Chapter 3 Pansy #4
“Hmm.” Ren fell silent for a moment, considering. Then: “All right. I’ll take that wager. But I’m staying here to supervise. I don’t want you wasting food out of ignorance.”
“I’m perfectly capable of figuring out flavor profiles myself,” Pansy said with a huff.
Ren remained dubious, dismissing her words with a pointed roll of their eyes.
Pansy might’ve found it insulting had their skepticism not ultimately been to her benefit.
Unwilling to simply let her loose on the bounty they’d laid out before her, Ren insisted on explaining each of the ingredients, describing not just their flavors, but also how they were normally used.
Oilflute. Sugarfern. Beechmoss. Lichenberry.
Pansy couldn’t believe how many there were.
What had once been nothing more than a tangle of strange weeds and foliage had unfurled into a fresh source of inspiration, seeding beneath her fingertips a desire to cook so great she could barely stand it.
And not just because she wanted to win this latest bet.
To think that goblin cuisine, something she’d never given much thought to until now, would awaken in her that same sense of wonder that had seized her the first time her mother had brought her into the kitchen as a young girl.
“This is going to taste amazing,” Pansy said as she poured the mushrooms, now dressed in a mixture of vinegar, oilflute and lichenberry – the closest thing Ren had to a lemon – into a hot skillet alongside the peeled chestnuts.
“Honestly, the smell is already making my mouth water, and the mushrooms haven’t even started to brown yet. ”
“Whatever you say,” Ren grumbled, their scowl now more pronounced than ever; no doubt because they agreed.
Pansy had seen the way their nostrils had flared when the skillet let loose a cloud of savory steam, a tantalizing prelude to the symphony that would soon follow.
Victory – or defeat, in Ren’s case – would never taste better.
While the mushrooms continued simmering away, Pansy quickly chopped up some garlic and threw it into another bowl with some oilflute, vinegar and a yellow, tomato-like vegetable Ren had called ambervine.
“This will be our dressing,” Pansy explained as she mashed everything together, acutely aware of the way Ren seemed to be scrutinizing her every move – now, more so than ever.
“This is a lot of ingredients for one meal,” Ren murmured, their eyebrows dragging low across their forehead.
“Is it? I think it’s a pretty simple recipe, actually.”
“I wouldn’t have used most of these…”
“Then I’m glad I could give you some much-needed instruction.” Pansy grinned.
Seeing that the liquid the mushrooms had released had finally cooked off, she tossed the finished dressing into the pan. A couple more stirs, enough to ensure that everything was properly coated, and she took the pan off the heat. “Now, to put everything together… Ready to eat your words, Ren?”
“Just shut up and serve the food already,” they snapped, arms snaking across their chest. “I can’t believe you had the nerve to complain about me being slow…”
“Ooh. Is someone a sore loser?” Pansy teased, delighting in the hateful look Ren shot her way. “You should be grateful. After all, you still get a delicious meal out of this.”
Granted, “delicious” turned out to be quite the understatement.
Glorious was more like it. As the first bite crunched between Pansy’s teeth, crisp lettuce marrying chewy mushrooms in a salty, sweet ceremony that was both familiar and new in equal parts, she found herself overcome with a sudden unshakable sense of certainty. This was what she’d been searching for.
“Wow,” she murmured, lips parting around a swell of awe, bright and airy, like gossamer. “This tastes amazing.”
Ren, meanwhile, said nothing. They didn’t have to. The tip of their fork, resting against their lower lip, seemed caught between two competing impulses: the first, to keep the flavor, still clinging to the utensil’s points, on their tongue; and the second, to prevent a second bite.
“So, it’s my win, then?” Pansy asked, her expression overwhelmed by a near-face-splitting grin.
A curt nod, executed with something like a grimace, sealed her victory.
Make that one bet down. One more to go.
With her belly full and the day’s exhaustion settling onto her bones like an especially rotund cat clambering onto its favorite armchair, Pansy decided it was time for bed.
The cottage, thankfully, was not without one.
It sat at the center of the master bedroom – the only real bedroom, given the cottage’s barely furnished state – an immense, towering structure of cast iron and ornate brass, polished to a near-blinding sheen.
Though the craftsmanship was halfling in origin, with each whorl of brass fashioned into a budding bloom, it, like much of the cottage, had suffered a level of…
call it encroachment. The four posts that would have once supported a canopy of fabric were draped in long trails of ivy, and instead of a down mattress there was a flat expanse of strange, spongy material.
Pressing a hand against it, Pansy conceded that it was not uncomfortable; though she did wonder whether her form would be forever etched into its surface once she’d laid upon it.
An unnecessary concern, it turned out. The material sprang back into place the moment she removed her hand, leaving no evidence that she’d ever touched it.
Either way, this mattress, peculiar though it was, was preferable to sleeping on the floor, which Pansy had been a touch worried about during her initial tour of the cottage. Clearly the “necessities”, as Ren had put it, included a bed – even if it didn’t come with any sheets.
Thankfully, Pansy had plenty of those. She selected a set in soft, buttery yellow – one of her favorites by far – and spread them across the mattress with practiced ease.
A horde of blankets, each woven from nearly a dozen different shades of yarn, soon followed, along with far more pillows than any one person could conceivably use, as demonstrated by the fact that most of them would migrate to the floor come morning.
By the time she was finished, the bed looked almost exactly like the one she’d left behind in her parents’ burrow.
The ivy, of course, being the one key difference.
Pleased with her efforts, Pansy headed into the adjoining bathroom to finish getting ready for bed.
She shivered as she crossed the threshold, the terracotta tiles cool against the soles of her feet, bare of socks for the first time since the start of the “dirt invasion”.
Thankfully, Ren had left the bathroom alone in that respect.
Her slippers, hard-soled and warm, would protect her from the rest.
While she waited for the bath, a slate-gray tub crammed beneath the room’s frosted window, Pansy organized her sizable collection of toiletries into the shallow cubbies that had been carved into the wall by the sink.
Considering this was to be a permanent arrangement, she figured she might as well get things set up as she liked them.
Certainly, before Ren had a chance to take over.
In a way, it was like a race. The goal? To infuse as much of herself into this cottage before Ren could do the same for themself.
It reminded her of Pioneers of Plainsborough, a game she’d once played as a child, where each player sought to capture the most tiles on the wooden board in a bid to expand their respective “farms”.
Much to her peers’ frustration (and her own delight), she’d taken to it like a duck to water, thoroughly sweeping the board every time she played.
This situation with the cottage, she resolved, would be no different.
She had already claimed the kitchen for herself, and now the master bed and bath too.
A big win for the Pansy Dominion by anyone’s standards, even with the added dirt.
And yet, somehow, Ren hadn’t gotten the memo.
Pansy’s eyes bulged as she padded back into the bedroom, the damp ends of her curls frizzing in the lingering steam. Because there was Ren, shoving aside her carefully manicured bedspread in favor of – you guessed it! – more moss.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, rushing over in a flurry of staccato slaps of slippers against hardwood; not even the shock of Ren’s invasion could make her forget about her all-too-necessary footwear. “This is my bed!”
Ren paused just long enough to give her a withering, sidelong look, their long, pointed ears flattening against their skull in naked displeasure.
“Just because you’ve thrown your stuff all over it doesn’t make it yours.
” A point they punctuated by tossing one of Pansy’s many pillows – a heavily embroidered sham with scalloped edges – at her face.
Pansy caught the pillow easily, setting it back onto the bed with a scowl. “We agreed not to destroy each other’s things.”
“How am I destroying anything? I’m just making some room.”
Room. It was then that Pansy noticed Ren’s clothing: a loose beige tunic that came down to their knees; far more like her own orange nightgown than the clothing she’d seen them wearing earlier. Her eyes widened anew, cold shock lancing through her nervous system.
“Oh, no. No, no, no,” she said, shaking her head again and again. “You’re not sleeping here.”
“Then where am I supposed to sleep exactly?” Ren asked, eyebrows arching. “This is the only bed in the entire house.”
“I—” Pansy snapped her mouth shut. It was the only bed, wasn’t it? But even so, did it really matter?
Definitely not, she decided after barely a second’s worth of consideration. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe on the floor? Looks pretty cozy with all that dirt. Just like home, right?”
Ren scowled at her. “I’m not sleeping on the floor.”
“If you put that moss… pad… thing”– she gestured towards the sheet of moss that had supplanted her pristine bedspread – “down, you can sleep on it instead.”
“It’s a blanket,” they retorted, their tone as flat as the line of their mouth.
“Whatever,” Pansy said with a shrug. “Call it what you want. All I know is that I’ll be sleeping on the bed. Alone.” And to prove it, she shoved the same blankets Ren had so rudely cast aside back into their rightful place. That sheet of moss be damned!
“Hey!” Ren shouted, barely managing to claw their mossy blanket into the safety of their arms before it fell to the floor.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” Pansy chided, once again the subject of the goblin’s venomous stare. “It’s just a bit of dirt. And you love dirt, don’t you? That’s why you covered the whole house in it, right?”
“You’re acting like a child,” they spat, yellow eyes blazing. “No. Worse than a child. At least a child knows how to share!”
“Maybe if there was someone worth sharing with, I would!”
“What if I just make you instead?”
Pansy’s eyes widened as Ren reached down and grabbed a fistful of dirt. Slowly, they extended their hand, fingers still closed tightly around their devastating payload, until it hovered just over the bed.
“No,” Pansy breathed, horror narrowing her throat. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Wouldn’t I?” Ren asked, the angle of their jaw brimming with triumph. “A little bit of dirt never bothered a goblin. But a halfling? Oh, I think that would bother them very, very much.”
“But the floor…” Pansy protested.
“Is the floor,” Ren explained slowly, as if speaking to an especially dim-witted child. “Would you like sleeping on the floor if there was a bed available? No? That’s what I thought.”
“Fine,” Pansy said after a beat, masking her bruised ego with a dismissive huff.
“But you need to stay on your half of the bed. And to make sure that happens…” She seized an armful of blankets and pillows, now jumbled in a haphazard mess, and dumped them into the middle of the bed.
A bit of maneuvering later, and she’d fashioned them into a makeshift wall.
Ren spared it half a glance before letting out a derisive snort. “You really are careless in everything you do. That mess would fall over if you looked at it wrong.”
“Then don’t look at it,” Pansy snapped, earning more mockery from Ren; this time in the form of an exaggerated roll of their eyes.
“Whatever makes you feel more secure,” they said, finally returning the handful of dirt to the floor – something Pansy had never thought would fill her with any measure of relief.
Dirt belonged outside; a fact she’d defend till her last breath.
But with the sanctity of her bed hanging in the balance, what else could she choose?
“I’m just trying to ensure a certain degree of fairness,” she insisted, hurriedly burrowing into the fluffy nest of bedding that comprised her side of the divide.
At least the bed’s big, she thought, pulling the covers up to her chin. Blanket wall or no. We probably won’t even come near each other.
And yet, something about the situation continued to speed her pulse, sending a strange flutter rooting deeper into her belly.
For as much as this was nothing more than yet another installment in an ongoing string of unfortunate circumstances, there remained an undeniable sort of intimacy in the act of sharing a bed with someone.
Sure, that someone was very much unwanted, but, given the state of Pansy’s heart, that apparently didn’t matter.
Each frenzied beat fed into the next, echoing so loudly in her own ears that it was a wonder Ren didn’t hear it too.
Sadly, no amount of deep breathing or calming mantras could assuage the static-like prickle that whispered across her skin.
Every inch of her was alive, buzzing, suffused with an inescapable awareness of her surroundings – right down to the way the mattress dipped slightly beneath Ren’s weight.
“Your sleeping arrangements are excessive,” they grumbled, shifting beside her, each movement another jolt. If Pansy hadn’t known better, she would have thought their behavior purposeful. A way to aggravate her further.
“Well, excuse me for preferring to stay warm,” Pansy sneered over the tremor that ping-ponged through her chest, jittery and electric. “Now, goodnight.”
And with that, she rolled onto her side, as if turning her back on Ren might put them out of her mind just as swiftly.
Their sharing a bed was out of necessity.
Nothing more. And Pansy would remind herself of this fact as many times as it took; until the words became as second nature as the apathy that should have accompanied them.