[Fic] "A Bit of Hot Water" -- Enchanted Forest Chronicles

[edenfalling]

wistfulmemory said: Let's go with Daystar and Shiara, Pipes and Beer, and the results of Shiara not quite being finished with her training with Kazul. (4,350 words)

Note: I only promised 250 words. This is, shall we say, slightly longer than that. *sheepish* (It also has nothing to do with beer and only tangentially deals with pipes, but the central gimmick is what jumped immediately to mind upon reading the prompt, and I think you can still tell how I got from the bingo square to the fic scenario.)

[ETA: the AO3 crosspost is now up!]

---------------------------------------------
A Bit of Hot Water
---------------------------------------------

Six months into Shiara's term as Kazul's princess (or apprentice -- which wasn't exactly the correct term either, since she wasn't studying to become either a dragon or a king, but felt less presumptuous than claiming to be royalty), she insisted that Daystar come visit her for a change.

"So long as you're willing to make all the diplomatic arrangements yourself, I have no objection," Kazul said when Shiara presented her demand.

"Diplomatic arrangements?" Shiara repeated with a frown. Nightwitch, sitting attentively on a nearby end table, curved her tail up in a supportive question mark.

Kazul smiled. "You have no official government position, and so can travel as you like. Daystar is the crown prince and heir apparent of the Enchanted Forest, and has to give notice before entering other kingdoms unless he either wants to be terribly rude or is excused from normal protocol because he's on a quest. Visiting you does not count as a quest."

"Oh," Shiara said. "Not even if I write the invitation as a riddle and lay a cunning trap outside the cave door?"

"Not even then, although now that you suggest it, I believe both riddle-notes and cunning traps are skills worth perfecting. I'll add them to your lesson schedule for the coming month."

"But--!" Shiara said, and then managed to clamp her mouth shut before the more detailed (and ruder) part of her protest could escape. After a moment she let her outrage hiss out between her clenched teeth as smoke and steam.

"Excellent progress," Kazul said. "Now go find Roxim and tell him I said it's time for you to learn how to arrange visits from foreign dignitaries."

Shiara spun on her heel and stomped toward the inner entrance to the royal caverns, which led into the confusing and only partially-mapped network of natural and artificial tunnels that honeycombed the Mountains of Morning. Tiny sparks leapt upward from each strike of her heels against the stone, until she realized Nightwitch was pouncing on each one in turn which was so ridiculously cute she couldn't maintain her indignation.

"I was enjoying being upset," she grumbled to her cat.

Nightwitch merely twined around Shiara's left ankle and purred smugly until Shiara gave in and lifted the cat to ride on her shoulder. "Better," Nightwitch said.

"You're a horrible bully," Shiara told her cat, but it was hopeless: they both knew she didn't mean it.

---------------

The trouble with asking Roxim for help, of course, was that when he committed to a goal, he sometimes went a bit overboard. In this case, he insisted that Shiara's first attempt at arranging a formal diplomatic reception had to pull out all the stops. "Start big!" he said. "After that, everything else will be easy, but if you start small and work up, you'll get nervous every time you run into a new level of formality or complication. Hrm. I wonder, should we invite a handful of Frost Giants for the same evening, and that questing Duke from Ashedown, and maybe the ambassador from Veritand...?"

He also refused to let her borrow Balimor's cauldron of plenty. "No cheats! Besides, a princess worth her name ought to know how to manage staff, and thanks to Cimorene we found a few catering companies willing to send a few cooks here on short notice, provided we pay sky-high. Can't get any waitstaff or cleaners, though. They get all twitchy about spending time around dragons, couldn't say why."

And so, in the brief moments when Shiara wasn't lugging food and dishes around, she ended up tucked beside Kazul at one end of an enormous table, big enough to hold twenty dragons per side, with Daystar seated all the way at the far end, between Roxim and a pair of rather confused siblings from South Wolf River who'd arrived slightly early for the annual discussion of water rights between their country and the dragons, and had been promptly roped into the banquet.

On the one hand, nothing went disastrously wrong, and by the end of the banquet various guests had begun to drift off with members of other delegations in ways that suggested intense political negotiation. On the other hand, Shiara had been reduced to communicating (badly) with Daystar via shrugs, exaggerated eyebrow gestures, and brief inquiries about whether he wanted more sauce on his roast duck, which was not at all what either of them had wanted from this visit.

Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately), Roxim was also an old friend of Queen Cimorene, and had consequently gotten some... well, not necessarily inaccurate, technically speaking, but definitely too firm ideas about Shiara's relationship with Daystar. And so immediately after the dessert course was finished, Roxim nudged Daystar (which, given the sharp edges of dragon scales, was a bit hard on his sleeve) and winked, and gestured with a single claw toward the wheeled cart where Shiara was loading the used dishes for removal to the banquet chamber's attached kitchen, Nightwitch perched somewhat precariously on her shoulder.

"But oughtn't I remain until Kazul dismisses the guests?" Daystar protested.

"Don't be ridiculous!" Roxim said in a terrible approximation of a whisper. "That won't be for hours yet, and young love should have a chance to flourish! You can think of it as strengthening the alliance between the Mountains of Morning and the Enchanted Forest, if you really want to be as much of a stuffed shirt as your grandfather."

The siblings from South Wolf River were politely attempting to hide their smiles.

Face crimson, Daystar rose from his seat and fled.

---------------

"I didn't ask for help with the dishes," Shiara said when Daystar slunk into the massive kitchen. "I may not be able to work all the charms in this room, but I'm perfectly capable of using soap and a cloth and my own two hands."

"Though I don't know why you'd want to," Nightwitch muttered from atop a row of cabinets, well away from the clutter. "Water. Eurgh."

"I know you don't need my help," Daystar said with a terribly earnest expression. "But the work will go faster with both of us pitching in, and the sooner we're done, the sooner we can go somewhere less overwhelming. And I think Roxim might eat me if I try to return to the banquet. He was very insistent that I follow you."

It was so much harder to argue with him when he had a reasonable point -- even harder when the person she really wanted to shout at was Roxim. Shiara huffed and turned back to the cart of dirty dessert plates, which she was unloading onto the counter beside the sink (the sink itself, of course, was already full of dishes from the previous courses, to say nothing of the cooking pots and utensils). "I'll wash. You dry."

"Are you sure it wouldn't be more efficient the other way around?" Daystar ventured. "Considering...?" He sketched a vague shape that might, if someone squinted and gave him the benefit of the doubt, look like a flame rather than a half-naked woman.

"Considering...?" Shiara repeated in a frosty tone. Above her, Nightwitch casually extended her claws and began sharpening them against the cabinet corner.

"Um. Fire produces hot air, which is the basis for most drying charms?"

"And that would be lovely, until I yelled at you and set all the dishtowels on fire. No, I'll wash. It's not as if hot water isn't equally useful for cleaning."

Daystar conceded the point, retrieved a dishtowel from a nearby hook, and tossed it neatly across his shoulder. Then he began clearing counter space on the far side of the sink -- "For the clean dishes," he said in response to Shiara's challenging look. "Since I don't know where they belong and I'd hate to disorder somebody else's kitchen."

"We'll figure it out together," Shiara said as she turned the sink tap and reached under a precarious pile of pots in search of the drain plug. Daystar made a faint noise of surprise, and she twisted to glare at him. "Did you think this was Kazul's normal kitchen? I've only been in here twice before today. It's not even technically part of the royal caverns -- just a place anyone can reserve if they're hosting a large gathering."

"I'm sorry for assuming," Daystar said. "These caves are arranged very differently from a castle, but dragons do tend to be solitary and territorial--"

"Like cats, and firewitches, and other sensible people," Nightwitch interjected.

"--so I suppose it makes more sense for them to keep a separate public area than for any individual dragon, even the king, to maintain a large household," Daystar finished. He glanced upward. "Have I offended your cat?"

"Ask her yourself; she's not deaf," Shiara snapped, irritation coiling in her chest like a bed of disturbed coals. "Meanwhile, I suppose if you were less of a reckless idiot, you would have asked your mother what living with dragons is really like before coming to visit their country. But apparently not." She shoved the plug into the drain and began rubbing soap into her dishcloth.

Daystar set down a colander with a bang. "I have asked! Mother has told me all kinds of things! They're just not the kind of things that involve maps and floor plans, and I think it's a bit much to assume hearing about a place can substitute for living there."

Shiara scrubbed viciously at a bit of blackened chicken on a roasting tray. "Oh, I see. She's told you prince things."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"And anyway, you might also have thought to ask me about my life instead of spending all our visits and letters going on about magic and manners and--"

"I do! I did! Please stop insinuating that I look down on you," Daystar said, polite to the end even in the middle of a fight, and somehow that snapped the last thread holding Shiara's temper in check.

She did manage not to focus her haywire magic on him. Instead, a hot, tangled burst of power rushed from her hands into the sink. The water began to boil, and something deep in the pipes clanged ominously.

"Shiara?" Daystar asked, moving to stand at her shoulder and peer worriedly downward. "I'm sorry if I've made you feel--"

The pipes clanged again. Shiara tugged Daystar more firmly behind her and began to back away, hands raised on the off chance that her magic might shield them both against her inadvertent spell, whatever it had been. "It's not your fault, I'm just in a bad mood because of Roxim and I'm sorry I took it out on you, please get out of here before the sink tries to--"

A geyser of boiling water, decades of congealed grease, and the peculiar black gunk that grows in uncleaned drains shot upward, hurling a fountain of kitchenware around the room. Metal clanged, porcelain cracked, and glass shattered amidst a rain of knives, forks, and gooey food scraps. Shiara ducked and wrapped her arms over her head, hoping she'd survive.

Eventually the noise died away to echoes, and then to nothing. Shiara lowered her arms and cautiously opened her eyes.

The kitchen looked like the aftermath of a magical duel, except for a suspiciously untouched bubble around her and Daystar.

"Please don't take this the wrong way, but I'm very glad that you apologized right before the sink exploded," Daystar said in a shaky voice. "Um. What should we do?"

"We leave," Shiara said as firmly as she could. "I'll write a note on the door telling everyone else to keep out, and ask Kazul for advice in the morning."

"Are you sure that's--"

"Now."

Shiara grabbed Daystar's hand and tugged him across the slimy, glass-strewn minefield masquerading as a kitchen floor. Nightwitch slunk out of the cupboard where she'd taken refuge and followed, yowling in protest at every drop of grease or shard of glass that dared to touch her fur.

As Shiara stopped to write a message in flaming letters on the door (one of the few spells she had learned to make work reliably over the past six months), she spotted Roxim leaning his head around the arched entrance to the banqueting cavern. He saw her hand still entwined with Daystar's (which was only to make sure he wouldn't try to go back into the kitchen and start cleaning!) and showed all his sharp silver teeth in an oddly avuncular smile.

"Enjoy your evening!" Roxim said in a badly modulated whisper. "I'll keep Kazul busy for another hour or two." Then he winked.

Shiara lost control of her spell and barely managed to put out her finger before she set the door itself on fire.

She and Daystar walked back to Kazul's caverns in hideously embarrassed silence, trailed by Nightwitch's gleeful feline schadenfreude.

---------------

When they reached Shiara's rooms (a pair of smallish caves next to the royal library), Nightwitch took one look around, made a noise that wasn't quite a word but which Shiara had decided probably translated to "Humans!" and excused herself to go groom her paws back to some semblance of order.

Meanwhile Daystar and Shiara stood frozen just inside the door, attention caught by the neatly-laid table in the center of the public cave: a bowl of strawberries, a bowl of cream, a positively sinful chocolate cake, a bottle of very expensive brandy, two snifters, and a vase of roses with a lit candle at its base, all on a cloth of fine red linen.

"I think Roxim may have formed a slightly inaccurate picture of our relationship," Daystar ventured after a minute of silence that somehow managed to be even more embarrassed than the silence in which they had walked away from the banquet hall.

"That was obvious an hour ago," Shiara said. "What I want to know is how he got all this set up. The doorway is too small for dragons to get through, and the catering chefs' contract specifically said they couldn't be required to go anywhere except the kitchens."

"Does he have a princess?"

Shiara shook her head. "He might have borrowed someone else's, though. Maybe more than one -- I know Menolyne is the best baker, but Dorimund is the best at decorating a room. Ooh, and now they'll gossip about us forever, even more than they already gossip about me because I'm a firewitch and a volunteer instead of an actual captive princess."

"I could try to talk them around," Daystar offered. "If they're so hung up on birth, they might listen to me even though they're too rude to listen to you."

"I can solve my problems myself!" Shiara said. Then she took a deep breath, turned to shut her door, and counted to ten. "But thank you for the offer," she added, and almost meant it.

(The most annoying thing about having to be polite all the time was that it had started to become a habit, and lately habit had started to occasionally become sincere. Shiara felt she had been tricked into becoming a different person, and she especially resented that this new version of herself seemed to be happier than the old one. So what if she'd felt angry and trapped all the time! Those were her feelings, and nobody had any right to pull them out of her grip before she was ready to let go.)

"You're welcome," Daystar said, still staring at the table. "Um. It seems ungrateful not to at least try the cake, after people went to the bother of making it for us."

Shiara looked at the cake. It was very tempting.

"Fine," she said. "We'll eat the cake. We can even try the brandy. But if you get too drunk to walk to your own cave -- or if Roxim decides to lurk in the corridor and shoo you back here -- you'll be sleeping in the armchair with the tablecloth for a blanket. Understood?"

"Of course," Daystar said, and walked forward to pull out one of the chairs for Shiara, because of course he did.

Shiara let him push her chair in to the table, but she refused to either serve him cake or let him try to serve her. They each had two perfectly good hands, so they would each cut their own slice and pour their own brandy, or else. She dumped a generous blob of cream and a full spoonful of strawberries on her cake before sinking her fork into the dark, chocolate confection.

It really was delicious. She'd have to remember to compliment Menolyne the next time they ran into each other, blast it all.

But not until after she fixed the kitchen.

Across the table, Daystar also seemed to be enjoying his cake, though he was less enthusiastic about the brandy. "It makes me sneeze," he said when Shiara raised an eyebrow at the face he pulled after trying a sip. "Do you have any water I could drink instead?"

Shiara rolled her eyes and finished chewing her latest bite of cake. "Not here. Kazul's kitchen is three arches to the right, past the library and the entrance to the treasure vaults. Get some yourself."

Daystar toyed with his fork instead of standing. After a moment, he said, "I still feel bad leaving that mess in the public kitchen. You will let me help clean it up in the morning, right?"

Shiara rolled her eyes again. "I don't see why you care, but fine. You can help. It would be just like you to have an extensive background in dish repair and plumbing."

"I didn't grow up in a palace. In fact, I've probably washed more dishes than you have. That was one of my jobs before Antorell found Mother and she sent me off with the sword," Daystar said. Then he paused, fork hovering an inch over the remnant of his cake, and frowned. "Speaking of the sword..."

"Yes?" Shiara prompted after he failed to finish his sentence.

Daystar blinked and lowered his fork to rest neatly on the edge of his plate. "Oh, sorry! I was trying to make sure I was remembering one of Mother's real stories and not one of the made-up stories Father likes to slip in when she's not paying attention. But I think this one was real."

"And?"

"Apparently when Father first met Mother, she'd been expecting a plumber to come fix a clogged drain in Kazul's sink. After they got straightened out who he really was and why he'd come to see Kazul, Father offered to fix the drain with magic, since it's hard to get plumbers to pay house calls to the Mountains of Morning. So he did." Daystar shrugged. "Mother wouldn't let him use the sword on the dishes, though -- she said a magic sword that does plumbing is strange but useful, but a magic sword that washes dishes is just silly -- but I think a magic sword that repairs dishes might be exactly what we need. What if I borrow the sword tomorrow morning and see what I can do?"

Shiara pointed her fork at him and scowled. "No. If you leave the Mountains of Morning, I'll have to arrange a second diplomatic visit within a single week in order for you to return. I refuse to deal with that."

"Oh, I wouldn't have to go fetch it! Not anymore." Daystar leaned forward, an excited smile on his face. "I'm learning magic too, remember? And I thought that, considering all the trouble Mother had retrieving the sword when it was stolen seventeen years ago, it would be sensible to add another spell that lets any member of the royal family who's been recognized by the sword summon it to themselves, regardless of where they or the sword are. Father, Morwen, and Telemain helped me set it up, and we just finished applying it last week. We haven't tested it more than a mile or so outside the Forest, but I'm sure Father won't mind if I summon the sword here to help you out."

Somehow, Shiara doubted the King of the Enchanted Forest would be unfazed by his magic sword's abrupt disappearance. But that was Daystar's problem, and facing it would probably help him build character or something like that. And while a magic sword that did kitchen repairs was fairly ridiculous in theory, in practice, anything that would save her the hours of work (and the expense of replacing all the shattered glass and porcelain) sounded wonderful.

"All right. We'll try it. But you should leave a mirror message with the gargoyle before you summon the sword, just to make sure nobody panics when it disappears."

Daystar looked affronted. "Of course. It would be rude not to."

"Not everything has to be about politeness! Sometimes it's just practical to let people know what you're doing."

"Politeness is practical," Daystar said. "That's the point: I treat other people with respect so they'll treat me with respect instead of working against me because I offended them."

"That's what your parents do. You're just a stuffed shirt," Shiara snapped. "Now please shut up and finish your cake before I lose my temper again."

This time Daystar was the one to roll his eyes (Shiara was almost impressed; she hadn't known he'd been learning sarcastic gestures), but he held his tongue and Shiara told herself that it would be embarrassing to lose her temper at him for doing what she'd asked.

---------------

When Kazul eventually returned home, Daystar insisted on going to thank her for her hospitality and apologize for any inconvenience he'd caused. Shiara took advantage of their mutual distraction to peer into the public corridors.

Roxim smiled at her from an alcove several archways along the tunnel, in the direction of the diplomatic guest caverns.

Shiara smiled weakly back.

"You get the armchair," she told Daystar when he returned to her personal rooms. "Unless you want to explain to Roxim that we're not-- um--"

He blanched. "The armchair sounds fine. I'm sorry for imposing, and I'll try to get Mother to explain things to him, gently, sometime when both of us can be very busy somewhere far away."

Daystar busied himself gathering cushions and shaking crumbs out of the tablecloth. Shiara watched for a moment, then went into her bedroom and persuaded the wardrobe to cough up a set of pajamas in his size rather than hers, plus a pair of bedsocks and fuzzy slippers. (Caves, even ones that absorbed frequent dragon flame and body heat, tended to be unpleasantly chilly at night.) Nightwitch watched this process with an amused tilt to her tail, but mercifully made no overt comments.

"Here," Shiara said, thrusting the clothes into Daystar's arms. "You can change once I shut my door; I promise not to peek. And, um, I'm not saying Roxim is completely wrong. About future possibilities. That may or may not become reality but in any case aren't completely unlikely. Just not tonight."

"Oh," Daystar said. "Um."

Shiara leaned forward and kissed his cheek, which was just as hot and tomato-colored as her own face must be. "I'm glad you're here, even if you did make me break a whole kitchen. Sleep well."

"You too," Daystar said. "Sweet dreams."

There was a brief pause while they both checked to be sure they had heard his words correctly. A hot rush of affection and annoyance bubbled in Shiara's chest until even she couldn't say which emotion would win out if Daystar kept staring at her with that overwhelmed expression.

Rather than wait to find out, she darted back into her room and slammed the door. "Goodnight!"

Shiara fell asleep to the sound of her cat's delighted laughter.

---------------

In the morning, Daystar summoned his sword and put the wreckage of the kitchen back together much cleaner than before (though he suggested hiring a plumber to make yearly checkups and also clean the grease traps, because you couldn't depend on magic swords for everything).

Shiara agreed. Then she grabbed his hand and tugged him out the door.

"I didn't go to the bother of learning how to write diplomatic invitations and arrange formal banquets just so you could stand around in a kitchen all day," she said when he protested. "We're going to visit the Caves of Fire and Night, and maybe the Pass of Silver Ice, and as long as you have that sword right here, we're going to try breaking your stupid politeness spell again. Your visit only lasts another day, so hurry up."

"Don't I get any say in this itinerary?" Daystar asked.

"Do you object to any of it?" Shiara said over her shoulder.

"Not as such. I just think we ought to add one item: thanking the princesses who put together the cake and-- um-- the rest of that, last night."

Shiara stopped dead in the middle of a tunnel. Daystar stumbled, nearly crashing into her shoulder, and Nightwitch mrowled irritably at the sudden change of pace.

"I--" Shiara began, and then couldn't think how to continue the sentence. "That was--" She tried desperately to stop herself from blushing. Her cheeks duly stayed at their normal temperature. Unfortunately, all the heat went straight out the top of her scalp instead, and her hair burst into little licks and curls of flame.

"I know," Daystar agreed. "But they meant well, and it was good cake."

Shiara's hair burned hotter. "Fine. But let me do the talking, even if they get rude or make horrible insinuations. I'm the one who has to live with them, not you, and I can handle my own problems."

"I know," Daystar said again. "I just hope someday you'll let me help more often, and help me with my problems in return. It's the po--" He stopped, visibly reconsidered his words, and finished, "Practical. It would be practical."

For once, the rush of warmth in Shiara's chest was untinged by aggravation.

She squeezed Daystar's hand, and smiled.

---------------------------------------------

End of Story

---------------------------------------------

Hopefully the rest of the fills will be more inclined to behave themselves...