“I suppose I should go ahead and fix the door and clean up before I get back to work.” Varus said and stood up from his seat, but in that instant, Hannah raised her hand.
“No, we can do it!” She said.
Varus canted his head a little, “You’re carpenters?” He asked.
“No. But we have a little magic, fixing a door is easy.” Tuesday answered.
“Yeah, it’s meow problem.” Hannah added in turn with a little winsome smile on her face.
“I see. Well…” Varus scratched the top of his white skull and looked at the gaping place where the door sat, “My magic is useful for some things, but it’s not particularly good with wood. I’m not much of a magic caster, so… if you think you can manage it, you can hardly break it worse than I already did.”
As if to answer him in the affirmative, a dangling hinge chose that moment to finally come loose and fall into the untended remnants with a little clatter of noise.
“Give it a try.” Varus said, and gave a casual wave toward the doorway that probably looked more dramatic than he intended, as their reaction was to spring to their feet and stand as straight as the soldiers he remembered from his time alive, snap their hands up, and give him crisp salutes with their fingers canted at their eyebrows and their ears lowered dramatically.
“Yes sir!” They exclaimed, and though the pages and the ink called to Varus to resume his work, his curiosity got the better of him and when he turned around to seemingly look at the page, he kept the corner of his eye on them.
The pair scurried around assembling the bits of broken door like they were pieces of a puzzle.
“Meow, not there, meowver here.” Hannah said as she passed a stray piece over to Tuesday. The little kitsune girl was ‘sniffing’ the pieces where Hannah was running them across the tiny, near invisible whiskers, and bantering back and forth about where they thought the pieces went, working outward from the hinges.
‘I couldn’t work anyway, not with all their noise.’ He thought and just tapped the quill against the tan paper while he waited and watched the place on the floor where the bits of door came back together.
It took several hours, and more than once Varus rolled his eyes at himself. ‘Why, oh why, did I have to slam that thing so hard? You don’t know your own strength sometimes, you know that?’ He rebuked himself as a memory came up from his youth.
The hero’s face was bright and full of life, he was a pale man, unique in that sense given that his warriors were all tanned from their time in the sun. But it seemed the sun could never truly touch him, not as it did others. His long golden hair was almost like a girl’s, as were his fine features, and somehow… despite the difficult days, ‘I never saw him frown. Always a cheerful word even in the darkest times… heh, and what a grip!’ Varus thought as he remembered wrestling while encamped on a long march. The strain and contest of muscles between Varus and his prime, and his leader, the one who simply called himself Hero, was a fond, but distant memory now. The cheers of those who watched the pair tumble around, each trying to get the upper hand, and everyone cheering for the man they wagered their rations of beer on…
‘If I could smile again, I would smile at that.’ He thought of the Hero’s cheerful face when Varus actually pinned his shoulders to the ground and the “Gwahhhh!” cries of those who lost their bets went up.
Even in defeat, never a poor word. “If I can beat the dark lord, and you can beat me, what does that say about the dark lord’s odds in battle, eh?!” The Hero asked, and a cheer went up from soldiers more nerved than ever for the fight ahead…
‘Poor lads…’ Varus thought, but snapped from his reverie when the clatter of wood snapped him out of his trance and he saw Hannah and Tuesday tussling on the floor.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“I get to cast it!”
“No, me!”
“But you got the last apple!”
“And you got the last carrot!”
“Apples are better than carrots, so I get to cast it!”
“Hey now, what’s this?” Varus asked and got up. He couldn’t even tell which one was saying which, but when his heavy voice went up and he stood to look down at them, the two immediately broke apart their little tussle and went down to bow at him.
“Sorry, Varus! We just couldn’t decide who got to cast the spell now that we finally finished putting the door together!” Tuesday exclaimed, “I should get to do it because she got the last honey carrot!”
“Says mew!” Hannah quipped and rose to sit back on her heels, both of their tails bristled and lashed about while she replied, “I should get to on account of she got the last honey glazed apple and an extra piece of meat!”
“Stop,” Varus said slowly and held up one hand with palm facing the kneeling pair, he put one hand up to his face as he inhaled heavily out of sheer habit, “you needed to cast a spell because you finished assembling the door, didn’t you? That’s what you said, right?”
“Mhmm.” The pair said and nodded in the affirmative as they glanced sideways at each other.
“There’s only one problem with that.” Varus said, and the two cocked their heads opposite one another as they looked up at him.
His outstretched hand became a fist and his index finger was leveled past them to what had been an assembled puzzle piece. “That.” He said emphatically.
“Hmmm?” The two asked at once and turned their heads to look over their shoulders. “Gah!” They cried as they saw the chaos their tussle had created.
The door, once nearly put together in its proper shape right down to the last screw in the last hinge, was now scattered everywhere, and several pieces were now more broken than they had been in the first place.
“I have to say,” Varus said while trying to hide his laughter, and having very little success, “I didn’t think you could actually break it worse than it was, but I was seriously mistaken.”
His snorting began to get worse as their aghast expressions remained frozen on their faces, and a board that was half tilted outside after being flown free, fell down to the little single stone step beyond the door with a little ‘thock’ noise.
The pair of girls began to take deep, deep breaths as if to yell blame at one another, but in an instant, Varus cut it off.
“You know,” he said in the command voice he once used with his soldiers, “you could save yourselves the trouble and just use your magic on individual pairs. Put two pieces together at a time and mend them, that’s what you were going to do, right, use mending?” He guessed, and the pair nodded.
“That way you both get to enjoy using magic, and if it takes a little longer, so what? It’ll still take less time than the results of a third tussle after you finish putting it all back together again…again…and maybe another again.”
Hannah and Tuesday’s faces became a bright and embarrassed red, and they gave tiny nods of understanding. “Mmmkay, we’ll do that.”
“Good.” Varus said, and turned back around to actually try to write something through the small noise of the pair sorting pieces once more and saying ‘mending’ each time they found a match.
Casting spells was a time consuming thing for living beings, even for those from races gifted with magic, but it felt very good to use, like getting your back scratched just right when you need it most, so it was no wonder they each wanted to be the one to cast the spell. His compromise would drag it out, but satisfy them both. The only problem? Every time one of them cast the spell out loud, it threw off Varus’s rhythm of writing, interrupting almost every paragraph along the way.
And as a result, the two were not done with the door for hours more, and in all that time, he had only managed two paragraphs of his work.
But when they were, and Varus watched as Tuesday put the last piece into place to cast the final spell, he could sense the pride on their faces. They had a few splinters and scrapes here and there, and a few tiny pieces of the door were not present. That though, was nothing he cared enough about to say anything.
“Good job.” Varus said while they beamed up at the undead master of the house, and he picked the door up with one hand before setting it back into the frame. “Alright, screw it into place.”
As Hannah rushed to the lower hinge, Tuesday hopped up onto her head, stood tiptoe, and used her fingernail to screw in the ones at the top while Varus held the door in place.
He clapped his hands together, Tuesday hopped down to the floor, and it was done.
“Very well done, Tuesday, Hannah. Now, I’ve got some writing to do, so-” Varus stopped his own sentence when he heard their bellies rumble.
“Maybe I’ll do that later, first, I suppose you should get something to eat…and maybe this time I’ll actually get to make the stew?” One red orb in his eye turned black as if he were winking down at the two, and though they blushed again, they said in unison…
“I’ll be patient.”
Varus didn’t believe them…but either way, he didn’t really mind.