I signal to the girls to help me up, so we can give the family a bit of privacy. The healers following in our wake as we leave the room.

"I have so many questions." Martin says as soon as the door closes behind us. "But, they can wait until we get you fed."

"How?" Jana can't seem to wait to ask her questions. "How does that spell even work?"

"Don't even think about trying it for yourself Jana." Martin snaps. "Without his control, and very likely his Plantkin nature, you'd put yourself into a coma trying to heal anything worse than a paper cut."

"Gee, thanks, Martin." I say through my teeth as Amelia and Apricot glare at me. "That really helped the girls feel better about me doing this."

"..." He looks from me to them with an embarrassed expression. "That's only for non-Plantkin trying the spell. Sorrel here stops well before any permanent harm would come to him. That's actually my first question, how do you decide when to stop."

"I did a bit of testing when I first saw Myra, but it's mostly a gut feeling." I shrug distracted by the spread that's been laid out for me in the dining room. "I just sorta know that it will take a lot longer to recover if I push any further than that. Now, if you'll excuse me?" I dive into the food, chewing and swallowing as fast as I can.

"Gods, where is it all going?" Jana breathes out.

"Scan me again." I bite out the words between mouthfuls of food.

"Since you three won't be able to feel his mana." Apricot explains. "He's using a growth spell to speed up his digestion. The jackass said it's better than passing out while waiting for his body to absorb the food."

"I told you I'm fine." My case is somewhat hampered by the fact that I spoke those words while stripping a chicken to the bone. "I will be, at least."

"..." She lets out a tired sigh. "I just don't want to lose you."

Putting the food down, I pull her into my lap. "I am not going anywhere! I didn't push myself too far for a burned little girl, I'm not going to do it for anyone else. Not unless it's you or Amelia. No buts!" I cut her off before she can even open her mouth. "Now, if you don't like seeing me this way, then help me when Martin and Elise teach me their healing spells."

"Of course I'm going to help. You big dummy." She sniffles and stuffs a roll into my mouth. "Now, shut up and eat."

"He really is in no danger."

"Martin." Elise hisses when everyone in the room glares at the clueless healer. "Learn to read the mood. Better yet, why don't you go put some more salve on Myra's arm. Sorry about him." She shakes her head after he leaves. "Martin is a great healer, but he's never been able to cure himself of that foot-in-mouth disease."

"Hah!" Martin's apprentice snorts out a laugh. "Sorry, but that describes him perfectly."

"It's alright." Amelia says while helping Apricot shove food into my mouth.

I feel a bit ridiculous, but it seems to make them happy. I'm not sure how I fell so completely for not one but two women so fast. And, I don't really care either. So, I gladly endure what swiftly turned into a competition between them to see who could feed me the most.

"You girls are lucky I can shapeshift." I say once they finally let me breathe. "Otherwise you would have choked me a few times there."

""Sorry."" They sound sheepish, but don't look it.

"All done?" Granville enters the dining room. "Good. Everyone will be coming down for dinner soon. I'll be serving that chocolate cake that you gave me the recipe for dessert."

"Chocolate?" Jana questions, so I hand her a bar. "There's a cake that tastes like this. Oh, Elise." She hugs the healer. "Thank you for inviting us to dinner."

"Thank Sorrel." Elise counters. "He's the one turned those horrid beans that Holt is always drinking into this."

"Seriously?" She looks more impressed now that when she saw me heal for the first time. "Please tell me you're going to be selling this stuff."

Stolen novel; please report.

"I still need to experiment a bit with blending the different roasts, but yeah." I nod. "I should start selling some soon. That's if these two don't eat everything I make. I also showed Granville all the steps, but without my magic to speed things up, it could take a month to produce a single batch."

"I feel bad for Seymour." Elise laughs. "Gran was pestering him to try and replicate some of what you did earlier."

"That's not all." The gardener just entered the room. "He wants me to tear out my garden and replace it with a plantation of those cocoa trees. Wouldn't leave me alone until I agreed to grow one. And, I'm only doing that because I've never seen a tree that blossoms from the trunk before." He grumps all the way to his chair.

"I don't know what he's thinking." Ed laughs. "We've been grinding that one batch all day and it's still not ready. Once it's done we still need to press it, grind the powder again, and mix everything up for days. I'm willing to help him out, but he's just being stubborn because you showed him up at lunch."

"He's the one who issued the challenge." I raise my hands in defense. "Sure, I might have showed off a bit, but can you really blame me?"

"Oh, not at all." The baron says with good humor in his voice. "In fact, I need to thank you. I heard he went all out on dinner, and plans to keep doing so in the coming days. It's been a while since he had a decent rival."

"Oh?" My lips curl up in amusement. "I might just have to break out some of my fancier recipes then." A round of delighted laughter rings out then, half at my words, and half at Martin who's been co-opted into carrying the baby chicks for Myra. She and Willow having decided to bring their new toys to dinner.

Reinholt's daughter made a bee-line for the girls as soon as she saw the stuffed animals. "What's Rebecca's favorite animal?" I quickly ask Dulcette.

"She likes cats." Reinholt answers.

"Yes, but she's been obsessed with that book about lions lately." His wife adds. "She wants one so she can play with its hair, like one of her dollies."

"I can do a lion." I nod and whip one up, using linen fibers to give it a long silky mane. Hiding it beneath the table along with my speaker box. I wait for the baron's grand-daughter to run back over.

"Mommy, mommy." The little rushes back over.

"Rrrr?" An inquisitive roar comes from under the table before she can continue.

"Eeek!" The girl jumps, causing us all to break into laughter. "Ahh! It's a lion." She scoops it up and starts hugging the life out of it. "Oh, thank you mister Sorrel, thank you, thank you. Mommy, can I go show the girls?"

"Just for a moment, they're about to bring out the food." Her mother tries to pat the lion on the head, but Rebecca's already halfway across the room. "Oh, that girl." She shakes her head with a rueful smile. "Thank you for that, Sorrel."

"Yes, thank you." Holt nods to me. "But, how did you make it roar?"

"Modified ventriloquism spell." The speaker answers for me after I set it on the table.

"You're just full of surprises, aren't you." He smiles while turning the box over in his hands.

"Well, if that's not the perfect set up, I don't know what is." Apricot laughs. "Make it do the thing."

"Well surprise, surprise, surprise. Yeah surprise, surprise, surprise." Reinholt drops the speaker when Bruce Springsteen starts singing. My first thought was John Lennon's ‘Surprise Surprise’, and then Radiohead's ‘No Surprises’. But the former is a somewhat explicit love song, and the latter says 'bring down the government.' So, neither of them really fit dinner at the baron's.

"It's not enchanted, the music is in my head." I answer before he can even ask. "Though, it is based on a standard music player." It's just a small boxy speaker, but I don't want to go into phones, mp3 players, and all that.

By now the whole room is focused on me and the speaker, and I'm wishing I hadn't listened to the pixie. "Oh, you love showing off, and you know it." She laughs at the glare I'm shooting her.

"You're a musician too?" The baron doesn't even seem surprised.

"Guitar and a bit of piano." I shrug. "Though, I'm even rustier at the piano than I am the guitar. And, don't ask me to sing. Not unless you want me to have to heal your ears afterward."

"Piano?" His eldest daughter, Lori, perks up. "Could you play us some piano from your home?"

"Sure, piano with dinner is almost always a good choice." Switching to the [Chill Piano] playlist, Chopin's Nocturne In E Flat Major, Op.9 No.2 fills the table. And, aside from the music, the room is silent for the next four minutes.

"You can play like that?" She looks at me with an interested glint in her eye.

"Oh, no no no. I was never that good." I shake my head vehemently. "I enjoy listening to classical piano, but focused on playing more modern stuff which tended to be somewhat simpler."

"You can pester him about music later." Reinholt tells his sister. "Right now, I want to see what Granville has made for us."

"Very well." She concedes with a sheepish look at the waiting chef. "It won't be an issue if we listen to more music as we eat though. Will it?" She continues after the feast has been presented.

Clair de Lune begins playing in answer to her question. "I can playback the songs in my head all day long. Music is nearly ubiquitous back home, and I'm not ashamed to admit that one of the first things I did after finding myself here was to work on the speaker box."

"Even before getting himself some clothes." Apricot adds with a laugh.

"So, you truly found yourself dumped in the middle of the woods with nothing, and the first thing you tried to reclaim was music? Oh, if only I wasn't already married." She laughs, but has a far off look in her eyes.

"Don't worry dear." Her mother put her hand on Lori's arm. "You just got the messenger bird from Farley, he should be back from Ciranna soon." Ciranna being the country just north of Cendassa, Larendath's closest neighbor.

"I know, it's just lonely without him here." When she sighs, I change the playlist to be slightly more upbeat. Starting with Mozart's Turkish March, aka Rondo alla Turca. She smiles and sends a slight nod in my direction when the peppier music plays.

The rest of the meal is filled with polite small talk and plenty of compliments for Granville's cooking.

***