Chapter 19: An Enchanting Evening
Windcrown was a lot more interesting than the other cities they’d visited. Where Esthar had everything neat scattered around, everything in Windcrown was… condensed. You could be anywhere in the whole city in just a few minutes.
After that first mishap with the tubes, she’d quickly learned that the black marked ones went DOWN, while the white ones went up. Going up was a lot more fun since the pressure had to build up a little before you popped upwards with a satisfying noise.
The black ones just kind of drifted downwards until you arrived at the next platform.
Another interesting thing about the city: cats were banned. Apparently, her feline brethren had been a little to liberal with their activities in the past. Stepped across one too many scroll written in fresh ink, or knocked over one too many alchemical ingredient into a bubbling cauldron. That, combined with their uncanny ability to get into places they shouldn’t. With so many magic users and experiments around, cats were apparently “dangerous to the wellbeing of the public” around here.
Ridiculous.
Regardless of the dog-brained people in charge of the place, it was a great place. Lots of birds to catch, people to mess with, and a fun transport system to play around with. And there were things called gliders that let people glide down on the air natural air currents of the mountain. They were apparently named after a bird.
Anyhow, with dusk rapidly approaching, she made her way up to the Sky District for dinner.
After finding a sky tube, waving to a very sweaty and tired Dantes and two more stops, she was at her destination.
Rather than individual small hubs found on the lower levels, here, there was a single large circular plaza of paved stone lined with tubes. All the tubes terminated here save two marked with a golden feather closest the gate. Two guards stood in front of those looking unfriendly, so they were presumably off limits to the public.
The only exit to the plaza aside from the tubes was the cliff face, and a large gatehouse made of that glass or crystal used in the tall buildings she saw beyond above. A few people were coming and going through the gate, either flashing a badge, or through a short line where a few people waited.
She waited a minute or two in line before she was questioned by a guard.
“Purpose in the upper city?”
“Dinner with a friend” she replied.
“Their name and yours please, miss” he responded politely. This guard seemed less disinterested than most others she’d seen below.
“I’m visiting Rowan Fawkes, and I am Mitty”.
“Ah, I know his wife, Selia. Real sweetheart. She goes to the lower districts to teach children when she’s not working in The Needle or her shop. Now Mitty, I’m going to need a last name.”
“Just Mitty, no last name.” I mean, technically she had one, she just never used it.
The guard closed his eyes for a moment before opening them and responding. “Sorry miss, I’m going to need that last name. Just for the record so we have something in case trouble arises. You can keep the nickname you gave me earlier though. That’s allowed.” Seeing her confusion he added “Most guards in the upper district can tell a lie from a truth.”
That was good to know. “Clark.” She wrinkled her nose at the name - it brought back memories she’d rather forget. “But if you tell anyone, I’ll kick you in the shins.”
The guard chuckled at that, but nodded. “Very well Mitty, you may enter. Since I see this is your first time I’m obliged to tell you to not make trouble, to not attempt to break crystalized wind in any form, that’s this stuff by the way” he said, tapping the crystal ground with his spear. “…and to not fly within 200 meters the spires. That’s about 600 feet if you’re from Esthar. Alright that’s everything I have for you miss, enjoy your dinner. I hear Selia makes a casserole to die for.”
She smiled and nodded, making her way through. Past here, everything was built of the crystallized wind from the streets to the lamp posts lining them, casting a prismatic light that reflected and refracted a thousand ways. Every step she took birthed and dimmed thousands of little glimmers from the smooth but faceted walls of the houses lining the streets.
Though it seemed like one might be able to look through the walls, doing so in practice was very difficult as a close inspection resulted in a kaleidoscope of different fragments of thousands of different perspectives, even with her keen eyesight.
Finding her way to the annoying enchanters house was not that difficult, just two minutes walk from the gate and down a street according to a guard she asked.
The streets here were wide, giving them the illusion of being empty, though the traffic was no thinner here than below, from what she saw.
She soon found herself in front of a (comparatively) short building, with a sign that read “Clever Fox Enchanting Solutions”. It was 4 stories tall, though entering it, she assumed Rowan and his wife must live on the upper floors, because the ground floor looked to be the shop area, with a couple display cases sprinkled around the room and a counter at the far end with a short lady with round cheeks smiling at her. It smelled magical in here.
“Hi, welcome to Clever Fox Enchanting Solutions, are you looking for anything? I’m afraid we’ll be closing soon, but if you’re looking for a boxed enchantment, we can provide.” She said welcomingly, as though she might offer milk and cookies momentarily.
“Just dinner, I think. Did Rowan say I was coming?”
“Oh yes, you must be Mitty right? Here let me close shop for the day.” She said, waving a hand at the door. The open sign she’d seen on the way in vibrated, and the letters shifted to ‘Closed’.
“Can I get you some cookies by the way? When Rowy said we were having guests today I just had to make a batch. I hope chocolate chip with chico nuts is okay. Oh I packed some for you to take as well. Here” she said, gently pushing a little cloth bag into her hand before bustling around behind the counter.
“Oh dear, Rowy said to give you some boots, but yours are already so nice! Here, we can do all that after supper. Why don’t you come upstairs and make yourself comfortable. I’ll have Rowy come down and let your friend in when he arrives.”
She fussed around for a bit longer before leading her to the stairs.
A quick gesture from the portly lady had the stairs humming with energy. Stepping on the first step did nothing, so she climbed as normal, but not for long, as she arrived at the top platform after just three steps. She was beginning to like this house.
Rowan’s wife appeared behind her out from nowhere before ushering her to a chair that looked immensely comfortable. “Here, here. Take a seat. Can I get you something warm? Tea perhaps? Jaffa? Rowy brings back all sorts of stuff from his journeys, so we have things from all over the world.”
Taking a seat she responded. “Something with milk please, miss Fawkes. Oh wow, this chair is soft.” The chair felt as though it engulfed her in a warm, soft hug.
“Oh, where are my manners. Just call me Selia, dear, though some of the kids call me Grangma Selia” she chuckled warmly at that. “How’s milk tea sound?”
She nodded as the woman scooted off into presumably the kitchen based off the smell. She inhaled deeply through her nose. All sorts of magic permeated the air here. [Softness] emanated from the chair she was currently reclined in, giving her the same magical signature as that of the Featherfish. Or at least partly.
Each of the enchantments she could smell: [Warmth] for the teacups on the cupboard, [Comprehension] from the reading glasses on the coffee table, [Freshness] from a flower vase. These and dozens, hundreds of other objects smelled of magic. But they smelled stiff. Inflexible. Forced.
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She took stock of the room from her chair. The beautiful cloud of a chair, softer than a kitten’s meow or a mother’s gaze. She wanted one for herself.
The contents of the room were normal enough for a living room, but it felt homey. It resembled the one she could remember from when she was a kitten, though it lacked a fireplace. She forced that unwelcome thought aside as Selia returned with a pot of tea.
“Here you go dear, let me just pour a cup for you. Spiced milk tea is fine, I hope? Careful, it’s hot.”
The tea was faintly spicy from what she assumed was cinnamon, and she detected a few others too. Nutmeg certainly. If the chair she was splayed out on soothed her muscles, the tea soothed her mind in much the same way, and with cup in hand, she just melted there on her cloud of bliss, sipping her warm spicy milk tea contentedly for a time.
Selia fussed over her a while longer before settling into a nice armchair herself. “Now that you’re all settled in, why don’t you tell me about yourself? Rowy barely said a thing about you, except that you have a very special skill you’d be showing us tonight, and that I’d find it interesting.”
She didn’t really want to talk about herself, so she focused on the latter part of that prompt. “Right, I was going to ask about it actually, but I smell a lot of magic in here, even more than aboard the ship. But they feel different here. Like they’re dead.”
Selia raised an eyebrow and stirred a sugar cube into her drink with a small thin spoon. “That’s certainly an unusual manifestation of [Mana Sense]. It’s almost always sight, and sometimes touch. I’ve never heard of a person smelling mana before, but I suppose it could happen. Is that the skill he mentioned, dear?”
“It’s part of it. If it’s alright with you, we can get into it later?”
“Of course, dear. For the difference between these enchantments on the Spitfire’s, well I think I know what you mean. It’s supposed to be secret, but…” Selia leaned in conspiratorially.
The lady really was growing on her. She could see the curiosity in Selia’s eye burned as brightly as her husband’s, but she controlled it much better, not pushing her after refusal. It also helped that she was the most comfortable she’d been in years currently and would have given anything to the lady if she so much as asked.
Selia continued, “The Spitfire is a special case for enchanting. It is, magically speaking, alive, which has several implications. Among those, is that enchantments can placed on it also remain alive. If for some reason the ship ‘died’ suddenly, all the enchantments on it would die too.”
“So they would disappear?”
“Not so much disappear, as just fix in place. Like all the ones you see-pardon, smell in here.” The kind woman smiled kindly, clearly happy to share her knowledge.
“What’s the difference then?”
Selia tapped her spoon on the rim of her glass before holding it up. “Most enchantments are dead, which means they cannot be removed or altered once placed. Well, not easily. There are ways to get around it with difficulty. Take this spoon here. Since it is not alive, when I place a [Flexible] enchantment on it, you can see it will take hold” she said, as the spoon went limp in her hand.
“Now that the enchantment has been placed, I cannot easily add another one. Now, if you’re skilled, you can remove a dead enchantment with some difficulty.” As she said this, she effortlessly waved her left hand over it, and the spoon froze in a ‘U’ shape, no longer flopping around like cooked spaghetti.
“But doing this stresses the material, so you really have to plan out your enchantments in advance and make sure you know exactly what you want before you place a dead enchantment. The difference between live and dead enchantments is the difference between writing on slate and writing in ink.”
To illustrate her point, she enchanted the spoon again, and it crumbled into a fine dust.
“So does that mean my cooking is alive?” Mitty asked.
“Exact- wait, pardon?” Selia responded, taken aback.
“The skill Rowan wanted me to show you is that I can make magic food. I’m just assuming it’s alive since my magic smells more like the Spitfire’s.”
“Tell you what dear, you look comfortable over there, so why don’t you show me after dinner? I prepared a hamburger casserole for you and your friend and speak of the devil, that must be him coming in now. Excuse me a moment dear, I think Rowy’s gotten distracted again, so I’ll go meet your friend downstairs.”
With that, Mitty found herself alone once more in the living room. She eyed all the little items on shelves. The tea cups on the low table in front of her. Some part of her wanted to knock them down just to hear them break. But she wouldn’t because that would be rude to Selia, and Selia was probably her new favourite person.
And besides, she was too comfortable here.
It just feels so. cozy... and… safe………
Was her last thought as she drifted off to sleep.
***
She woke some time later feeling rested like she hadn’t in a long time. Selia was bouncing about from kitchen to dining room, carrying plates, cups and some heavy ceramic dishes. She heard Dantes saying something about stairs in the other room which got a good laugh from Rowan.
So, Rowan was around after all.
After a few trips, Selia noticed she was awake.
“Hi dear, why don’t you make your way into the dining room. Everything is almost ready.”
Without as much difficulty as she would have thought, she pushed herself off that beautiful chair and made her way towards the voices.
“Hey Mitts! Saw you snoozing there pretty hard. You didn’t even wake when I tripped into the living room. Those stairs are weird.” Dantes said loudly.
Rowan nodded. “Indeed, that is one of my favourite works in this house. Welcome, amira. Thank you for joining us for supper. My wife is an excellent cook, though I was hoping to get a look at what you do later. Sorry for not welcoming you earlier. I was… occupied.”
Selia gave Rowan a dirty look as she joined them at the table with a final dish she set atop a circle of fabric. “You can’t invite guests over and not greet them Rowy. I love you despite being a knucklehead, but it doesn’t mean you can ignore basic courtesy.”
“Of course, love.” he laughed nervously. “I was just analyzing our guest’s special food in the workshop” he said, pulling out a flask she suspected was filled with that first fish chowder she’d made long ago. It would likely be rancid by now unless the man had preserved it. Which would make sense, she supposed.
“Well put it aside for now. I won’t have you talking business with our guests at my table. Here, everyone can serve themselves.”
The two were cute together, she thought. And she handles him well. I wonder if Dantes and I will end up like that… minus the marriage part of course.
She was fortunately spared the need for conversation as they all served themselves from the dishes laid out in the center of the table. She saw some sort of meat casserole, scalloped potatoes, and fried asparagus, as well as fresh baked bread in a basket. Frying green things in other things that actually taste good really was the best way to handle them. If you did it right, they wouldn’t even be green in the end.
The food was great. It wasn’t even magically great, though every piece of tableware in front of her was practically glowing with magic, it was just regular great. In a great kind of way. Her pupils constricted as she bit into the potatoes.
Crispy AND creamy, cheesy, just a little salty, she tasted bacon, and probably… dill, if her memory served her, as well as some other herb she did not recognize. At this point in her culinary practice she was fairly familiar with the different herbs, but she still got them mixed up from time to time.
She saw Dantes next to her basically heaving in food by the shovel full. That dog was a bottomless pit when it came to good food. At least he could appreciate it properly. She gave him a glare as he slurped up some cheese that dangled from his mouth.
He at least had the decency to look sheepish about it, nodding an apology to their hosts.
Selia just smiled the way only a chef can smile when seeing others enjoy their food. “I’m glad you dears are so enthusiastic about my cooking. You never eat with so much gusto, Rowy.”
“It’s good, love. It always is. I just don’t have the appetite of youth on my side” was the reply.
Mitty could tell it was a quip they exchanged often, and she found herself smiling alongside Rowan.
“So, dears, have you made any plans for the Aurora?”
“O, waff hat?” Dantes got out, mouth stuffed with casserole. Mitty kicked him under that table.
“Oh, it’s a grand sight. Once every year or two, beautiful lights dance in the sky for an evening. I really can’t do it justice with my words, you should see it for yourself. There wasn’t one last year, so everyone is all excited about it this time around. There’s the festival of course, and they’re hosting a banquet at the Angel Wing and pulling out all the stops. Not to mention most any scholar of magic worth their salt has some project or other ready for the celebration.”
“Why’s that? Are the lights magical?” she questioned.
“No, dear. The Aurora is completely natural, though we do predict its arrival with magic. And everyone has a project ready because magic is strengthened that night, especially ice and wind magic. It leads to all sorts of things that wouldn’t be possible normally. Why if I weren’t taking the kids out that night to the observation deck, I would probably… oh dear, look at me rambling in front of the guests. I do get excited about such things.”
Rowan added to that his wife’s excited exclamations “If you’re doing something magical, next week is the night to do it. That’s why Windcrown is so popular with mages and the like, it’s already the best place to be for wind magic, and once a year it gets even better. All mages hired by the palace get the day off and everything. It’s the best night for magic all year. Well aside from the eclipse next month, but that only happens once a century or so.”
Mitty’s mind whirred with ideas. What if the Aurora empowered her cooking? Maybe she would be able to keep the flight aspect of her fried Featherfish dish and fly away on wings of night. That would be a wish come true.
Before she could really settle on a plan Dantes chimed in, finally finished his third plate. “What was that about a banquet?”
Ugh, already thinking of food and he’s barely finished his supper.
“Oh dear, can I get you some more food from the kitchen? I don’t think anyone’s enjoyed my cooking so much before.”
That got her a ‘yes, please’ from Dantes, so Selia went back to get the second casserole she’d made, and Rowan answered the question.
“Just lots of rich folks getting together in the Halo. A masquerade with lots of drinking, eating and entertainment, I imagine. I might’ve gone if I didn’t have my own project on the go.”
A masquerade? Mitty felt her plans changing again for the better.
Supper slowly wrapped up, and Dantes excused himself reluctantly, citing a prior arrangement at a dojo or some such.
Selia began to clear off the table, and Mitty joined her in the kitchen. It was time to deliver on her promise, and she found herself looking forward to cooking for woman.
She was going to put her heart and soul into making her best dish yet.