Wallace

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"Are you quite mad?" Valentine demanded.

We were back in the lobby, where she sat in my lap, dabbing at my skin with a restaurant napkin. A pair of castings on her part, Earth Movement for the glass, and Water Movement for the wine had cleaned up the mess, but there were still spots of blood on my face and arms where tiny flying shards had cut me.

I ruffled her hair, "Come on," I said warmly, "It'll be fine. I think it's clear what happened. We used Water, Transform, and Movement. The Water part, that worked out, the magic affected what we wanted it to. It just didn't do quite what we intended."

Val pawed at my arm, "My hair is messy enough! And I notice you're using 'we' a great deal. I seem to believe the spell was your idea."

"Yeah, but you were supervising," I replied flippantly, "Transform, I think that's clear. The water was transmuted into wine, and the wine into water. Movement, well it's like you said, Movement can make things explode. Which it did."

She pulled the napkin away from my cheek, the glossy white fabric dotted with patches of blood. Val held it clutched in her dainty little fist and shook it at me, "And you want to try it again? Gods Wallace, I can teach you something else, anything else."

I gently took the napkin and set it on the table beside the loveseat. Meant for two, it was just about large enough to be comfortable for me, though that didn't leave much room for Valentine. Not that I minded having her sitting in my lap.

"This is something else," I urged her gently, "Same goal, different method. We- or I -replace Transform and Movement with Communicate. The luggage carts," I gestured to where one sat empty by the elevators, "have all the brass we'd need. We'd keep it simple, only trying to move the heat from a bottle of wine to a cup of water."

Val's brows furrowed, "Communicate?"

I spread my hands, "Very little chance of anything exploding," I said brightly, "And I think it might even do the job better than Control would."

Val frowned and put a finger to her lips, "You want to make the wine talk to the water, and give it some of its warmth? Do I understand your inscrutable thought process?"

"Just think about it, there's a whole magical verb for Communicate. Now I don't know how the words were discovered," I hooked a finger inside my collar and drew out the necklace Temerity had given me, "or even if the translations this thing gives me are quite right. I also don't know if the magic in this world is the product of some analogue of evolution or intelligent design. But whatever the case may be, Communicate is different enough from the other Verbs to be its own thing. If it's just for letting people send magic letters or whatever, then it seems a little underwhelming. Especially when you compare it to the rest of the words which, at least to me, seem extremely broad."

"So when you hear 'communicate'," Valentine mused, "You imagine it to include any sort of transfer from one place to another?"

"Sure," I replied with a shrug.

Her eyes grew wide, and she snapped her fingers, "Like an immaterial counterpart to Movement," she realised.

"I hadn't been thinking about it that way, but yet, phrase it like that, I think you've got it exactly," I agreed.

"Okay," Val said grudgingly, "I see how this might work."

"And," I added, "You'd get an ice-cold bottle of wine out of it."

She smirked, "Say no more."

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With the remains of our previous experiment cleared away, Val brought over the new bottle and set it down next to the glass I'd filled with tap water.

"Get tired of red?"

"White wines chill better," she explained, "I suppose your family owns few vineyards."

"Vineyards," I laughed, "No, I'm more of a whiskey guy anyways. Maybe if this works, I can make some magic whiskey stones."

"Yes, well, step back a bit," she urged, waving me closer to the building, "You might be confident this will go more smoothly, but I don't want to find myself picking shards of glass out of your hair and clothes twice in one day."

I rose to my feet and joined her near the door, "Is there any limit to the distances involved?" I asked thoughtfully.

"I suppose it depends on what you mean by the 'limit'," she hedged, "I doubt there is some point at which magic stops working, but the further the subject, the more difficult it generally is to enforce your will upon it. Not to mention the task of visualising what is and what will be, there's something to be said for the ability to inspect something up close."

"But I was up close, does it matter then that I've backed away, so long as I remember all the details?"

She shrugged, "You're beginning to reach the limits of my familiarity with magic. The only thing that comes to mind is that I know there were experiments, casting spells with and without the aid of a spyglass. When the casters were able to view their subjects through the spyglass, they were able to work their magic with greater ease."

I turned to regard the bottle of white wine, and glass of tap water, "Well, I don't think I'll need a spyglass for this."

I regarded the ingredients for the spell. A second glass of water, and a little brass cap. The cap had covered up one of the steel screws that held the frame of the luggage rack together, and prying a couple off had been easier than taking a hacksaw we didn't have to the brass tubing.

I closed my eyes, and while I held the image of the bottle and glass in my mind, it wasn't my focus. Instead, I visualised the movement of the atoms themselves. Thermal energy, when you got down to it, was just a sort of random kinetic energy on a different scale. My spell would cease those random movements in the wine, while exciting the movements of those in the water.

I opened my eyes a moment later. The world seemed distant, much as it did when I finished meditating. It was dimmer, less intense. Dissociative might be a better term for it, and I held the image I'd constructed in my mind. I was careful not to hold on too tightly, lest the image shatter, and let the magic flow.

Valentine yelped as the bottle and glass both shattered, and I immediately realised how I'd screwed it up.

"Huh, well at least the spell works."

Val peered up at me and gave me a flat look.

"Hey, the wine is cold now," I pointed out, "I don't know what more you want."

And boy was it ever. The bottle had shattered, leaving a solid block of wine that mirrored the inside of the now broken bottle. The water, by comparison, had flash-boiled. It hadn't gone immediately to vapour, which was good since if it had the glass probably would have exploded, but the sudden spike in heat was still sufficient to shatter the un-tempered glass. The only real risk was getting splashed, and thankfully we'd been standing far enough back for that not to be an issue.

The air around the frozen wine seemed to smoke, with wisps of white vapour sublimating off the surface of the super-cooled beverage. In short, it was undrinkable and would be for a while, but it was cold.

She pursed her lips, but I caught the smile in her eyes, "You don't do things halfway, do you?"

"You were the one who said white wine chills better."

Val rolled her eyes, "I'll fetch another bottle, you can clean up this time."

She retreated into the kitchen, and I fished a couple of bobby pins out of my pocket. I still had the glass of water, and I realised belatedly that I'd not used all of it. I had to look closely to notice that I'd used any at all.

I frowned in thought. I hadn't been touching the water either. If magic could be worked over a substantial distance, perhaps the same was true for drawing mana out of something?

Every time I find an answer, even to questions I don't know I'm asking, I find myself with fresh mysteries. I guess this magic stuff might be kinda complicated.

I used a little more of the water and one of the pins to send the frozen wine flying. -Or rather, I intended to send the bottle flying. Which, admittedly, is more or less what happened.

The wine, very briefly, broke the speed of sound as the combined mass-energy of a few millilitres of water and most of a gram of steel was turned into kinetic energy. Thankfully magic isn't perfectly efficient, otherwise, the frozen wine might have made it to some percent of light speed and then who knows what might have happened. I mean, Einstein presumably, but life's real complicated when he's involved. As it was, the frozen block of wine likely still got up to double-digit Mach numbers before the aerodynamic forces tore it apart, turning into a puff of wine flavoured snow that began to settle slowly to the grass.

I was still chuckling darkly when Valentine burst through the door, her face flushed bright purple. She growled when she saw me, and slumped to the ground, a fresh bottle tucked under her arm.

"Dammit Wallace," she wheezed, "I thought you'd hurt yourself again. Instead, I find you standing around, laughing like a lunatic. And you still haven't cleaned up the glass."

"I think I'm starting to get a handle on just how much energy there is to play with," I explained, still grinning like an idiot.

Val regarded me with a wry expression, her chest still heaving with every breath, "Play with?" she repeated.

"Absolutely," I insisted, "Go ahead, you tell me something more fun than magic."

Val bit her lip "I can think of a few things," she panted.

I sighed and extended a hand, "Of course you can."

She shook her head and set the bottle on the concrete next to her, "I'm going to sit right here until my head stops spinning."

I was about to turn away, to finish cleaning up so I could have another go, but I hesitated. Val looked like a bit of a mess, and it was largely on my account. Her breath was ragged, and sweat beaded on her skin. Stray strands of hair stuck to her face and forehead, and her thick mane of hair was generally a tangled mess. Now that hadn't entirely been a result of her rushing to my aid, but I imagine it's hard to brush your hair with a mangled shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Val, I didn't mean to scare you."

She took a moment to get her breathing under control before she spoke again.

"It's okay," she assured me, "Besides, I think I like this side of you."

"What do you mean?" I frowned.

"You just seem so much more alive when magic's involved," she remarked, "Don't get me wrong, I like an indomitable wall of muscle as much as the next girl. But there's something magical about that indomitable wall of muscle smiling with the wonder of a child. Aw, now the indomitable wall of muscle is blushing."

"Yes, well," I grumbled, "That's all thanks to you."

And it was true. I'm not going to be all 'woe is me', my life, by anyone's standards, was pretty amazing before I got shanghaied by a dump truck. But I found it hard to remember the last time I'd been quite so happy as now.

I finished cleaning up the glass with Transform Earth. Transform with zinc from a quarter, and Earth from a bit of nearby dirt. I used the spell to fuse the shards of glass into a few small marbles, figuring they'd be a more convenient source of Earth mana than carrying around a bunch of loose dirt in my pockets.

I realised I only had the one glass of water, but figured it was fine. I needed to try the full version of the spell eventually and now was as good a time as any. In this case, the heat was transferred from the liquid to the air instead of the other way around, but it was close enough.

I went through much the same process as I had the last time, with two differences. First, as mentioned, was that the heat was going out into the open air. Second, was that I wasn't trying to completely remove all the thermal energy from the wine. I wanted something around ten degrees Celsius. Not zero Kelvin. Bit of a difference there.

I opened my eyes and let the magic flow.

I felt a gust of warm wind on my face, and this time, the bottle didn't explode, shatter, or generally act disagreeably. Water was already beading on its surface by the time I'd walked over to pick it up, and Val received it greedily.

"Gods yes, do you have any idea how long it's been since I had a cold drink?" she asked before putting the bottle to her lips.

"We were just in Parabuteo a week ago," I laughed.

Val reluctantly lowered the bottle, "Even Temerity doesn't have chilled drinks," she retorted, "Your people might have whole rooms dedicated to chilling food and drink, but the rest of us must get by on scavenged ice. I can scarcely remember the last time anyone made it back with some."

"Is there no winter on this world?" I frowned.

Val shook her head, "Sometimes the mists will carry with them weather from other worlds, heat waves, blizzards, thunderstorms, even a sandstorm once. But true seasons?" Val took another sip of wine, "No. I can scarcely imagine how we would have survived if there had been winter to contend with upon all this. It's only recently that we've been able to sustain ourselves without relying on scavenged food, and even then, it is a close thing," she flicked her wrist, "This is about as cold as it gets most of the time."

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

I suppose that simplifies things if we start farming the land around the hotel.

I knelt and put one finger on the bottle, gently drawing it away from her lips, "You're not allowed to get drunk till we're done learning magic for the day."

Val growled playfully and clawed at me with her free hand, "Back!" she giggled, "I'll be asleep, and you'll still be asking questions. Besides, I have wine now. Why wait?"

"Well," I smiled, "You recall the chocolate bar I tempted you off the couch with?"

She put a finger to her lips, "Perhaps I could be convinced. Though as I said, I already have wine," she pointed out.

"Oh, I have more chocolate bars," I replied, nodding gravely, "But I'm pretty sure I saw some ice cream in the freezer. I'd get us some, but I'm afraid it just wouldn't be wise to enter until we're sure we can cool it back down," I added, with exaggerated disappointment.

Val set the bottle down and narrowed her eyes, "What exactly is ice cream?"

"Cold, ice-cold," I began, my voice low, "Delicious and creamy, made in all manner of flavours."

"Chocolate?" she whispered.

"Not just chocolate," I murmured, "Caramel, peanut butter, mint, and yet more flavours that no fey has ever heard of, let alone tasted," I leaned back on my heels and spread my hands, "But you have your wine, I suppose I should leave you to it."

Valentine speared me with her gaze as she re-corked the bottle and licked her lips, "Provide me with this ice cream, and I would be very," she paused, "grateful."

Her eyes seemed to bore into me as my face grew hot, and my chest tight, and it felt as if I were paralysed as she held the look for a long moment. Then her serious expression broke into a smirk.

"You're just so precious. I think I'll never tire of making you blush."

She scooped up the bottle and pushed herself to her feet. I sighed in exasperation, half-smiling despite myself, and rose as well.

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"That's it? That's the ice cream?"

I'd lifted Val so she could see through the freezer door's small window, and she had her nose pressed against it. Each breath fogged the glass, which she'd quickly wipe away with the sleeve of her flight suit.

"Yes, and it's all yours, if only you'll help me keep the freezer cool," I promised, "Eventually we'll want something long term, an enchantment. But for the time being, it should be enough to cool it periodically and let the insulation do its job."

Val patted my arm, and I set her down.

"What need have you of me?" she asked, "You need only fetch a little brass, a bucket of water, and you should be able to do the same as with the wine. I'm not even certain why you should need the water, why not move the heat from the air inside to the air out here?"

"I told you about the water tower on the roof?" I asked.

She nodded, and I continued, "Well there's also a hot water tank on each floor. Now if the building had electricity and gas, those tanks would be working, providing hot water to each floor. But they're not. The plumbing hookups are still good though, I checked while you were snoozing. So if we can get hot water into one of those tanks, or I guess heat the water that's there-"

"Oh gods yes. A hot bath would be just what I need to take the ache out of my shoulder."

"Is it that bad?" I worried.

She grimaced, "It's getting better, but I still can't lift my arm above shoulder level. It's making it awfully difficult to tend to my hair," she ran a hand through it, or tried to. She found a nasty snarl about a third of the way through and stopped.

"Ice cream, a hot bath, and I'll help you with your hair," I promised, "And somewhere in there I'll find time to cook us dinner."

She smiled. Not a hungry or desirous smile, and not a sly or amused one either. It was a warm, cosy smile.

"I can fend for myself, you know," she protested half-heartedly, "I'd been doing this for half a decade or so before you came along. And I don't need quite so much pampering."

I knelt down to her eye level and found that I had almost to sit on the ground to do it.

"I don't want you to feel as if I don't think you can take care of yourself. The way I figure it, we're a team, and you're kinda beat to hell right now. I figure a little pampering is called for, and when I end up beat to hell, then maybe you return the favour."

Valentine cupped my cheek, leaned in, and kissed me gently but deeply on the lips. There was an intensity to it that was hard to describe. I'd always figured that the swooning, fainting, going weak in the knees, all that was just rom-com nonsense. Val held the kiss for a few seconds, and in those few seconds she explained, in detail, just how mistaken I'd been. Now I didn't actually faint or swoon, please, I have an image to maintain. But I felt an inevitable pull, and a shiver ran through me as she drew away.

"Deal. But we'll have to work on your kissing," she added, patting my cheek lightly, "You're a bit toothy, big guy."

"I suppose I might need more practice," I admitted.

"Oh, I can teach that as well, but you'll have to pay your tuition in ice cream," she giggled, "So as much as it pains me, let's put the flirting aside and why don't you tell me what you need."

"Two things come to mind, at least if we're gonna do this without enchantments," I raised my thumb, "How do I keep spells going for longer, and," I asked, extending my finger, "How do I do magic at range if I can't see the target?"

She hesitated, and I saw a smirk starting to form.

"Yeah yeah, having trouble lasting long enough? We can work on that too," I said, in my worst impression of her.

Her smirk broke into a grin, and she shrugged, "I don't know what you expect me to tell you. It is an area you'll need to work on," she said matter-of-factly, "Have you practised at all? Do you know about how long you can keep a spell going?"

"If my math is right, a bobby pin should last for about seventy seconds, based on what you told me about an ounce lasting an hour. I can make it to thirty before it fails. Even meditation doesn't seem to extend that by any appreciable amount."

"That's not too bad for a beginner. And meditation will help," she assured me, "But you need to be working with a lot more mana before the benefits start to show. The fact that you already know how to meditate does help. My suggestion is simply to go ahead and cast your spell. Brass for Communicate is a bit of a bother, but Water and Air are so plentiful that you need only a speck of the metal and you should be able to experiment as much as you like."

"It doesn't matter that I'd only be using a small amount of Communicate mana?"

Val shook her head, and her tangled hair rippled down her back, "No- Well, it depends," she hedged, "Say we were just using two mana types, Communicate and Water, and you had an ocean of Water, but only a little fleck of brass for Communicate. In terms of total mana, it would be the same as if it were switched, a drop of Water and tonnes of brass. The difference would be in how much mana you needed at once. Water, for some reason, is only a moderate source of its own mana. While brass, being metal, is a Greater source."

"So when I'm casting a spell, I get to total up all the mana and treat it the same, but I'm limited by whatever the least potent source is?" I summarised.

"Yes. As for casting spells on things you can't see," Valentine raised her hands, "I'm sorry, I wouldn't know where to begin."

"Doesn't sound like you're working too hard to earn that ice cream," I grimaced.

"I am trying!" she protested, "Perhaps you can keep the image of the tank in your mind," she offered.

I let out a long grumbling sigh, "Testing this is gonna suck. I don't wanna run up and down the stairs every time I need to check if the spell is working."

Val was smiling her cosy smile again, "Wally, I don't think you appreciate what you've accomplished today. You just discovered a whole new use for magic. You don't also need to develop, on the spot, the ability to cast magic through walls. If anyone in the entire world can do that, they're keeping it to themselves."

"But-"

"Yes," she sighed in exasperation, "You promised me a warm bath, I know. But you don't need to do it all with one spell. Let's cool the freezer down and have our ice cream, and then we can go back upstairs and figure out a way to heat the water separately."

She was right, of course. I was being my usual obsessive self, trying to get the most out of every moment. Makes me great at strategy games, but a little overbearing when it comes to the rest of life.

"You're right, you're right," I admitted, then something occurred to me, "Hey, maybe we can't heat the water off the freezer, but the oven is close enough-"

"Bend down so I can slap you upside the head."

I spread my hands, "Okay, fine. Air to air, nothing fancy."

I had a few more of those brass caps from the luggage cart, but decided to save those. They'd be better used for spells cast while out travelling, so instead I went and fetched the luggage cart.

Val took a seat on the red suede that upholstered the base, while I took my multitool to the screws holding the brass frame in place.

"Maybe we can fashion a harness for you, and you can pull me around," she giggled.

"This is a luggage cart," I pointed out, "Is the princess satisfied to be treated as luggage now?"

"Only when I'm at the Blushing Maiden," she said dismissively, "And I'm a noblewoman, not a princess. Nobility, not royalty."

"Yeah, but noblewoman doesn't have the same ring to it. Well, excuse me noblewoman. See? Doesn't really work, too many syllables."

"Ah yes, can't have too many syllables or the giant gets confused," she teased.

I lifted the frame off of the platform and moved it off to the side, "I should warn you," I said seriously, as I began to take it apart, "You're getting pampered now, but I'm also plotting my vengeance."

She put a hand to her mouth in feigned surprise, "Oh my, whatever will I do?"

"Of course, it's only fair to wait till you're healed. But once you are, I may strike at any moment."

I pulled one of the shorter tubes free, and flipped the multitool around so I could get at the pliers. It took only a moment working it back and forth for a piece to break off.

"And I thought I was the tease. I can hardly wait."

I pulled more bits of brass off the end of the tube until I had a small pile of warped brass chips in the palm of my hand. So armed, I went over to the freezer window, and peered inside, inspecting everything in sight so I'd have a clear image of what was going on.

"You might want to wheel yourself out of here, little lady. it's about to get pretty warm."

"How warm? Are you about to set the kitchen aflame while everything inside the freezer shatters?"

"There's a thermometer here," I indicated, "It's analogue, not digital, so it's still working. The fridge here is basically room-temperature, but the freezer is just barely in the acceptable range. It's about to drop about twenty degrees, which means- I think -that it's about to get twenty degrees hotter in here," I paused to think for a moment, "You know, I could-"

"Don't," she interrupted, "Make it more complicated than it needs to be. I'll prop open the door. It's cool enough outside that it shouldn't get too bad in here."

There was a wedge of wood by the back door, and Val pushed it into place with her foot. Just as many tired and underpaid cook staff had before, I imagined.

I made myself relax, my half-meditation aided by the cool breeze Val had let in, and fell once again into my cooling spell. Whether it was a consequence of practice with this specific type spell, or experience with magic, in general, was hard to tell, but I found it easier to find the right state of mind this time. It was only a few seconds before I began to feel warm air mixing with the cool breeze, and about a minute or so later, I saw the thermostat's needle begin to shift.

"How are we doing Wally?" Valentine murmured, a few minutes later.

"Still going," I replied quietly, as if the noise might break the spell.

For all I knew, it might. Or if not the volume, then the act of speaking, of splitting my focus. But I could still feel the spell, and the needle kept on moving.

The thermostat was broken up into three zones. There was green, which was labelled 'ideal'. On either side, was the yellow zone, labelled 'safe'. The needle had been about halfway through the yellow zone on it's way to red 'unsafe' zone when we'd first got here.

I found I had plenty of mana available, and it didn't seem that my focus was about to falter, so I let it cool down back into the green, and then through into the cold side of 'safe'. Best to give us some safety margin, especially if I was about to open the door and go rooting around inside.

It took another brass chip, but the fridge got the cooling treatment as well. I didn't know that it would do much at this point, but there was going to be some stuff in there that was still in decent shape, and hopefully, it would keep the smell down as well once I pulled the door open.

Even with the door propped open, it had gotten quite toasty, and I turned away from the focus of my magic to see Val laying on what was left of the luggage cart. She'd wriggled out of the flight suit, and now wore only her tank top and shorts.

"Can I have ice cream now?" she sighed.

"I'll make us dinner. There's gonna be something in here that's good," I told her, jerking my thumb back over my shoulder, "Then we can have ice cream."

"You like drawing things out, don't you?"

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Cooking with magic turned out to be more trouble than I'd realised. I'd intended simply to use the same temperature control spell to heat the heating elements atop the electric stove and cook as I would normally. And in the end, that's admittedly what I did. The trouble was in keeping my focus while also keeping an eye on how the burgers were coming along.

Yes. Burgers.

There had been beef patties, cheese, and burger buns in the freezer, and lettuce, and barbeque sauce in the fridge.

The cheese was shredded, and the buns were frozen, but both of those troubles were easily solved.

The greens had even been in pretty good shape, waiting on their shelf in the fridge. Nearly everything else in there was a write-off, except maybe the beer and soda, but the fruit and vegetables seemed okay. There were potatoes as well, though they'd started to bud. They weren't too far along and were okay to eat, but of everything in the fridge, they were the best candidate for farming. Tomatoes, peppers, citrus, all theoretically had seeds I could plant, but I didn't know the first thing about farming peppers. Was the soil here of the right sort? Did they need some specific fertiliser? Potatoes though, potatoes don't give a fuck. Dirt is dirt as far as a potato is concerned, and while a diet consisting only of potatoes would grow tiresome, that wasn't the situation at hand. The fridge and freezer were working now, for a specific definition of 'working'. I didn't need variety, I could import that. What I needed was a staple crop that could be relied upon in emergencies, and for that, potatoes were perfect.

Val was waiting in the booth, an open bottle and a single wineglass on the table. It was the same booth as last time, at the end of the row, back in the corner. I was already thinking of it as 'ours', though that only made so much sense. We had the whole building to ourselves, after all.

I set Val's plate on the table before her and slid into the booth across the table. Of course, there were two burgers on my plate, but I burn through a lot more calories than the little princess.

"Mmm, it certainly smells delicious," she admitted, "I'm just not certain how I'm meant to eat it."

I picked up my first burger, took a bite out of it, and shrugged.

Val eyed me, and then the burger. With some trepidation, she picked it up and took the daintiest little bite. It didn't take her long to decide that burgers were fit for a noblewoman, though she was cautious not to make a mess as she ate. Not that I'm any different, as obsessive as I am about cleanliness, among other things.

"I was a little worried that you wouldn't be able to fit that thing in your mouth," I mentioned once she'd finished.

Val dabbed at her mouth with a napkin and gave me an amused look, but didn't comment.

"Burgers, I'm talking about burgers," I said defensively, "You know what, I'm gonna go get the ice cream."

I took the dishes with me, and I could feel Val's mirthful gaze follow me as I retreated to the kitchen.

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"Ah, I see I get a spoon this time," Valentine observed, "I was starting to wonder just how high-class this establishment was if they expect the patrons to eat with their hands."

"I'm not anywhere as good as the kitchen staff this place would have had before we moved in, but this is the sort of place you could get a fifty dollar burger. Steak is great, but a good restaurant burger is worth killing over."

"Perhaps humans are just generally savage then," she teased.

I set the long rectangular plate with its little bowls in the centre of the table and took up my own spoon. There'd been a decent selection in the freezer, and without any idea as to what Val might like, I brought out a little of each.

"What is this one?" she asked, gesturing with her spoon, "The colour is slightly concerning."

"Mint chocolate," I explained, "That's why it's green."

"Hmmm," she mused, eyeing it distrustfully.

"Hey, that's fine. I'll eat it," I shrugged.

Val parried my spoon before it could strike home, and in a flash of movement, she had the spoon in her mouth, and a full third of the mint chocolate was suddenly absent.

"Oh my gob," she said in a sigh, almost a moan.

There was a moment of pained realisation, and then she cried, "Oh my gob," once again.

She swallowed roughly, coughed, and clutched at her head, "Why is it hurting me?"

I reached out and took a much smaller spoonful of the undefended mint chocolate, "Ice cream headache," I explained, "You've got to pace yourself when you're eating something this cold. Try not to let it touch the roof of your mouth," I advised.

Val still fought me for every spoonful of ice cream, but she paced herself as we perused the rest of the ice cream selection, and was mostly able to avoid another headache.

"I have a new hypothesis about Simon," Val began, once she finished licking her spoon clean, "I believe now that he must be an ice cream smith, as there is little I would not do for more."

"I'll have to remember to move all the ice cream to the top shelf," I yawned.

Val pursed her lips, "You'd go all red at so much the thought of extorting me with ice cream. You're doing it now!" she cheered.

"I guess I'm just not evil overlord material," I admitted.

Val laughed, "The very idea of you trying to assemble a harem, stammering and blushing your way through it. It would be the most extensive and well run, but all the women would be very bored."

I couldn't help but laugh, "You're just awful."

She leaned back and took a languid pose with her knees spread, "Ah yes," she began, her voice as deep as she could manage, "Bring me the fey noblewoman with the long purple hair, I wish for her to attend to me. Mmm, ah, there you are. I'm sure you're wondering why I desired your presence- No, keep your clothes on- No, don't kneel, keep your hands off my belt- Yes, that's better, take a seat over there. Now, tell me more of... enchantment."