. Nyssa was, after all, an elemental, not actually a human, and both the tea and the sugar cubes had probably been in the pantry for quite some time, if Pandy had to guess. “I fixed the pantry,” Pandy said cautiously, “but I didn’t clean it out. You know that nothing in there is, um, probably good anymore. Right?”

The elemental looked startled, drifting the rest of the way into the room as she laid a hand to her mouth, dark eyes growing wide. “Oh, dear. I’ll start cleaning up right away, then. Have the Enchantments been restored as well?”

Pandy nodded. The ‘Cold Storage’ enchantment on the pantry was the only one she’d spent Mana on so far. It had cost over five hundred Mana, and almost brought her back down to zero, but it seemed like the most important one. She should recover enough Mana to fix the Shelter enchantments on the bedrooms tonight, but getting a magical refrigerator seemed like a Now kind of thing. Of course, she hadn’t taken into account the fact that they didn’t actually have any food to put in it, or that someone might try to actually serve something made with the weevil-infested flour or shriveled potatoes covered in dessicated tentacles.

“I’ll go get something,” Isidor said, stepping forward and putting out a hand, palm up. “You’ll just bring home another stray or spend all of our money on magic socks.”

Our money? When had it become ‘our’ money? Though Pandy probably should think about giving the kids some kind of allowance. That was a thing real parents did, wasn’t it, not just something they made up for old television shows? Not that Pandy was a parent, far from it, but she was still at least partially responsible for a shocking number of children at this point, so she should probably start thinking like-

Isidor waggled his fingers, and Pandy reluctantly dropped a gold coin into his palm. He stared at it, then raised his eyes and gave her yet another Look. She couldn’t interpret this one, but she put another gold into his hand. That seemed like a lot for a few tavern meals, but what did she know? The only restaurant she’d been to in this world was the one with the crepes, and she hadn’t paid attention to how much Augustus paid, either there or when he purchased food at the Grange displays.

Pandy could have kicked herself. She kept thinking that she needed to figure out the monetary system, but she never paid attention or even just asked. Augustus would definitely-

Isidor wiggled his fingers again, and when Pandy looked into his palm, she saw that it was empty. She was sure she’d already given him two gold, and that really should be plenty, but she was already holding the third coin when it clicked. Isidor was bilking her. She was definitely overpaying, and there was no way she was going to get any change, either.

She vanished the third coin back into her Inventory, and the teen looked away, clicking his tongue in disappointment. Pandy glared at him, only then noticing that Tempest had stuck her head out of his pocket and was watching the interaction, turtle-beak open in what could only be interpreted as laughter.

“Cook, me,” came an entirely unfamiliar voice from somewhere down by Pandy’s feet. Everyone looked, seeing only the very small child now sitting on the floor, gnawing on her duck with slightly more human teeth. Hazel looked back at them, lowering the duck just long enough to say, “Me. Cook.” In a tone that would have been commanding if there wasn’t a distinct and adorable lisp in it.

“You… can cook?” Pandy asked, trying not to sound as skeptical as she felt.

The fluffy little head bobbed. “Fair-ear-man no like. Chase away. Hazel cook.”

Pandy worked through that, eventually figuring out that Fair-ear-man was probably Mr. Farrier, who apparently did not appreciate either a Dragon or a toddler doing whatever it was Hazel thought of as cooking in his kitchen. This might just explain a bit of why Professor Beeswick had pawned the dragonling off on Pandy, especially if Hazel was as determined to pursue her hobby as she seemed to be.

With a helpless look at Nyssa, Pandy said, “I’m sure you can… help?”

Nyssa nodded, a broad smile spreading across her face. If that smile was a tad bit wider than should have been physically possible, Pandy wasn’t going to mention it, because the elemental servant cheerfully said, “Of course! I’ve taught many a child to cook before. General Avington himself had me teach his son. He was a firm believer that everyone should have the skills to care for themselves in an emergency.”

That sentiment sounded familiar, and Pandy wondered if an Avington had snuck into Augustus’s family line at some point in the past. Maybe she would look through the Family History after all, just to see if any Blackwoods popped up. “We still need to get some food for right now,” Pandy said weakly, just as the far-too-resonant sound of a brass knocker striking a brass plate sounded from the direction of the front door.

Nyssa’s smile grew impossibly wider. “Guests!” she exclaimed, and disappeared through the wall toward the door.

Pandy turned a panicked look on the Dragon – who was in her reptilian shape once again – and then the princess. Fortunately, Isidor had it under control. “Upstairs,” he told Eleanor, and the princess nodded, darting through the open door into the hallway. Isidor followed her, pausing just long enough to tell Pandy, “You should probably change.”

Change? Pandy’s hand went to her throat, where the necklace hadn’t hung since she took it off to show Eleanor who she was. Quickly, she removed it from her Inventory and clasped it around her neck, then looked down at Hazel. “Stay out of sight,” she told the Dragon, not expecting it to have any effect. To her surprise, however, the little elemental just picked up her duck in her mouth and flew off through the door leading into the sewing room.

Nox’s voice reached Pandy. “May I tell the lady who is calling upon her?” He sounded Extremely Disapproving, which was strange, because she couldn’t think of anyone she knew who would cause the stiff and proper elemental to sound like that. Unless it was someone she didn’t know? Had the Shadow Exchange sent someone after the princess already? No, they wouldn’t knock. Probably.

Cautiously, Pandy stuck her head out through the sitting room door, staring toward the entryway. There stood a filthy, bedraggled, and somewhat battered Augustus – glasses missing, a few chunks of his hair not just in disarray but either matted to his head or entirely absent. Pandy gasped, already throwing Minor Heals at him as she rushed forward, which made her miss the woman standing next to him until she was next to Nox, who half-blocked the door.

The woman was so slender as to be waif-like, wearing a torn blouse and a skirt tightly belted at her waist. Her delicate features were set in a scowl, dried blood streaking her lips and chin. One eye was swelling closed as Pandy watched. Augustus’s hand grasped her firmly by the nape of the neck, clearly keeping the woman in place against her will.

“Good afternoon, Eurydice,” Augustus said in a voice that could only be described as exhausted, though some color was returning to his face as Pandy’s heals fixed whatever was wrong with him. It took two and a half, and now that she was close, she could see that part of the darkness staining his shirt was blood, not dirt. Thrusting the woman forward, he added, “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I’m afraid I need your help.”

Pandy took another step closer to the stranger, thinking,

Minor Heal successful.

Healed Empress Glory for 20 HP.

+1 Corruption Points for entering Dark Aura I