Juliette Coulombe (clearyourmind) wrote in emillion, @ 2013-08-28 16:04:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, !log, juliette coulombe, pyr min |
Who: Juliette & Pyr
What: Kitchen duty
Where: Bahamut Hall
When: Today, before lunch
Rating: G
Status: Complete!
Where kitchen duty had once been something to be accepted with a small sigh or even dreaded quietly, Juliette now found herself looking forward to the time she could spend there. Perhaps this was because she had discovered that there was something to be learned there, after all, quite aside from the endless washing of dishes, polishing of silverware, and mopping of floors. Theo was a busy man, far too busy to spend every day with his squire, but he had given her a few lessons here and there, and, as was her norm, she had used books to supplement the rest. She had floors to wash at Bahamut Hall today, but if she hurried… She clutched the bag of groceries to her chest. A quick salad wouldn’t take too long, and a few discreet inquiries had revealed such to be the lunch of choice for Councilor Liu. She knew he had been working hard, and yet he had still taken time to train with her these last few weeks. Now that she had found a simple and functional way to express her gratitude, she was eager to try her hand at making him something once more. The lemon-pear vinaigrette seemed promising and not too difficult, and if she completed her work quickly, she thought she might have the salad assembled before lunchtime… Walking into the kitchen, she stopped, confused. There was Pyr Min, huddled in the corner against a cabinet, his head at a strange and unnatural angle. The bag of groceries fell from her hands, forgotten, as she rushed to kneel at his side, ready to search for injuries and frightened that he might have hurt himself, only to realize he was… Asleep? Her hand was already on his shoulder -- she had thought to look for wounds with some half-formed idea to attempt a Cure -- so there was really nothing for it but to shake him. “Pyr?” Pyr was having a wonderful dream. In his dream, Councilor Cassul called him into her office and told him she was sorry for punishing him, that she knew he and Sky hadn't meant to cause trouble and that Pyr was exempt from squire duties for a year. Then she brought out a basket full of chocolate cookies and brownies, and told Pyr he could eat his fill, and take the rest up to his room to eat later. Everything tasted delicious—and best of all, no matter how much he ate, the basket's contents were never depleted. Pyr was in heaven. He'd been working so hard, he hadn't had time to sit down and stuff his face without having to worry about what task he had to carry out later or what class he had to attend. Then the dream changed. Councilor Cassul was gone, and Thistle appeared out of nowhere, growling and baring his teeth at Pyr, and latched onto the basket with his claws, trying to wrest it from Pyr's grasp. Pyr tried to shake the ferret off, but the vicious thing wouldn't budge—and then the ground began to shake, and— "These are my sweets!" he shouted, and stood up with a bolt, ready to fight—but there were no sweets, and no Thistle. Wait, what? He took a look around, disoriented, and saw the kitchen counter and the dishes placed on top of it. Then he looked down and saw Juliette kneeling on the floor, staring up at him, and he realised he'd fallen asleep in the middle of kitchen duty. "Oh, it's you, Juliette." At least he hadn't been caught napping by one of the senior guild members. He heaved a sigh of relief and buried his face in his hands, rubbing at his eyes. "Please don't tell anyone." She blinked up at him a few times, utterly bewildered, before getting back to her feet and stating the obvious, “You were asleep on the kitchen floor.” It didn’t look at all comfortable, but, come to think of it, he looked quite exhausted. Still, she could not fathom being tired enough to sleep sitting up against a cabinet. She remembered her bag then and whirled around. Its contents were strewn all over the floor -- a head of lettuce, a crate previously containing berries (the berries themselves had rolled everywhere), unshelled walnuts, a wrapped hunk of goat cheese, a lemon. She supposed she should be grateful that the bottle of olive oil appeared not to have broken, but it was still an incredible mess. A mess, she thought with a sigh, that she would have to clean up before she could wash the floor, leaving her little time to experiment with vinaigrette or anything else… Pyr noticed the mess on the floor then. That hadn’t been there when he’d gone to sleep, so it must be Juliette’s. Her groceries. Had she dropped them when she’d knelt down to shake him awake? “Crap. Sorry, that’s my fault,” he said with a wince. If he hadn’t been napping on the floor, that probably wouldn’t have happened, though lately it seemed he couldn’t help falling asleep whenever he stopped for a minute, no matter where he was or who was around. Positions he had always thought would be uncomfortable no longer bothered him; he could fall soundly asleep on his feet leaning against a wall or, on one occasion, kneeling on the floor of his bedroom with only his head on the bed. He bent down at once to clean up the mess on the floor. He picked up the lemon, the cheese, and the bottle of oil (just in case he managed to knock it over and break it yet) and placed them on the kitchen counter. Then he crouched down again and set to the task of collecting the berries that had rolled away into every nook of the guildhall kitchen. He picked up as many as he could find, but he had no doubt there were still more under the furniture, where he could neither see them nor reach them. “I’ll wash these for you,” he told Juliette, and turned to do just that. “You do not have to - ” But it seemed he already was. So she knelt again to gather walnuts and lettuce leaves and a few errant berries. Fortunately, the mess seemed smaller when there were two of them crawling around the floor, and it did not take more than a few minutes to pick up everything that was easily reachable. She supposed that as she swept under furniture, she would unearth the other half of her escaped berries. “It is not necessary,” she attempted to tell him, but he was already at the sink with the berries that had been recovered, and really, what was she to do, snatch them out of his hands? So she let it be, placing the lettuce beside the sink and bundling the other items back in her bag before opening the broom closet, pulling out the broom, mop, and bucket. As he washed, she began to sweep. “I take it you have been… training exceptionally hard,” she said at last, a roundabout way of inquiring just how this situation had come about. “Ugh. I’ve been training from sunrise until sundown for over a week. It sucks,” he replied. He thought he detected some curiosity in Juliette’s tone, but she was probably too polite to ask directly what he was being punished for, so it was a relatively safe topic. He wasn’t going to volunteer that information, and if they were talking about his training, they weren’t talking about the ball, which was a can of worms Pyr didn’t want to touch with a ten-foot pole. It was inevitable that Juliette would eventually find out about Sky—Pyr thought they’d been exceptionally lucky so far that she hadn’t spotted Sky around the guildhalls on the days he came to train with the Fighters’ Guild—but if Pyr had to explain about his twin, he’d rather not do it somewhere full of cutting knives. Not that he thought Juliette would be that angry, but she wasn’t going to like the news, either. Better to be safe. “Councilor Cassul designed a new training regime for me,” Pyr said. He continued to wash the berries and placed them in a bowl by the sink once they were clean. “I have a lot more classes than I used to, even one-on-one training sessions. All day long.” He hoped to encourage discussion about his training. Then they could go on to talk about fighting in general, which was the safest topic Pyr could think of, and with luck they wouldn’t even touch on the issue of Sky. “Hmm,” Juliette said thoughtfully, buying herself time as she attempted to organize her thoughts. As a punishment, especially one without a set end date, it seemed quite harsh. What could Pyr have done to deserve it? “It seems as though it would be…. highly educational as an experience.” As well as exhausting and painful, but these were such givens that she did not feel the need to mention them. There were another half a dozen berries on the floor now, excavated from beneath cabinets and tables; she swept up the dirt into a dustpan before picking out the berries and dumping them in the sink, too. Might as well not waste them, she supposed. “And presently, you are meant to be…” She doubted the answer was ‘napping on the kitchen floor,’ but she wondered just what particularly unpleasant task he had been set to complete if he had been left to his own devices. Well, educational was one word for it, though certainly not the one he would have used. If he was being educated in anything, it was the importance of not getting caught. He’d been in trouble before, countless times, but the repercussions had never been on this scale. He ached all over. If he got through this and lived, he was determined to sleep for a whole week. Maybe two, depending on how long his punishment went on. “I have kitchen duty for the foreseeable future. I was…” What had he been doing when he’d fallen asleep, anyway? He furrowed his brow, trying to remember, and turned to look at the spot where he’d been napping. And saw a white rag on the floor next to the cabinet. “...I was cleaning the cabinet doors.” Probably. “I already did the dishes and scrubbed the pots and pans.” And there’d been some sort of vegetable soup left over in a container that he’d helped himself to, as compensation for all the trouble. Perhaps the soup had been someone else’s, but it had been just sitting there, and no one else was in the kitchen to see, anyway. “What are you doing here?” he asked, curious. He didn’t think squires were made to purchase supplies for the guildhall kitchens, so those had to be Juliette’s groceries. Unable to keep a hopeful tone from seeping into his voice, he asked, “Were you going to cook something?” Once he had cleared the sink, she began filling the bucket that went along with the mop. At his question, she gave the mop and broom a pointed look before saying, “Washing the floor.” As though it weren’t painfully obvious. “I have kitchen duty today, too.” She did not have quite the quantity of chores that he had apparently been assigned but all squires did some. She felt a bit flustered at his other question however -- that was private, even if more and more people had come to realize that she had this new… hobby, of a sort. “Only a salad,” she said at last. “I thought it might be pleasant on such a warm day. And I thought to…” And she should not say that -- really, what was she thinking!? “That is, I was planning on making several portions.” She had to taste it to make sure the vinaigrette had come out well. “If we finish our chores early enough and you wish to try some…” A shameless distraction tactic, but he seemed as though he would not turn down food, and then perhaps he wouldn’t ask who the other portions were meant for. When she trailed off, Pyr turned to look at her, and saw she’d gone a little pink. He was dying to know why, maybe tease her about it a little, but he held back. If he got on her nerves, she may discard her good manners and not let him try that salad. And well, if she didn’t want to talk about that, they could strike a silent truce—he didn’t want to talk about his punishment, so they were even. “Hey, isn’t Finch your mentor? He’s pretty good at cooking.” Pyr had managed to try the bisque Finch had left at Shieldwyrm, before someone had made off with the pot. He had no idea who’d done that, but Finch had said in his network post not to steal the pot, so really, he’d had it coming. “Is he teaching you to cook, too?” “Lord Finch has given me some… advice when it comes to cooking, yes.” Putting the bucket of warm, sudsy water on the floor, she began her mopping. This task seemed to go faster with company, strangely, even if she did have to mop around his feet. “As in other things, I am nowhere near being his equal.” But perhaps the salad would turn out well all the same. With him once more occupied with the cabinets, she allowed the silence to stretch for the next ten minutes as she applied herself to her task. She thought about asking about his presence at the ball -- again -- but he had not given her any clear answers over the network this morning. Perhaps he had been taken by one of the senior guild members for one reason or another, or perhaps one of the other noble squires had brought him as his or her guest, or perhaps he had been invited by a relation he was not particularly fond of, or perhaps… Well, her theories were numerous, but she did not think she would get an answer no matter how much she pried, so she kept silent. Fortunately, the mopping was completed quickly, the bucket emptied, and the mop, broom, and bucket put away in the broom closet once more. “What else needs doing?” she asked curiously. “And when is your next training session?” If she hurried, she might be able to test her recipe on him before he departed. If Finch had been teaching Juliette to cook, then it would be pretty good. She’d said before that if they finished their task quickly enough, she would let him have a portion, so Pyr decided to up his pace a little. He finished his work with the cabinets and moved on to wipe the counter with the rag. “You’ll probably get better the more you cook, right?” he said, in reference to her earlier comment. Really, he would have been surprised if her skills in the kitchen could rival Finch’s, but she was always putting herself down. “And I can help taste test the stuff you make. I don’t mind.” He liked being fed, and didn’t turn up his nose at free food, even if it wasn’t as good as it may have been. He decided not to tell Juliette that. “I think we’re about done. Just need to take a look at the pantry, sometimes people go and grab something quick from there and it ends up a mess.” People included him, too, sometimes, though that was at Lindwyrm, not here at Bahamut. “I still have a little time to go until my next training session. Maybe a little over a half hour.” Thankfully, she’d woken him up from his nap, or he’d still be propped up against that cabinet. And with her help, cleaning had gone faster. “I may complete this in time to spare a portion before you must go, then.” She found a big bowl for the salad itself as well as a small one for the vinaigrette, a cutting board and a knife, then rummaged around for awhile before she unearthed a nutcracker. “If you would like to shell these walnuts for me, once you have completed your inspection of the pantry?” If he assisted with that portion, which was one of the most time consuming, she thought she could complete the entire process in under a quarter hour. She busied herself with measuring the oil, pear vinegar, lemon juice, salt, and pepper, whisking them together in the small bowl until the mixture seemed to taste correct. Chopping the lettuce and crumbling the cheese didn’t take long at all, after that, and Pyr had obediently shelled the walnuts and disposed of the shells, so all that was left was to add the berries and toss everything with the vinaigrette. She had already set three bowls aside, which she now filled. A glance at the clock told her it was just about ten minutes to lunchtime -- perfect. If she hurried, she could deliver the salad to Councilor Liu’s office quietly and depart with no one the wiser. “Please help yourself,” she said, taking up her own bowl and fetching a fork. “Thanks,” Pyr said, taking one of the bowls. “It looks pretty good!” He’d thought that as she was making it, too—and once he tried it, it turned out he’d been right. “And tastes pretty good, too!” Even better because of how hungry he was. He’d always been the kind to eat at all hours and never turn away a meal, but Councilor Cassul’s training regime had exacerbated that, to the point where he was permanently hungry. “Are you in a hurry?” he asked when he saw how fast Juliette was eating—fast for her, anyway. Whenever he’d seen her eat before, she always took small bites and ate slowly. Not today. “I’ve a number of things to take care of, yes,” she said, choosing evasion in place of attempting to lie. She was in a hurry -- the councilor could return to his desk any minute -- but she was not about to explain. “It is not much; however, I am glad that you like it.” She offered him a smile which was small but not unfriendly. Really, he was doing her a favor, but if he enjoyed the salad in the process, then it was a mutually beneficial situation, wasn’t it? And with that in mind… Finishing with the contents of her bowl, she placed it in the sink, took up the last filled bowl and her bag, and told him, “As I cooked, the dishes are yours to do. Good luck with the rest of your... training.” Before he could protest, she left the kitchen at a rapid walking pace. Five minutes -- she might make it if she hurried. The offices were not so very far from the kitchen. Pyr blinked at her as she stood up—she had finished before him?—and let out a bewildered, “Oh, sure.” He wondered who the third bowl was for, but didn’t bother asking, as she probably wouldn’t answer. And she was already halfway out the door, so whatever. He shrugged as she left and continued eating his portion. It was really good, and free, on top of that. Kitchen duty wasn’t half-bad, he decided. |