The knife thudded on the cutting board when Theresa pushed it through a potato.
"Child, what are you doing back there? Hurry up!" shrieked an old lady from the other side of the room.
Theresa studied the cut she just made. This was growing more difficult by the minute. Her arms wobbled, her focus drifted, and her knees ached. But everyone was counting on her. There could be no stopping now. She dabbed her face with her elbow and turned the potato to cut it lengthwise.
"I can't hear you!" the old lady shrieked again.
Her mother Agatha had to be about 93 now, right? Surely God wouldn't hold it against her if one of the nails in her rocking chair happened to come loose.
"Don't make me come back there, girl!"
The knife edge thudded again on the cutting board. Theresa bowed her head and turned it slightly to put the woman in the corner of her eye. "You seem eager enough," she muttered back.
"What was that? Say it louder! I ain't an elf!"
Theresa dropped the potato chunks into the pot, laid the knife aside, and tossed her apron on the counter. "If you're so eager to come back here, then why don't you cook dinner while you're at it?"
The rocking chair stopped creaking. A moment later, the withered old hag stormed into the kitchen. She pinched Theresa's ear until the woman yelped for mercy. "Ow ow ow my ear, stop!" "Don't give me yer lip, Theresa May Foster. Go git your man; I'll finish this mess."
Theresa slipped outside nursing her ear. Agatha crossed her arms with a huff and surveyed the kitchen. "That rebellious rabbit, making me do all the work. Wish Miles was here to give her a good paddling." She leaned over the stove to look inside the pot. Potatoes and assorted herbs swirled inside, cut with her daughter's usual meticulous precision. The fish and the carrots remained to be prepped.
She picked up the knife and looked at it like she'd just drawn Excalibur. She looked at the carrots. Agatha steeled her nerves and made to cut them. The edge of the knife rested atop her prey.
The carrot snapped. One piece fell on the floor, and the other fell in the sink.
"Dag nabbit!" She picked up another carrot and tried again.
Both pieces spun and fell on the floor.
As did the next two.
With a loud grunt to the universe, she squatted as far as she could and picked up each one until her face turned red with exhaustion. Once all the pieces were safely in the pot and boiling the germs away, she muttered a "screw it" and dumped in all the remaining carrots whole.
The last batch of ingredients she had to prepare was none other than her old nemesis, the one ingredient that most grossed her out ever since she was a little girl: fish. She hesitated, holding up the knife as if to commit a murder.
The front door opened, and one by one the rest of the clan filed in. First came the young children, about two dozen or so, five of whom were Theresa's. The rest belonged to Agatha's four sons, who came in next with their wives. These were big, hulking men who needed their protein for grueling farm work. Skipping the fish maybe wasn't such a good idea.
Finally, Theresa and her husband Timothy came in, both looking a little tousled. "What were you guys doing out back?" asked Jasper, Agatha's second-oldest. Timothy shrugged. "Stuff." Theresa unfolded one arm and waved. "Hi, I'm Stuff." "Oh my god." Bobby threw up his arms. "Seriously, ma?" She sat down in a chair Timothy pulled out for her and retorted, "Until you interrupted us to ask where the hoe is, yes." Their daughter Reid snorted back a laugh. "Don't you say it, young lady."
Agatha looked on as a playful back-and-forth began over a topic entirely too mature for anyone under 30. With the whole clan waiting on her for their dinner, the matriarch began to sweat.
She looked at the fish once more.
Its beady black eye stared back at her, daring her to plunge the knife.
She imagined cutting it out and snipping the nerve. The old woman almost hurled her lunch. How was she supposed to clean and gut one fish, let alone thirty? Agatha set the knife on the counter and started scheming up ways to fob this off on someone else.
A gentle hand touched her on the back. She turned to see Theresa standing beside her.
Agatha remembered when her matriarch, the venerable Lydia Warren, would praise Agatha's cooking, and everyone would thank her for the wonderful meal. She remembered gathering and preparing hundreds of ingredients with such efficiency as rivalled the palace's fastest cooks. She remembered poring over books and experimenting with countless different recipes.
She used to be good at cooking.
Agatha wiped her eyes. Theresa cleaned and gutted a fish and handed her the meat. "I need help. Can you dice this for me please, ma?"
The old woman eyed her. As a rule, the matriarch didn't accept pity. It was weak. Only the cowardly evaded responsibility for their actions. But...there was nothing cowardly about helping someone who asked. It was her daughter's job anyway.
So Agatha seized the meat, gave one last glower of defiance, and sliced it. And as mother and daughter worked together to finish the clan's dinner, the tension between them faded away, and something else, something warmer, took its place. That night, after the two women put their families to sleep for the night, they looked at one another and decided.
The legend that dwarves are master craftsmen is mostly a bunch of bunk; that honor goes to the elves. It's Guntag (pronounced goon'-tog), an architect, whose masterful dungeons and elaborate temples single-handedly spawned that legend. The Ancient weapons left behind in the Apocalypse War were deemed too powerful to leave out in the open, so the Four Kings paid him to create secret dungeons for them in the four corners of the continent. They took the locations of these dungeons with them to their graves.
While there are a few people who possess clues to the locations of one or two, only one person alive in the whole world knows where all of the dungeons are.
These creatures are dwarves with a certain set of genes that eliminate facial hair. While some stories consider them a different race (and the dwarves would agree), they are definitely one and the same. Like most dwarves, they prefer living underground, but unlike most dwarves, they favor dirt and tree dwellings over rock and stone. They tend to live on the Riftgard frontier where security is lax, so they are often at great risk of getting raided and pillaged. Thus, they tend to fear outsiders and hide as much as possible from them.
On the other hand you may now introduce the doctor for everyone in the council chambers.
I think I'll do that. In the meantime, while we wait for the others to post, I'd like to write a few short stories set on Aion. Currently working on one already 'cuz I'm bored. xD
Lord Zee
BellBottomBlues
Lewascan2