05. Lunch and a Priestess

Not sure about this chapter, if I am to be perfectly honest. But here it is. Enjoy (with any luck). Working on a bonus story which will let you know some more about Raina.

The hours slipped by easily as Raina fixed up any orders for tomorrow. A cake for a boy called Thomas whose 11^th birthday was sometime soon. A few dozen of the soft, sticky lamington cakes that were ordered for snacks at a business function as well as a few for a school bake sale that the store was donating to. She chatted lightly with the other woman who also spent most of her day in the back of the bakery. She made the meat pies and prepared the hot lunch for the buffet in the second half of the bakery.  Daisy, the other woman looked up at the clock hanging over the cork board of orders.

‘I think it’s about lunch time.’ she commented with an air of relief as she wiped her damp brow with the back of her arm. Raina’s eyes flickered up to the clock and she nodded.

‘Well, so it is.’ Raina straightened up from where she had been dipping some sponge cake squares in chocolate and coconut to make the lamingtons. ‘Let me finish this off, Daisy. Then we can have lunch or something.’ Raina smiled. She had managed to keep her mind off of last night and Mirror, but now with less to think about it was all slipping back to her and Daisy was certainly good enough of a distraction, at least for lunch.

‘Of course, I’ll go get the other new girl to handle the stuff out here for a while.’ Daisy said brightly and went to go tell the workers out the front that they would be going out to lunch and to keep an eye on the food out the back while they where gone. She came back chatting avidly with the other new worker who had bouncy red curls which had to have been both coloured and man made. The woman was called Robyn, or possibly Rowen. Raina didn’t have enough time to clarify or even shake hands before Daisy was shooing her out the door in her cheerful way, not wanting to waste her limited lunch time. Daisy laughed when she realized they were still wearing their little white hairnets and aprons.

‘Ah never mind that. We can take them back in after lunch.’ Daisy commented, pulling both hers and Raina’s off with haste before brushing herself off to rid herself of crumbs. Raina was trying not to laugh at the ridiculous woman. She must have been only 30, but she reminded Raina of many a woman from over a century ago. The common folk were good natured often enough, and unfussed by little mistakes. A smile crept though despite her efforts to not laugh.

Daisy wasn’t the sort that would have minded, however.

‘Did you have any place in mind?’ Raina asked, looking around at the shops. She didn’t have much of a taste for most of the shops around here – fish and chips, burgers, there was even the “Golden Arches” of course. Raina didn’t need to eat often, it was partly why she never seemed to notice when it was lunch time.

With a considering look at their surroundings Daisy looked at the slightly taller woman beside her. ‘Not really, there’s that fancy cafe down near the old cinema but it’s pricey, a little too much for it’s own good.’

‘How about that little one, the.. Acacia?’ Raina suggested. It was an old Cafe that sold healthier food than one might be inclined to think thanks to it’s 1950’s look. Daisy though the Acacia was a good enough place to eat and so she nodded and they headed south along Rockwell street.

–-

Across the town a young woman sat on a sizeable granite bolder looking out towards the east. Her hair was brown and she had a friendly sort of feeling about her, but worry creased her brow as she seemed to ponder the scattering leaves at the base of a near by tree.

There was movement behind her, a man approaching her and she did not need to turn to know who it was. ‘Cian, did you meet her highness? I see you are still in tact.’ she said with a slight smirk, turning her head around slightly so that he could see her in profile and she could see him. Cian suppressed a light chuckle.

‘Lady, of course I met her… she has a questionable temperament. Thought that may have been my fault. Actually, Sophia was quite certain that it was my fault and you know our Sophie…’

‘A lot more reliable than the weather man, Sophia is.’ she smiled kindly. ‘Do you think Raina will come, milord?’ she rose from the rock on which she was sitting and hopped off into the long grass. Cian was there to catch her even though she didn’t fall, his firm hands grasping her gently around her waist. ‘Too protective.’ she mumbled, pushing him away from her body. His smile quickly returned and he replied.

‘I look after all my ladies, Valerie’ His eyes looked straight into hers and the familiarity and the alienness of them once again startled her, like it so often did. He looked so very human most of the time but ever since she had known him she had noticed the… otherness of him. ‘It is the honourable thing to do.’

Valerie shook her head and turned away again as she felt her cheeks beginning to burn. ‘Do you think Raina is who the courts still whisper of? The one they banished and now once again seek?’

‘Perhaps… she has enough power to bring a nation to it’s knees, if the way the scrying pendulum acted and.. Well.. She had something unique – at least in this realm.’

Taking a step towards the rock again and pretending to be un interested Valerie cocked her head to the side and looked at his platinum blond hair. ‘We have a few unique things ourselves, Cian. Speak plainly.’ her voice was soft and underneath that was a sort of urgency – she wanted to know despite her attempts to seem calm and uninterested.

‘A magic mirror.’

‘….Like the Wicked Queen in Snow White?’

‘No. I’m quite sure that mirror wore more clothes than this one.’

She was staring at him a little by this stage it was as though he had told her he saw the Great Goddess endorsing McDonalds by dancing naked in a ad and singing a baudy ballet. Cian couldn’t help but snort a little, it was all too funny to see her shocked when she was so seldom surprised at anything.

‘How can a mirror be naked’ she said suddenly, the words blurring together. Images flashed through her mind of the possibilities, mirrors with human bodies, sentient mirrors… it was certainly not the most normal idea. Not even to a witch.

‘Should I be jealous?’ he asked with a flirtatious wink. She rolled her eyes but he noticed her cheeks flush slightly.

Standing up and walking toward him before causally circling around Cian she played with his blond hair, and a ran finger over his vaguely pointed ears and clucked her tongue. There was an edge of power to her as she touched him, it smelt like dewy earth and moonless nights. ‘You have nothing to fear from a mirror, amour. Or do you think so little of yourself? I’m quite sure I would not know how to.. use it, anyway’ She giggled slightly as she leant up and rested her head against his shoulder. ‘Tell me more, about the mirror.’

Cian was amused and slowly told her the details of the mirror, from the silver frame and the fairy gems with butterflies captured for eternity within. To the.. man, himself. What little he had seen of him at least.

Which was actually quite a lot, considering he had only seen him once, and for under a few minutes at that. Her curiosity it turned out, did not rest on the man inside the mirror but rather the mirrors adornments. They reminded her of past wonders she had seen.

‘I haven’t been inside the mountain since I was a child, you know. They have this rule, it’s stupid if you ask me. Mortals aren’t supposed to go within for fear if they leave it’ll have been, well, an awful long time, and mortals are much with the turning into dust if they’re too old. As it is I went in there for a week and came out five months later. I rather miss the place, it was…’ she paused, unsure how to finished the sentence and tugged at the piece of hair she was curling around her finger with such a force that Cian briefly feared that she might pull it out of her head.

Quickly he offered ‘indescribable. The courts of the fey are beautiful, mesmerising… and sometimes more terrifying than words can say, if they are in the right mood.’ he was right, so she nodded in agreement.

‘If Raina is coming I… we, we must go prepare the temple.’ she grinned and nipped at his ear lobe with an air playfulness. ‘We do not want to upset her or give her a bad first impression.’ It was then that Cian found himself being dragged off by Valerie. Sometimes he was glad she was so devout and assertive when she wanted to be. It made his life just that little bit more interesting.

—

The coffee was hot but not strong enough for Raina’s taste at the Acacia, Daisy however seemed quite content with hers across the small round table with strangely coloured napkins. They had ordered their lunch and were waiting for it to arrive while Raina watched Daisy with a sort of amused smile as the other woman carefully arranged the sugar servings in to a strange version of a house of cards… minus the cards, of course.

‘This is what people talk about when I’m not around.’ she said with a grin, being careful not to breathe on the precariously balanced building. ‘I normally do it with cards, but I’ve done it with stranger things than this. Once when I worked at Woolies in my teens I stacked things, I made the foil pans and such into these “houses” like people do with the cards. Got meself fired, of course. when the lady manager caught me at it several times. Bit of a compulsion, I think. Never mind.’ her smile hadn’t faltered, but instead grew as she recalled it. Raina thought Daisy must smile a lot, because though she wasn’t old she was beginning to get what humans called laugh lines.  Raina couldn’t get laugh lines, the fey didn’t ever change much physically once they reached the age of maturity which she had long since past. As Raina was feeling remorseful over this fact she realized that Daisy had been speaking to her.

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ she said, biting her lip slightly. ‘What was it you said?’

Daisy placed the last sugar serve on the top of the house just as the waitress approached. They all fell down when the waitress set down the chicken salad for Raina and Daisy’s BLT with a side of chips. Daisy watched the houses’ quick descent with an air of reassignment. It was inevitable that it would fall down, Daisy figured. ‘I said, it’s much more of a mild oddity than what the people around here think of you.’ Raina quirked an eyebrow at her co-worker and smiled.

‘Well, people will think what they wish to think. Trust me on this one.’ They had been talking about her in every town she went too, how Raina wasn’t sure and half the time it didn’t even make sense what they were saying… but then again, perhaps they just somehow saw through some part of her masquerade as a human.

The witches had.

‘What do they say?’ Raina asked finally as she picked up a piece of lettuce with her fingers and popped it into her mouth. The cutlery wasn’t necessarily good for her. Iron was bad for the fey, which did make eating in public a pain… sometimes literally.

‘Well I heard Brooke Forester, she works at the library, that there’s something strange about you. Mentioned something about the otherkin, how she had seen you eat in public but never with the steel cutlery. The girl reads too much! She has fairies coming out her ears, I’ll tell you that.’

‘Fairies in her ears?’ Raina snorted softly. Inwardly she had to fight to keep the frown from her face. People in Blackridge here a little too smart for their own health if what Daisy was saying was true.

‘The cutlery.. it makes me a little nauseous. Sort of an allergy, had it all my life.’ True enough. The thought of putting it in her mouth alone conjured up some unpleasant mental imagery. Including one fey whose mouth had been severely burnt by prolonged exposure to the iron in the steel instruments.

‘Ah, too bad then.’ If Daisy didn’t believe Raina then she was a pretty good liar, because the look on her face was genuinely sympathetic.

The meal continued though by now their lunch hour was quickly fading away. They paid their bill and spoke lightly of the town and it’s inhabitants, from the kind elderly folk to the bratty children and the strange stories that people told about the locations around the town (and which ones Daisy didn’t think were purely tourist traps).

Raina sighed softly when they reached the bakery again and wondered if she should be concerned about Cian. Perhaps she could try a little scrying of her own later.