Tea Scene

Ire sat down with a cup of tea, looking at his young guest with bemusement. The younger boy had been here the better part of twenty minutes, ten of which had been spent alone with Murk as Ire found Selah, told her to make the tea, waited around until she brought the tea back, and accompanied her in to serve it. She was gone now and the guest was fidgety.

Ire leaned back in his chair.

“Now, who did you say you were, and how did you get here?”

“We told you. We are your neighbor from the north.”

“I know our neighbors from the north. They don’t look like you. Or him.” He nodded at Murk and took a sip of the tea. It was a bit dusty – if he had known that he would be using both of them, he would have rinsed them both out, but as it was, ‘Tern’ had the clean cup and Ire made due with the one that had been on the mantle for ten years.

Tern toyed with his teacup, still without having drank. “We are a little farther north than that.”

“Living underwater would account for why I haven’t seen you before.”

The young boy scowled fearsomely and appeared to consider pouring out the tea on the floor in a gesture of anger. He definitely didn’t want to drink it and, when Ire reached out a hand to take the offending teacup, he handed it over and, after a second of hesitation, accepted Ire’s proffered cup. That, he drank. Fear of poison then, Ire mused. He should have switched them from the beginning.

Tern began to explain. “We live in what you would call the sky. It exists where this ‘Lanval’ kingdom exists, but north of here. And you can’t find it, so refrain from shooting cannons at the sky or any such thing.”

“Ah.” Ire’s impulse was to call him crazy and call the twins to escort him out, but crazy did not lend one the ability to materialize inside a king’s bedroom. Whatever that skill was, it would be useful to have. (So would ‘cannons’ but that was a question for another day.)

He cleared his throat, sipped at the tea. “Well, Landria isn’t one to make war, at the moment.”

“Excellent.” Tern looked down into the teacup, having drained its contents and just now fretting about it. “What is this queer powder at the base?”

“Sugar. It sweetens the drink.” Well, it was probably sugar. Some of it might be dust. All the same, Tern relaxed a little and Ire could finally ask why he was here.

“You didn’t come down here for tea though.”

“No. We came to tell you to move your castle.”

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Leads into 'Neighbors,' available here: http://missjoneswrites.wordpress.com/2013/03/02/neighbors-story/