Sky blue Short Stories - Current story: Fair Maiden - Finished!
Cerulean_Wings
First Post
Colmarr said:Not a problem. I was hoping that I hadn't come across as condescending. Thanks for taking my comments in the manner I intended
Not at all, on the contrary: it's exactly the sort of critic I was looking for desperately in my previous story hour, so it's quite refreshing to read someone's honest and well thought opinion on my writing
The next short story is almost done, I just need to give it the finishing touches...
Cerulean_Wings
First Post
The fair maid
Priscilla recoiled backwards at the impact of the butler’s slap against her head, allowing a yelp to be released from her lips. Her head banged hard against a fine set of metallic utensils that were hanging over the kitchen table in the process, forcing yet another cry of pain from the young woman.
The butler, Caredhio, regarded her with narrowed eyes, his lower lip trembling “Now listen here, you little whelp” he commanded with his typical elegant, yet dangerous voice. “If I find out that you disrespected the master one more time, I’ll feed your beaten body to the dogs, you hear?”
The girl nodded quickly while she rubbed the place on her head where she had hit herself with the cooking items. Try as she might, she couldn’t blink away the tears forming in her green eyes, partly from pain and partly from embarrassment.
I can’t believe I’m in trouble for standing up to that-that bully of a lord! “Master” Thalis had no right to treat me like that she thought and wisely kept the notion to herself.
Thankfully for Priscilla, Caredhio was no mind reader and so her inner thoughts remained a mystery to him. Still, the aged butler didn’t cease to regard the maid with a look of suspicion even after she curtsied and dashed away to perform the next kitchen chore. “That one has to learn her place” the butler said to himself in a low voice, clenching and unclenching his fists.
Still fuming, Caredhio walked briskly towards the door that lead outside of the kitchen, stopping his journey once in order to yell at a clumsy cook who had dropped an expensive spice on the floor. When the door slammed after his departure, Priscilla wasn’t the only one to sigh in relief.
“Prisci, girl, what did you do this time?” a big burly cook by the name of Ogen inquired whilst preparing an elaborate dish with his massive hands. In response, Priscilla took a flask of pepper and one of salt with her hands and brought them next to the large cook where her assigned dish was. A loose strand of red hair obtained freedom from her pony tail and paraded itself in front of her eyes, forcing Priscilla to tie it back with the rest of it.
Seeing no response forthcoming, Ogen shook his head. “Stubborn lass” he mumbled.
“What was that?” the perceptive girl inquired while seasoning her dish and Ogen shook his hands in front of him from left to right rapidly “N-nothing! Nothing at all, Prisci!”
She seemed satisfied by the answer and focused her attention on the task at hand. Ogen was twice as tall as her, many times as strong, yet the big cook had always been under her thumb when it came down to it. How it had come to that, not even Ogen himself could offer an explanation.
“Stupid Caredhio” the young maid said at length, her eyes focused solely on the potatoes on the elaborate plate in front of her. “Her mother probably worked the streets when he was in her womb or something.”
Ogen knew better than to agree or disagree with her-heck, or even say anything at all when Priscilla was like that! The other members of the kitchen staff avoided her like the plague as well, at least while she had had a fight with the mansion’s butler.
Another cook passed behind them with a luxurious cart carrying delicious meals of high caliber cooking. “Remember our master wishes his potatoes mashed into a puree” he commented as he passed. Priscilla didn’t give a response, but she grabbed for the potato masher and began to pound into each vegetable with the vigor that a seasoned warrior carves his mace into the heads of his most hated opponents.
Ogen took a stealthy step to the left, clearing some distance between him and the energetic woman. He concentrated solely on his plate like his life depended on it- and in his mind that was indeed the case!
“Slap me for not bowing low enough, will he?” she whispered through gritted teeth. The potato masher went up and down at incredible velocity, partly due to Priscilla picturing both Caredhio and Thalis’ faces over the potatoes. In a matter of seconds there were only the post-massacre remains of the vegetables left in the plate.
Priscilla huffed a little bit, feeling lightheaded, taking a moment to regain her breath. Her arms felt like she had been throwing heavy rocks at a far-away target, and so she stretched them while recuperating her energy.
Ogen put one hand on her shoulder gently; judging from Priscilla’s lack of reaction, he assumed it wasn’t an unwelcome act of charity. “Maybe you should take a break” he suggested. Priscilla nodded slowly.
The same cook that had come by with the food cart returned the same way, now with an empty cart, and he used the chance to say “And don’t forget about the lord’s intolerance to nutmeg. He’ll throw a fit if he has another coughing episode.”
The words barely registered in her mind and she nodded absently at the fast-moving cook. She looked down at her apron, normally a white cloth of medium quality; now it resembled a surgeon’s vest, covered in potato chunks acting as gore.
She leaned forward against the counter and crafted a small nest with her arms for her head. A second later, her head snapped upwards, a look of revelation across her face: there was one particular thought that stuck in her mind, seemingly for no apparent reason.
Nutmeg.
“Oh, how could I forget? Our dear master is allergic to nutmeg” Priscilla mused while allowing a sly grin to take form on her fair face. “It’d be a shame if someone accidentally put some in his mashed potatoes…”
“Priscilla, please don’t do this” Ogen protested with a low but serious tone. “If he has another coughing episode he’ll have us all flayed alive”. The maid pouted in response, making Ogen change tactics; the big man joined his hands into a praying position and put up his best “pretty please” face.
Priscilla threw up her hands and harrumphed noisily, responded with a quick “Fine, fine” and walked away towards a different sector of the kitchen to pick up a few more ingredients. Ogen exhaled in absolute relief.
On her way, without thinking twice about it, she artfully snatched a nutmeg flask that was nearby. Once back to her station, she started pouring its contents down onto the potatoes she had just mashed. “Slap me for not bowing low enough, will he?” she whispered again and again while dumping more and more of the spice onto the dish. After a brief moment she stopped to consider the resulting dish: no one would notice the difference if she mixed the puree a bit.
Not even if she uncorked the stopper and allowed the whole contents of the flask to rain upon lord Thalis’ most delicate dinner.
Ogen sighed deeply. “Gods preserve us, we’re all dead cooks” he prayed after catching a glimpse of Priscilla’s antics.
---
To say the dinning room was richly adorned would be a gross understatement: ivory vases with golden gilding were placed atop black marble pedestals on the corners of the rectangular chamber, along with a corresponding painting for them representing a member of the noble family living in the mansion, the Baudyrs. From the center of the room, right above the dining table, was an enormous chandelier made of special crystals that reflected multicolored light. All forms of jewelry, tapestries and expensive adornments were placed around the dinning room with great precision, all of them constantly dusted and washed daily.
At the large and exuberant oak wood table sat a multitude of people, the master of the house included.
“Shall we begin?” Thalis Baudyr said with one wine-filled glass on his right hand towards his guests, nobles from the city who dressed just as pompously as the relatively young baron, still in his late twenties. Everyone flashed their best fake smile and nodded with no less authentic eagerness.
In the next room Caredhio was giving quick and simple instructions to the staff that had been chosen to deliver the meal. Due to some strange trick of fate, Priscilla was amongst those people and the carts full of finely treated food.
“Don’t look at them” the butler was enouncing low enough for only the servants to hear. “Don’t talk to them” he added, then took a moment to stare at everyone in the eye one by one. “And for God’s sake, don’t even think about disrespecting our master!”.
The servants nodded as one, their eyes cast low, shoulders slightly hunched as proof of their submission. Satisfied, Caredhio nodded to himself and opened the double doors leading into the dinning room. It took a matter of seconds for the carts to start rolling into the chamber at a moderate pace, not too fast and not too slow.
Meanwhile, the nobles pretended as if their food was being brought to them by invisible forces, too snobbish in their way of seeing life to admit that there were, in fact, human beings taking their food to their table without even asking for a ‘thank you’ in return.
Fate wasn’t about to stop tampering with Priscilla’s life, for she was the one to deliver the nutmeg-seasoned dish to Thalis. She placed it in front of him along with the other plates that were already there without a word or a look as sternly instructed. Moments later she was back in the previous room with the rest of the staff, waiting for Caredhio to return and give his appraisal of their performance.
Come on, eat it was the thought that kept popping into Priscilla’s head again and again. Without realizing it she was nibbling on her thumb whiles her other hand clawed at her own apron.
Several minutes passed and the double wooden doors opened and closed in a flash, the only change being that the butler was with the staff in the back room. “No complaints” he said with a hint of surprise after making sure everybody was there. Caredhio re-adjusted his fine tunic, not for the first time in the day “You’ve all performed… well, and I’m sure this will mean the master is-“
His next words were cut out; there was a commotion at the dinner table, as if someone had fainted. At first the sounds coming from thre were barely recognizable, with multiple nobles shouting words and phrases at the same time, forcing Caredhio to open the doors to the chamber once more.
“He’s choking” yelled one noble.
“His face is all red, he can’t breathe!” another shouted.
Priscilla looked into the dinning room from the edge of the threshold: all the nobles were placed around lord Thalis in a semi-circle, with two of the men holding him steady on his feet. The young baron was having a massive coughing spasm, making his body flail back and forth like a cawing raven.
“Ha!” Priscilla would’ve wanted to cheer right there and then, but the wise maid held the celebration in her mind only, victory dance and all. She had to make a supreme effort to keep a concerned expression on her face, though.
Caredhio was shouting orders for the nobles to move out of the way and for the staff to fetch a healer as quickly as humanly possible, but Priscilla wasn’t listening, suddenly concerned; why the big commotion for a simple coughing fit that Thalis had had before by accident? It would be over in a minute or so, resulting in a flustered Thalis and Caredhio.
She didn’t move from her spot in the back room and nobody seemed to notice her lack of action. Her eyes were locked on her master’s convulsing body, which lost energy with every second.
“It wasn’t supposed to be this bad” she kept telling herself under her breath as she witnessed the surreal scene.
Thalis stopped coughing all of a sudden and then lay very still. Caredhio and the visitant nobles talked to him, but he ignored them. Or so it seemed at first.
For Priscilla the world was devoid of all sound, even with the servants running back with the mansion’s healer in tow, even with the butler shouting his master’s name.
In the ensuing chaos, no one realized at first that there was a red haired maid laughing like a maniac in the back room, hugging her knees as she sat against a wall.
Priscilla recoiled backwards at the impact of the butler’s slap against her head, allowing a yelp to be released from her lips. Her head banged hard against a fine set of metallic utensils that were hanging over the kitchen table in the process, forcing yet another cry of pain from the young woman.
The butler, Caredhio, regarded her with narrowed eyes, his lower lip trembling “Now listen here, you little whelp” he commanded with his typical elegant, yet dangerous voice. “If I find out that you disrespected the master one more time, I’ll feed your beaten body to the dogs, you hear?”
The girl nodded quickly while she rubbed the place on her head where she had hit herself with the cooking items. Try as she might, she couldn’t blink away the tears forming in her green eyes, partly from pain and partly from embarrassment.
I can’t believe I’m in trouble for standing up to that-that bully of a lord! “Master” Thalis had no right to treat me like that she thought and wisely kept the notion to herself.
Thankfully for Priscilla, Caredhio was no mind reader and so her inner thoughts remained a mystery to him. Still, the aged butler didn’t cease to regard the maid with a look of suspicion even after she curtsied and dashed away to perform the next kitchen chore. “That one has to learn her place” the butler said to himself in a low voice, clenching and unclenching his fists.
Still fuming, Caredhio walked briskly towards the door that lead outside of the kitchen, stopping his journey once in order to yell at a clumsy cook who had dropped an expensive spice on the floor. When the door slammed after his departure, Priscilla wasn’t the only one to sigh in relief.
“Prisci, girl, what did you do this time?” a big burly cook by the name of Ogen inquired whilst preparing an elaborate dish with his massive hands. In response, Priscilla took a flask of pepper and one of salt with her hands and brought them next to the large cook where her assigned dish was. A loose strand of red hair obtained freedom from her pony tail and paraded itself in front of her eyes, forcing Priscilla to tie it back with the rest of it.
Seeing no response forthcoming, Ogen shook his head. “Stubborn lass” he mumbled.
“What was that?” the perceptive girl inquired while seasoning her dish and Ogen shook his hands in front of him from left to right rapidly “N-nothing! Nothing at all, Prisci!”
She seemed satisfied by the answer and focused her attention on the task at hand. Ogen was twice as tall as her, many times as strong, yet the big cook had always been under her thumb when it came down to it. How it had come to that, not even Ogen himself could offer an explanation.
“Stupid Caredhio” the young maid said at length, her eyes focused solely on the potatoes on the elaborate plate in front of her. “Her mother probably worked the streets when he was in her womb or something.”
Ogen knew better than to agree or disagree with her-heck, or even say anything at all when Priscilla was like that! The other members of the kitchen staff avoided her like the plague as well, at least while she had had a fight with the mansion’s butler.
Another cook passed behind them with a luxurious cart carrying delicious meals of high caliber cooking. “Remember our master wishes his potatoes mashed into a puree” he commented as he passed. Priscilla didn’t give a response, but she grabbed for the potato masher and began to pound into each vegetable with the vigor that a seasoned warrior carves his mace into the heads of his most hated opponents.
Ogen took a stealthy step to the left, clearing some distance between him and the energetic woman. He concentrated solely on his plate like his life depended on it- and in his mind that was indeed the case!
“Slap me for not bowing low enough, will he?” she whispered through gritted teeth. The potato masher went up and down at incredible velocity, partly due to Priscilla picturing both Caredhio and Thalis’ faces over the potatoes. In a matter of seconds there were only the post-massacre remains of the vegetables left in the plate.
Priscilla huffed a little bit, feeling lightheaded, taking a moment to regain her breath. Her arms felt like she had been throwing heavy rocks at a far-away target, and so she stretched them while recuperating her energy.
Ogen put one hand on her shoulder gently; judging from Priscilla’s lack of reaction, he assumed it wasn’t an unwelcome act of charity. “Maybe you should take a break” he suggested. Priscilla nodded slowly.
The same cook that had come by with the food cart returned the same way, now with an empty cart, and he used the chance to say “And don’t forget about the lord’s intolerance to nutmeg. He’ll throw a fit if he has another coughing episode.”
The words barely registered in her mind and she nodded absently at the fast-moving cook. She looked down at her apron, normally a white cloth of medium quality; now it resembled a surgeon’s vest, covered in potato chunks acting as gore.
She leaned forward against the counter and crafted a small nest with her arms for her head. A second later, her head snapped upwards, a look of revelation across her face: there was one particular thought that stuck in her mind, seemingly for no apparent reason.
Nutmeg.
“Oh, how could I forget? Our dear master is allergic to nutmeg” Priscilla mused while allowing a sly grin to take form on her fair face. “It’d be a shame if someone accidentally put some in his mashed potatoes…”
“Priscilla, please don’t do this” Ogen protested with a low but serious tone. “If he has another coughing episode he’ll have us all flayed alive”. The maid pouted in response, making Ogen change tactics; the big man joined his hands into a praying position and put up his best “pretty please” face.
Priscilla threw up her hands and harrumphed noisily, responded with a quick “Fine, fine” and walked away towards a different sector of the kitchen to pick up a few more ingredients. Ogen exhaled in absolute relief.
On her way, without thinking twice about it, she artfully snatched a nutmeg flask that was nearby. Once back to her station, she started pouring its contents down onto the potatoes she had just mashed. “Slap me for not bowing low enough, will he?” she whispered again and again while dumping more and more of the spice onto the dish. After a brief moment she stopped to consider the resulting dish: no one would notice the difference if she mixed the puree a bit.
Not even if she uncorked the stopper and allowed the whole contents of the flask to rain upon lord Thalis’ most delicate dinner.
Ogen sighed deeply. “Gods preserve us, we’re all dead cooks” he prayed after catching a glimpse of Priscilla’s antics.
---
To say the dinning room was richly adorned would be a gross understatement: ivory vases with golden gilding were placed atop black marble pedestals on the corners of the rectangular chamber, along with a corresponding painting for them representing a member of the noble family living in the mansion, the Baudyrs. From the center of the room, right above the dining table, was an enormous chandelier made of special crystals that reflected multicolored light. All forms of jewelry, tapestries and expensive adornments were placed around the dinning room with great precision, all of them constantly dusted and washed daily.
At the large and exuberant oak wood table sat a multitude of people, the master of the house included.
“Shall we begin?” Thalis Baudyr said with one wine-filled glass on his right hand towards his guests, nobles from the city who dressed just as pompously as the relatively young baron, still in his late twenties. Everyone flashed their best fake smile and nodded with no less authentic eagerness.
In the next room Caredhio was giving quick and simple instructions to the staff that had been chosen to deliver the meal. Due to some strange trick of fate, Priscilla was amongst those people and the carts full of finely treated food.
“Don’t look at them” the butler was enouncing low enough for only the servants to hear. “Don’t talk to them” he added, then took a moment to stare at everyone in the eye one by one. “And for God’s sake, don’t even think about disrespecting our master!”.
The servants nodded as one, their eyes cast low, shoulders slightly hunched as proof of their submission. Satisfied, Caredhio nodded to himself and opened the double doors leading into the dinning room. It took a matter of seconds for the carts to start rolling into the chamber at a moderate pace, not too fast and not too slow.
Meanwhile, the nobles pretended as if their food was being brought to them by invisible forces, too snobbish in their way of seeing life to admit that there were, in fact, human beings taking their food to their table without even asking for a ‘thank you’ in return.
Fate wasn’t about to stop tampering with Priscilla’s life, for she was the one to deliver the nutmeg-seasoned dish to Thalis. She placed it in front of him along with the other plates that were already there without a word or a look as sternly instructed. Moments later she was back in the previous room with the rest of the staff, waiting for Caredhio to return and give his appraisal of their performance.
Come on, eat it was the thought that kept popping into Priscilla’s head again and again. Without realizing it she was nibbling on her thumb whiles her other hand clawed at her own apron.
Several minutes passed and the double wooden doors opened and closed in a flash, the only change being that the butler was with the staff in the back room. “No complaints” he said with a hint of surprise after making sure everybody was there. Caredhio re-adjusted his fine tunic, not for the first time in the day “You’ve all performed… well, and I’m sure this will mean the master is-“
His next words were cut out; there was a commotion at the dinner table, as if someone had fainted. At first the sounds coming from thre were barely recognizable, with multiple nobles shouting words and phrases at the same time, forcing Caredhio to open the doors to the chamber once more.
“He’s choking” yelled one noble.
“His face is all red, he can’t breathe!” another shouted.
Priscilla looked into the dinning room from the edge of the threshold: all the nobles were placed around lord Thalis in a semi-circle, with two of the men holding him steady on his feet. The young baron was having a massive coughing spasm, making his body flail back and forth like a cawing raven.
“Ha!” Priscilla would’ve wanted to cheer right there and then, but the wise maid held the celebration in her mind only, victory dance and all. She had to make a supreme effort to keep a concerned expression on her face, though.
Caredhio was shouting orders for the nobles to move out of the way and for the staff to fetch a healer as quickly as humanly possible, but Priscilla wasn’t listening, suddenly concerned; why the big commotion for a simple coughing fit that Thalis had had before by accident? It would be over in a minute or so, resulting in a flustered Thalis and Caredhio.
She didn’t move from her spot in the back room and nobody seemed to notice her lack of action. Her eyes were locked on her master’s convulsing body, which lost energy with every second.
“It wasn’t supposed to be this bad” she kept telling herself under her breath as she witnessed the surreal scene.
Thalis stopped coughing all of a sudden and then lay very still. Caredhio and the visitant nobles talked to him, but he ignored them. Or so it seemed at first.
For Priscilla the world was devoid of all sound, even with the servants running back with the mansion’s healer in tow, even with the butler shouting his master’s name.
In the ensuing chaos, no one realized at first that there was a red haired maid laughing like a maniac in the back room, hugging her knees as she sat against a wall.
