The sound of an explosion followed by a cacophony of Sobian profanities propelled Dari full-speed to the kitchen behind the bar.

“Don’t fret,” Jie coughed, waving smoke away, face blackened by soot, his glasses askew. Dari rushed to his side, flapping her hands, panicking in half-dozen languages, never pinging off modern Kanglis. “Really, Dari, I’m fine. It was just an experiment gone a bit off. I wasn’t entirely keen on my eyebrows, at any rate,” he searched for a clean spot on his shirt to wipe his glasses. Dari slipped them from his face, clearing the smoke stain with her apron. She offered them for Jie’s inspection before setting them back onto his nose, fingertips brushing the sides of his face.

“Much better, dear Dari,” Jie replied. “Thank you.”

Sam crashed through the kitchen door, her shirt buttoned crookedly, one suspender strap trailing after her.

“What in the outer darkness? Oh,” she panted, leaning against the doorframe. “You scared half the life out of me, Jie! Here’s me thinkin’ there was a Lich attack or somesuch. I thought you were just making heating charms today. You can do a pound of those in your sleep. What’s got you exploding my kitchen?”

“You perhaps overestimate me, my lady-lord,” he replied with another small cough, “The heating charms are finished and replaced under the bar. This,” he gestured at the burnt dough smoking on the butcher block, “is a bit of an experiment. It seems our pretty pot-girl has inspired the more fashion-inclined ladies of the village.”

“Pretty pot girl has inspired ladies?” Dari questioned, pointing to herself.

“Hair color charms,” Jie grumbled, “I’ve had no fewer than five women ask after the charm you use. I am concerned that should they discover the jewel-tone hair charm fad of Amissopolis is a fabrication, they will begin to ask more complex questions.”

Sam guffawed, as Dari tried to suppress giggles of her own.

“Hair color charms? How did you manage to make an explosive instead?”

Jie sighed.

“After some consideration, I came to the conclusion such a charm would require something akin to an elf-glamor. Given that glamors are relatively simple magic, and directing magic is really little more than intent plus weight of desire…”

“You were just magic-sick, Jie,” Sam said, crossing her arms.

“Precisely. I thought perhaps some magical residue might remain, and be induced to spread, and further and do as it was asked? It was an experiment,” Jie said, crossing his arms.

“Magic isn’t mold, Jie, and you aren’t a loaf of bread,” Sam frowned. “And even if it did work like that, Lujain didn’t know what sort of magic you had.”

“It isn’t as if anyone kept me abreast of my own treatment,” Jie grumbled.

“What was there to be abreast of? You were sick, you sat out by the tree like Lujain said, you got better.”

“With ‘unusual speed’, I believe Lujain said,” Jie countered.

“Even more reason to leave it alone. Magic’s magic,” Sam chided. “You’re a damn fine charmsmith, but

you’re no magic handler, kid.”

Jie furrowed what would have been his brows, had they not been burnt off.

“I believe that observation to be self-evident, lady-lord,” he said. Dari gave a sympathetic pout and drew her finger tip over Jie’s eyes, clearing two lines through the soot on his skin.

Sam cackled.

“My dearest Dari, I know you to be too kind-hearted to have drawn eyebrows in an expression of anger on my sooted face, heaping insult on my already grievously injured ego.”

“Injured ego?” Dari asked with an impish grin.

“You wound me, the both of you,” Jie declared, making a feint at Dari’s face with soot stained fingers.

“Maybe a dye, instead?” Sam suggested. “Anyhow, don’t go messing with all that intent and weight and residue business.You’ll burn something down and I’ll have to take it out of your wages.”

“My wages?” one of the clean stripes Dari had drawn over Jie’s eyes rippled.

“You’ll get a stern talking to, then. And I’ll tell Deliatus you tried magic with Dari in the place,'' Sam said with a warning tone, leaving for the bar.

“Understood,” Jie said, shivering at the thought of Deliatus’ ire.

“You find this quite amusing, don’t you?” Jie asked Dari, who trembled in her attempt to hold in laughter.

“You enjoy your clever little eyebrows joke?’

“Amusing eyebrows,” Dari laughed.

Jie reached for her hand, but Dari shook her head. Retrieving a clean bar rag, she wetted it in the rain barrel just outside the kitchen door. Sliding Jie’s glasses off, she daubed his face with the damp rag.

“I could’ve tended to my own wounds, as it were,” he said, losing a fight with a contented smile tugging the corners of his mouth.

Dari rested her free hand against Jie’s neck.

“I have liking to do to it. You have liking for me to do to it, as well,” she teased.

“You’ve been listening to ‘Latus too much,” Jie said, “Flirtation doesn’t suit you at all.”

“You are having the sighs and the looks like to those of the dreams for other reasons, then,” Dari challenged, scrubbing at a pernicious spot of smoke stain on Jie’s cheekbone. “You are having the dreams to handle to

the magic?”

“No, you utter scamp,” Jie said, taking the rag and giving Dari a playful snap with it. “It was an experiment. I’m a bit too old to pick up magic-handling.”

Dari frowned.

“I do not have the thought you are having very a lot of the oldness. You are having to the skin with very a lot of smoothness and the hair with darkness and prettiness.”

“Excellent observation,” Jie said, anxious to move past what appeared to be a compliment. “But most handlers are apprenticed at ten, often younger. Many things are worth a try, though.”

“Why do you care to this? A charm to give girls hair the similarity to mine has the sound of very a lot of silliness,” Dari said.

“It does have such a sound, if I were to be asked, but I was not. I was asked to produce said charm, which so far has failed rather explosively. Sam is too dismissive of the feminine arts of cosmetics. I am no expert, but your hair is clearly not a dye, as you are a pot-girl in an out-of-the way tavern, not a princess. I have dabbled in dyes. For the complexity of color present in your hair, one would require a great many very tiny snails from the Baladian Gulf. Expensiosa Assinus Cochlea, as is their proper Mori name. They’re known as the Ohphugno snails in the common vernacular, after the response of most merchants on learning their price--” distracted by the glee of his explanation not only being tolerated, but listened to, Jie ran his fine-boned, soot streaked fingers through Dari’s hair before pulling away. “Were you wearing a dye, the roots of your hair would have shown a common color several times over by now, or lost its gleam. Hence, the assumption of a charm.”

Dari grasped Jie’s hand, settling her fingers between his.

“You do to this experiment so the people will not to think to the strange things about me. The stranger things, I have the thought, because they are having the belief I have the damage from bad magic,” she said. “You are concerning to what they would to do to me if the people have the thought am very, very a lot strange.”

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“You are very a lot strange,” Jie echoed, “but some may not find your strangeness quite so endearing as I, or Sam and Deliatus.”

“Show to me how do I make to the charms. I have the belief I could to help,” Dari said.

Jie hesitated. The still-smoking lump of charm dough was not his first explosion, nor his fiftieth. Lujain had been able to save his hand when he was still developing his heating charms, though the tip of his left pinky was still square and bright pink when exposed to heat. The thought of Dari's hand; smooth and soft and beautiful in his own, missing fingers, skin scarred odd colors because of a lesson he delivered turned his stomach.

Jie shook himself. Dari was a pot girl, not a noblewoman or porcelain doll. In Jie’s experience, scars were tally marks toward competency. Dari was already beautiful; she wished to be competent. Dari grinned, her wide, violet eyes pleading.

Dari was already quite competent in the art of persuasion, Jie conceded.

Charmsmithing was, at its wildest heights, tedious. She would lose interest. But he’d allow Dari to make the decision for herself.

“Alright. But an easy one, first, ok? Though it may be quite amusing if the villagers came to believe absent eyebrows to be fashionable, should we give the hair charm another try.”

“I will not to make to the explosion,” Dari insisted.

“Perish the thought,” Jie said, prying burnt dough from the butcher block.

“Perish?” she parroted, disconnected from Jie’s translation, pointing at the dough.

He placed the smoldering lump in a bucket near the kitchen door.

“It will receive a proper burial in my charm graveyard,” he said. “The same tree which healed me of my magic sickness. With your assistance, of course.”

Dari mouthed through several words, touching her fingertips to her thumbnail, as if she counted.

“Incorruptible,” Dari finally remarked with an approving nod.

“Well-spotted,” Jie said, his face alight with genuine praise. “Perhaps you know more of charmsmithing than

you let on?”

Dari replied in a tangle of middle Kanglais and old Dwarvish, snapping her fingers in frustration. Sighing, she snatched Jie’s wrist.

“No. Oak cannot to be corrupted. This is the simple thing everyone knows to,” she replied. She released him, but hovered. “For this reason it could to give to you the healing.”

“Your faith in the knowledge of the common man is admirable, if misplaced,” Jie said, pulling a long, shallow dough-kneading bowl from a shelf. He set it into place on the butcherblock.

“What charm do we make to?” Dari asked, leaning over his shoulder, hand resting on his forearm.

“Pain-catchers. Very simple, very popular,” he replied, “they prevent aches of the joints and muscles, or soothe them. Could you be so good as to fill this with rye flour? The darker brown sort, over there,” he pointed, handing Dari a earthenware canister. “It isn’t strictly required to be rye, but customers have a bit more faith in charms against pain with a more aggressive appearance than wheat flour affords.”

Dari filled the canister, returning it to Jie’s butcher block.

“Pour it into the dough bowl, here,” he said, popping the seal on a crock.

Dari reached for the crock, babbling, shaking her head.

“To try, please?” she struggled.

Jie took her hand.

“Please to let me to try to do to it. I have wishing to learn to very a lot of the useful things,” Dari said with

Jie’s little spark of translation.

Jie sat the crock on the butcher block.

“I said you could help, Dari, my dear. I hardly think I should allow you to learn all of my little tricks. You’ll have me out of a job.”

“I will to beg to Sam to give to you the permission to stay to assist me,” Dari replied.

“How gracious,” Jie grinned. “Alright, charm mistress Dari, three fingers of this, down to your second knuckle,” he pointed to the crock.

Dari dug into the slimy mixture with a grimace.

“Aloe and finely ground almonds,” he responded. “I use it primarily as a binding agent, but here it assists with the charm as well.”

Dari scraped the mess off her fingers into the dough bowl.

“Do forgive what sounds like a bit of a forward request, but would you be so good as to bare one of your shoulders?” Jie stammered. “You’ll be needing both hands, and it would be prudent to stay in easy communication.” The narrow corner of the kitchen Jie had commandeered for his charms was compact enough he could reach most of his supplies with a lean, never moving his hand from Dari’s shoulder.

Dari had already plunged both hands into the dough bowl. She gave a sideways nod toward the puffed sleeve covering her left shoulder, babbling her permission in what Jie believed he recognized as Mori twisted through an Old Dwarvish grammar pattern. As if he handled fire, Jie slipped a nimble finger beneath the fabric, sliding it off Dari’s ochre shoulder. With more confidence, he placed his palm in the soft space between her shoulder and neck.

“Very a lot of silliness,” Dari continued, assuming Jie had understood her linguistic whirlwind. She worked the mixture into a dough, as she had seen Jie do before. “You ask to me to show to you my shoulder, but you act to me as if I will to bite to you when you move to my sleeve yourself.”

“Begging your pardon,” Jie said, indignant, “such an act has at least the appearance of impropriety.”

Dari leaned to gently nip Jie’s wrist.

“This is the thing you had it coming to you,” she said. “Your touch does not to have the feeling of impropriety,” Dari said, squeezing the dough forming in the bowl. “It has the feeling to the tickling.”

“You can leave off kneading just now,” he said, his cheeks pink.

Dari wiped her hands on her apron.

“We are to add to it what things?”

“Ground clove, which we have here,” Jie pointed. “A pinch with your thumb and first three fingers ought to suffice.” Dari did as instructed, dusting the powder across the sticky dough.

“Ginger, which I should have prepared ahead of time,” he said, leaning over Dari to reach for the root sitting on a table near the butcher block. Dari snatched it, holding it close to her chest with raised eyebrows.

“I suppose you want me to instruct you in its preparation, as well?”

“It would to be the useful thing,” Dari said.

Jie smiled. It had been a long time since he’d had a chance to teach anything more complicated than scrambled eggs to anyone, though he made note to keep his teaching voice to himself. He doubted Dari would allow such a pedantic tone to stand. With as ordinary a tone as he could manage, he showed her how to strip the ginger root of its skin, though he insisted on helping her to mince a segment into mush.

“The knives have a taste for my blood, I don’t want them hungering after you, as well.”

“Show to me, then,” she insisted, refusing to release the knife or the root. Jie sighed, leaning over her, curling her clumsy fingers against the blade, pushing gently against her hands to rock the knife through the root. Dari’s mince was not as fine as Jie’s but managed to pulverize the root onto something workable, which he supposed was the point.

“In with that, as well,” Jie said. “And to the garden for a bit of chickweed. It stays in a pot, so as not to overrun the place.”

He led Dari outside, stopping short of half an old whisky barrel, bare but for close-clipped green stems. Jie grumbled. “If such a thing is to be had. An entire hill of grass, and better plants besides, Mormo, I ask you!” he shouted toward the barn. “I’m certain I have a bit dried someplace, but it’s not nearly as effective…” he trailed off, catching sight of Dari.

On her knees, Dari caressed the remaining stalks, eyes closed. Green leaves dotted with white flowers rose to meet her touch, began to overflow the barrel.

“How much?” she stuttered without Jie’s touch to translate.

“A small handful will suffice,” he said, not quite able to deny what saw, but unable to fully believe it, either.

“Enough,” she stuttered, head tilted at the pot of greens. ”Thanking to you,” she said, turning to Jie.

Jie pressed his lips together, offering his hand to help Dari up.

“I do appreciate your help in obtaining our ingredients, Dari. But you should take care in allowing others to see your peculiar talent with plants.”

Dari nodded, grave.

“I do not want to give to anyone the jealous feeling,” she said, eyes glittering roguishly.

“Certainly not,” Jie said, opening the kitchen door for Dari, staring at the new chickweed crop.

“And just a bit of honey. No real reason for it, other than palatability, and we have it on hand, thanks to a certain pot-girl and apparent charmsmith,” Jie instructed. “The pain-catchers shipped in from the guild taste precisely as you’d expect. These have an advantage.”

Dari put her whole strength into fighting the tough dough, rolling and kneading until it was a uniform, mud colored lump. Jie, his hand resting on her shoulder, fought the urge to help her only after being knocked in the ribs by Dari’s swinging elbows, uncertain if they’d been aimed at him or not.

“The flour, to do the rolling?” Dari asked.

“Excellent eye,” Jie said, dusting the butcher block with rye flour.

“With this,” Jie said, handing Dari a rolling pin. He hesitated, moving to lean over her, to show her how to roll the dough out, equal parts disappointed and proud as she flattened the roll herself.

“To how thick?” she asked.

“The length of your thumbnail should do. You’re certain you will not permit me to assist you?”

“I can to do it,” Dari insisted, huffing against the resistance of the tough charm dough.

“I am aware. Humor me, please,” Jie said.

“You must to take from me the roller!” she declared.

Jie slipped his arms around her, placing his rough hands atop hers, giving a little push.

“I will allow to you to do to this,” Dari said, her breath less labored, “but for only the reason you are appearing to have very a lot of wanting to do to it.”

Jie blushed, his face brushing against Dari’s hair. He had never fully appreciated the mint soap, nor the rosemary hair oil he produced so often, he thought, scenting both on Dari, mingled with the sweat of working in the close kitchen. “It’s a matter of weight, as well as strength,” he said. “I struggle with it, too. If you can leave the flirtatious airs to Deliatus, I’ll have an excellent charmsmithing assistant in you, yet.” He held his breath as Dari took a half-step back, anchoring herself against him to push the dough flat.“Assistant!” Dari laughed. “I have the thought I am having the natural talent to charms. But, since you showed to me niceness to teach to me, we can to be the partners. Possibly.”

The dough flattened, Dari raised her fingers to tangle them with Jie’s, where he had hesitated in moving his hands from hers. She let her head rest against his collarbone. Jie froze, feeling something was expected of him, but not knowing what.

“So long as the possibility exists,” he said.

“I have seen the charms before. We now do to the cutting?” Dari asked.

“Aha, and here is where I will lose my student,” he said, breaking away from her in relief, rifling through a drawer. “Rune stamps. A more tedious activity is unknown. In the event a duller chore does exist, and I am quite wrong about a great many cosmological matters, I shall discover it when I die.”“Give to me, and I will to help,” Dari said, hand outstretched.

“I believe you can manage this task on your own with little difficulty,” Jie said, “if you could be so good as to give me a chance to go re-capture Mormo, should he remain in goat form, of course.” Jie opened the kitchen door, watching Dari. She did not look up from her work, pushing stamps half the size of a one-piece coin into the charm dough. Jie left the kitchen, glancing toward the chickweed barrel as he walked by, snatching an errant bunch spilling over the side before it had a chance to overtake his garden.

“She already thanked you,” he said, feeling silly, as a hidden wind passed through the plant, making it appear to shrink a few inches back into its container. Jie rubbed his eyes. Teaching was exhausting, he thought, no matter how eager the pupil. Setting off after Mormo, he took care not to look back at the chickweed barrel.

Mormo was a poor fugitive. He escaped often enough that Jie sometimes suspected he was a mage with very poor luck or very particular interests who’d trapped himself in the shape of a goat. His bids for freedom were always short lived and poorly planned, choosing the same few spots for a base camp with each escape. Jie found him, this time, gorging himself in the huckleberry glade about a half-mile from the barn. Jie never even needed a rope to lead Mormo home, just a stern reminder as to his duties regarding the nanny goats, a short tug on his horns, at most. Having temporarily secured Mormo with his goatly harem, Jie returned to the kitchen. Dari had already arranged the pain-catchers in neat rows on a baking sheet, each perfectly imprinted by the stamp he had given her. “Was I gone so long?” Jie asked.

Dari shook her head. “Gone so long.”

He took her hand. “You were not gone for the very a lot long amount of the time. This action was the action with the easiness. To do to it is just the patience, the careful hand, I have the thought,” she explained.

“You are not wrong,” Jie said, “It usually takes me a bit longer, is all.” “The touch of the woman?” Dari offered.

“I must definitely have a word with Deliatus as to the education she has been subjecting you to,” Jie said. “Deliatus has very a lot of the interesting things to tell to me. You are being the teacher, but others may to give to me the education, too. ” Dari said.

“I do not doubt it for a moment,” he Jie sighed.“Are we to finish the charm?” Dari asked. “They’ll need to heat for a bit, but they are finished,” Jie said, sliding the sheet into the oven. “I made to them,” Dari said with a smile, “They will to be very a lot powerful. The old man with the aching back will to jump to the rope with his grandchildren.” Jie frowned. “Perhaps he would. But these are for a specific customer with a bit more pain than an old man’s backache.