The Vampire & Her Witch

It didn’t take long, once Ashlynn rang the bell, for the doors to the formal dining room to open once again, this time to admit a soft-bellied man from the Clan of the Great Claw, leading what felt like a small army of servants carrying trays into the dining room.

”Good evening, Lady Nyrielle, Lady Ashlynn,” Georg said, stopping a polite distance away from the couple at the head of the table and bowing deeply. ”I hope you and your guests enjoy what we’ve prepared tonight,” he said as his rounded ears twitched anxiously. ”I know some of your guests are new to the Vale of Mists, so I’ve tried to make a good, welcoming assortment.”

”Master Georg,” Nyrielle said with a smile. ”I know you’ve worked very hard, and I’m certain that everyone will be delighted to experience your cooking tonight. What have you brought us to start with?”

”The first dish is in honor of Sir Ignatious and his companions from the Church,” Georg said, offering a second bow, not as deep as the one he’d given to Nyrielle and Ashlynn, to the Inquisitor and Heila. ”I wanted to bring everyone together tonight with something bright and refreshing after the long carriage ride from Hanrahan.”

As Georg spoke, the servants moved about the table, setting out plates, filling goblets with a crisp apple cider, and placing an artfully arranged salad before each of the guests.

Diarmuid had eaten plenty of salads in his life. Usually, when he attended formal gatherings like this in the courts of lords, there would be a dish of wilted greens dressed with oil and vinegar, pulled from a communal bowl at the center of the table. The salads served in the abbeys of the Inquisition were much the same, filled with fresh herbs and leafy greens from the garden, though they could become overly austere and bland if the priests in charge of the kitchens favored certain teachings of the Great Prophet.

But when the servant placed the small plate before him, he found himself staring at something that looked more like a work of sacred art than any food he’d ever been served.

The winter greens of the salad had been arranged in a perfect spiral, each leaf positioned with the precision of a craftsman laying tiles. At the center of the spiral, and scattered out across the dish, bright red peppers, preserved from the summer harvest, had been cut to resemble the flames of a bonfire at the center of the ’vegetable garden.’

Paper-thin slices of roasted golden beets nestled between the winter greens added to the illusion of flames, their edges caramelized to a darker amber color. Here and there across the dish, candied walnuts gleamed like polished stones, and the entire salad had been dusted with tiny ribbons of shaved, aged cheese that gave the impression of snow falling lightly across a winter garden.

”The peppers are a little spicy,” Georg warned as the servants ensured that everything was in place for the first course. ”Lady Heila, I used a red beet for yours in place of the peppers, I hope you don’t mind,” he said with a slight smile while his ears twitched in anticipation of his diner’s first bites.

”Thank you, Georg,” Heila said, blushing slightly when she realized that he’d prepared a special version of one of his dishes, just for her. ”If cousin Jacques ever visits, you have to teach him how to make versions of dishes that aren’t spicy and still taste just as good.”

”Jacques wasn’t that bad of a cook,” Ashlynn said with a light laugh as she picked up her fork. ”And he worked so hard. He even fried mudfish for me in the middle of the Briar while I was lashed to the Ancient Willow to collect a seed for Heila,” Ashlynn explained to the people around her. ”He just struggled to make milder versions of dishes that were originally supposed to be spicy. He tried very hard, though.”

”I can’t imagine Jacques visiting us in winter,” Zedya said from further down the table. ”I’ve never seen anyone from the Ancient Clan who could tolerate a winter that was cold enough to snow. If he visited, he’d probably burn through his weight in firewood every day, just trying to get his room to be warm enough, and he’d still probably sleep half the day away.”

”He wanted to come,” Ashlynn said as she took her first bite of the salad. ”But he didn’t want to leave Amahle alone until the rest of her coven returned. If he ever does visit, though, I’m sure that he and Master Georg will have plenty to talk about. Jacques’ cooking is homey, but it isn’t subtle in its use of seasoning,” she said as she thought back to the meals she’d shared with the Sandbox Witch and the rest of the Mother of Thorns coven in the Briar.

”Jacques isn’t subtle about anything,” Heila said with a light snort of laughter. ”But he tries hard, even then,” she acknowledged. ”If he can’t visit us, then we’ll just have to go back to the Briar to visit him, or at least make him meet us in High Fen City,” she said firmly.

”I hope to visit the Briar some time in the next few years,” Ollie said between bites of salad. ”I’d like to see the Cypress trees that Lady Ashlynn collected my seed from, and I think I could learn a lot from Jacques,” he said lightly.

There had been a brief period of time where he deeply regretted remaining in the Vale of Mists while Heila accompanied Ashlynn to the Briar in order to train with the Mother of Thorns. He felt like he’d fallen behind in a race he hadn’t realized he was running, and while he’d learned a great deal from Ashlynn, Heila, and even Talauia since he received his seed of witchcraft, that wasn’t the same as spending an entire summer studying with the Mother of Thorns.

Heila’s witchcraft was leagues ahead of his own, and while Ollie was catching up, even Virve felt like she was far ahead of him at times. It was only recently, when he saw Virve struggling to find enough of the right kind of people to form Lady Ashlynn’s personal guard, that he started to realize how far ’ahead’ he was in other areas.

While it was true that Heila had received instruction from the Mother of Thorns, and both Heila and Virve had received seeds of witchcraft from Ancient trees, Ollie’s work to build a village hadn’t been wasted effort. He had a thriving community that grew stronger every day, with people like Constable Daithi, Old Nan, Milo, and all the others that he could rely on.

He just had to remind himself that the road ahead was long, and there were many different branches along the way. If the other people in the coven reached some destinations before he did, the same would also be true for him.

But even as the conversation flowed around him and everyone seemed to be relaxing into the warm, relaxed atmosphere that both Ashlynn and Georg were working to cultivate, Ollie realized that there was someone who had yet to take a single bite of their salad, despite holding a fork in hand for several moments...