. . Okay, then.

[taennyn]

I actually have clue one for the meme requests for Falcons' Feathers and Chevalier de Grammont, the remaining many-request stories.

I also appear to have an inkling of clue one for the Trickwood Unification. (dear fuck, it's way more than one novel I could actually start Wild Roses here fuuuuuuck)

Clue One means chunks of jigsaw puzzle, not

Comments

[taennyn]

sharp knives and shouting cooks - Some Kind of Love Song, Takashi ( between checking the traps and match)

--

"Where in the hell did my hot water get to?" one of the chefs was shouting, and I almost startled off the shelf I'd been sleeping on, and did knock one of the jars of blackberry jam off the shelf.

Trying to catch it would have knocked another four off the shelf to follow it, so I just watched as it fell, shattered and splashed seeds and sugar all over the floor and the inside of the pantry door.

I was still extracting myself from the other jars--old man Josephs had been shouting for a while before I'd woken up--when one of the scullery maids opened the door to investigate the noise.

From my vantage point, she looked like Anne or Mary by the pattern of raw marks on her hands from scrubbing pots. They'd been swapping kerchiefs around so much even I couldn't make things more confused for them.

The marks looked like they hurt. I'd stopped gluing things to the insides of the dishes weeks ago.

When she saw the smashed jam, she winced, and I revised my guess. That was Suzanne, and she proved it when she turned her head and hissed "Marie!" over her shoulder.

Marie was always easy to spot, even in the kerchief. She had curls, and I'd borrowed them more than once.

Wrapping a tighter layer of illusion over me, I dropped down to the floor myself, landing outside the splash zone.

"Do I tell him the jar fell?" Suzanne was asking, under cover of Josephs detonating again.

"Not yet," Marie told her, wincing as she looked at the purple-smeared floor, "but make sure it's you or me who fetches from here--"

I yawned, popping my jaw as I did, and peered out over their bent heads to see what was going on.

Josephs was waving a knife in the general direction of Anton the soup-chef, accusing him of poaching the water. Anton was roaring back that he hadn't so much as looked at Josephs' damned water, and if Josephs didn't get out of his damned way the soup course wouldn't be putting in an appearance until midnight, and Lord Banks would have both their heads on a plate for ruining the celebration dinner.

Anton turned his head, and for the life of me it looked like he was staring right at me as he growled "Have your head too, you don't get moving--"

I jumped, skittered a few feet away, out of his line of sight, and ducked into one of the pages' skins.

Marie, who'd been standing directly behind me, flinched, dropped into a hurried apologetic curtsey, and slammed the pantry door behind her. "Sorry m'lord!"

"Go get more water!" Josephs shouted, waving his knife at Suzanne, who scurried off.

The hot water hadn't been me.

Wait. Celebration dinner?

[taennyn]

Yeah, the maids have been having a hell of a time with a fox in residence; it was actually the fact that they didn't curse and flail and be entertaining that made him stop gluing things to the pots. They just rubbed their hands rawer, and it's no fun if it's JUST pain.

He has No Idea what's up with the water. (Arianhrod, actually, as it happens. Aimed for unattended water to make herself tea to grump over, and the spell wasn't precise enough. >.>)

[billradish]

Bwahahahah! Oh, dear. Those poor maids, those poor chefs, poor fox, poor Arianhrod, poor jam!

I'll point out that you have Mary set up as interchangeable, with Marie as identifiable shortly after. The names are similar enough that it caused me a problem.

[taennyn]

Fmerf. I think this will read a bit better when I'm not learning maid-names for the first time in a comment-piece. The kerchief-thing is actually an all-the-maids affair, because a certain fox took to swapping them around on the girls. And then they all went 'y'know what? communal kerchiefs! wash what you've worn. (or what you can find)' so it's really hard to tell several of them apart from above.

[taennyn]

He likes to make drama but not to cause hurt, methinks.

Exactly. He's in this for the entertainment value, not actual pain. He just currently finds more funny than he perhaps should. >.>

[klgaffney]

poor, poor household. it's easy to see why nobody'd want a fox in the house---his sense of humor is very smash-bang. =D
i love the suspicions of another mischief-maker in residence, and the five-second delay between words and full comprehension at the end.

[taennyn]

Well. This is a species that invented the Feathers Game. >.>

(he protests that he just woke up! He still remembered that there were interesting words, and what they were!)