[centre][b]Intermission; Maeven and Draza[/b][/centre]
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The morning was not as early of one as yesterday, the party she had spent so much time at the night prior had definitely worn her out. However, she managed to get up as the sun still did, and Draza did her best to continue her morning routine. With a yawn, she crawled out of bed, and prepared herself for the day before heading to the kitchens again.

Maeven rubs her eyes, the wearisome bags having only grown in the night. She had been up much of it preparing Fafnir for the inevitable mission. Yet, even beyond that, sleep had eluded her once more. A night fraught with nightmares and terrors out the corners of her sleep addled mind were only spurred on by the faint murmurs and lullaby of the dragon who only condemned her for past actions. She shudders and rubs her arms, feeling unusually cold in the drafty castle in the wee hours of the morning. Compared to Tuleria, the kingdom was a land of cold. Her faint pitter-pattering footfalls lull her into a near comatose state as she paces towards the kitchen, stomach snarling viciously at her for sustenance as the midnight oil had only burned on.

The kitchen was a bustle, as it always was in the morning as the servants went about their duties to make meals for the morning’s breakfast, bake breads and prepare the ingredients and clean. The many hands went about their work on pots and pans over flame and water, with Draza half asleep in a corner, mostly undisturbed by her new friends in the staff. They would offer her a kindness or two, but in this morning she seemed like the only kindness she needed was something soft to lay upon despite the infrequent insistences that she would be fine.

Maeven’s arrival was something that would escape Draza’s notice, but not necessarily the notice of the servants. Having had a similar case of someone who normally didn’t go there arriving around the time Draza did the day prior, a maid came over to Maeven, “Excuse me, my lady, are you here to see Draza? She’s off in the corner right now,” she said, pointing in Draza’s direction, “I… think the fae is overworking herself… and,” she caught herself before commenting on the look of Maeven herself, blushing from her presumptuousness and stepping aside, “I’m sorry. Forgive me, your affairs are none of my own.”

Maeven looks at her stupidly for a moment, unsure what she meant before reaching out and clumsily fumbling a loaf of bread and some fruit into her hands. She shrugs and stuffs a mouthful of the bread into her face and mumbles around it, “Ish okay. Jus’ hungreh.” She does, however, let her gaze drift to Draza curiously after the servant spoke up. She raises her brow curiously at seeing the little sprite woman looking so… drained. It was nothing she had ever spied on the normally animated sprite. 

She groans, rubbing her eyes tiredly with her sleeve, bread still clutched securely as she makes her way over, swallowing the chunk of bread. She grimaces at how dry it is, and awkwardly shuffling her bread into the crook of her arm snatches a retreating cup of juice as she settles down near the sprite. “Why so frumpy, lit’l lady?” she asks with a crook of her head, chancing a chomp into the Renaltan fruit.

There wasn’t much of a response, it appeared that between Maeven’s walking over and sitting down, Draza went from half asleep to just a bit more, and was actively dozing off in the powdered sugar, the airy sweet rocking back and forth with her breath beside her mouth.

Maeven raises her brows at the strange behaviour and instead, sets her food and drink down carefully before slapping the table jarringly. “Eh, Miss Fae. Wake up, it’s day time.”

Technically a lie, Maeven’s effort to stir Draza awake did work nonetheless. The sprite jolted up, sugar along her face where she was drooling a bit and it got sticky with the sweet, and powdered white in her hair as well, “Huh, what? Day? I’m awake. I’m making cookies.”

Maeven passes along her orange juice, “Drink up. The sweet ought to give you a little more gumption.” She snorts and then gestures on herself for where Draza was a mess, “And you might clean yourself up a little, lest someone think you forgot to tidy after leaving company.”

And that joke went right over Draza’s sleepy little head. She did pull out something to wipe her face off anyway, but could not begin to properly drink that orange juice without having to full body grapple it. Things can be made to scale down for little people, normal people cups of juice were still big things for her… and heavy. Regardless, her hair was pulled back and so she just dipped her face into it for a quick splash of cold and a drink. Or maybe she fell in, she was pretty darn tired.

Maeven grasps the cup to keep it from tipping over before maneuvering to edge Draza back a little, not wanting to see the little person drown in her morning pick-me-up. “Careful now, we wouldn’t me to have to explain to the Queens what happened to… Our mascot? That’s what you are, aren’t you?”

Unevenly blinking her eyes, Draza was a bit more awake now, just in time to be called the mascot. “Eh, mascot? I wish I was just that, would be safer…” she yawned, “No, that’s not true, I want to help. I’m just uhm…” her brain slowly moved into gear as she snapped her fingers, “Diplomatic… stuff. I’m good with the fine print, and working out like… diplomacy…” she yawned again, “Good at talking when I’m awake, I promise.”

“Thanks for the addendum. Cuz you weren’t fooling me otherwise,” she chuckles, taking another mouthful of bread and fruit. “I suppose its good someone is the wordsy type. I can spin a tale on the fly when need-be, but I don’t have the apt for getting really fancy and convoluted… Doubt most of the types I’ve seen are, either.” She sniffs and looks at the rest of her drink, deciding against it after seeing white sugar and a fae hair floating in it. “What’s got you up all night, eh?”

Draza mumbled something about ‘Lady Alicia’ in response to the ‘convoluted’ bit, before giving a full response to the question, “I was up later than I’m used to last night. There was a party, and it was originally small, and then I got involved… there was singing and dancing and boy could that man dance. Said he got practice from dancing with his daughter when she was about twice my size for dancing with lil people,” she rambled a bit, “But uh, birthday party. It was great.”

The Mechanist looks at Draza like she was some twisted creature from the Underdark itself. “Birthday parties. I thought only kids celebrated those things. Rich kids. Nobles, to be precise,” she furrows her brow, plucking at her bread before taking the last of it in a large bite. Mouth still fairly full, she keeps on talking, “Course, I guess you’re big enough to be considered a kid. And we are in a castle. So what the Hells. Let’s go with it.”

She blinked, “Wait, it wasn’t a party for me. There was this nice old lady, Granmere, it was her 68th birthday. Her family’s all dead, and people were pitching in to make the best of what would otherwise feel kinda down for her. She’s got a lot of good hearted people around her. And good cooks. People from all around the street came!”

Maeven simply blinks her eyes and shakes her head, “Should have bought the old crone a tombstone. She can’t have much longer in he-” She frowns, considering her words before shaking her head, “It sounds sweet and all, but a bit of a waste. Just my personal thoughts on it. Its sweet of them, I suppose. But isn’t there better things to be spending time and coin on? Like this impending demon war?”

“They already live in the frail shadow of a war with the gods, and every working hour ultimately goes to this new war coming up,” Draza said with uncharacteristic solemness, “If they don’t get some chance to enjoy life, they’ll stop feeling like it’s worth fighting for.” She takes a deep breath, her tone switching back to normal, “At least, that’s my personal thoughts on it.”

Maeven considers it before snorting, “Well, there’s less useless pleasures in life. A warm body in your bed, a gut-warming drink on your gullet, you know, things people actually do for fun. Not… Showering an elder woman with gifts and well-wishes when they’re only gonna keep her ticker ticking for so much longer,” she shrugs, standing up and stealing a new glass to drink from. She frowns and jostles it to the table at the heat coming through the wood. “Ach, hot. But it smells good…” Maeven shakes her head and gestures at the sprite, “So what’s happening with those cookies? Last one of yours I had was heaven.”

Draza would comment on the actual nature of the party versus what Maeven thought the party was, but decided against it when the woman changed subjects, “They’re heaven because good ingredients, and from lots, and lots of practice. I was a baker before I was really anything else, and that’s… a looooooooooooooooot of cookies. You get good after a while!”

She frowns, taking a sip of the morning brew. “Hmm. I imagine.” She swills the cup around. “This could use a cookie,” she all but pouts as she sets the cup down. “So what else did you do. Baker extraordinaire, diplomatic savant, and apparently team mascot now… Anything else?”

“I would hardly call myself extraordinaire or a savant… or mascot,” she adds before finally resuming her cookie making, nix napping within the ingredients, “But I also know some simple first aid from my time with the Templars. I could also if pressed maaaaaaaybe perform some of their rites, but not very well. It’s been a while.”

Maeven wrinkles her nose, “No need to do the rites of that order, fae lady. Not much of a fan of the sect.” She watches Draza mixing the ingredients with apparent intrigue. “I bet I could end up making that job a hundred times easier for you…” She muses what her old collection of soul gems could have done for this woman before shuddering at the thought. The cost for many of them had been too great.

Draza’s work was not necessarily a hard one, more a time consuming one. Small hands took more times across the board to get the same work done with smaller tools, let alone the normal sized ones, “I don’t feel the need for this to be easier. Some people garden to relax, others beat up straw men. Me?” she sets down the first batch of raw cookie dough she made that morning, “I make some mighty fine sweets.”

She furrows her brow before shrugging, “Guess that’s one way to put it…” She looks at the cookies with interest before smirking. “Anyways, mind making sure some of those delectable delights make it my way before they’re all gone? I figure I ought to make sure Faf is good for some test runs this afternoon. Make sure it’s all in line and on target.”

Draza smiled as she loaded them onto a little tray, “I can definitely make sure of that. You’ll get some reserved from this batch, and maybe a little extra from the ones I’m serving at the gala ball properly.”

“Fantastic. I’d share them with my friend, but he hasn’t the stomach for such,” she grins widely at her little joke. The poor dragon really didn’t, after all.

Draza didn’t quite know all about Faf’s workings, but she shrugged and smiled nonetheless and let Maeven be about her work, as she went about hers. Faf wasn’t going to calibrate himself, and these cookies weren’t going to cook themselves either.