11 Work Your Magic

Veronica's eyes sparkled as she tied her hair up with the ribbon. "Thank you! It's beautiful. How do I look?"

"You…" Rukelion began. Honestly, she looked like an angel even more than usual since her entire countenance glowed with joy. "You look nice."

Nice? Nice wasn't even close to being an accurate descriptor! Why couldn't he ever say what was actually on his mind? She didn't even seem to know how beautiful she was considering her confusion about all the male attention she got whenever they went to town.

The marriage proposals hadn't stopped even with him accompanying her every time. He supposed it was because he was still so short and unthreatening. If he was older, they wouldn't have this problem.

His growth spurt could come any day now. The sooner the better. Georgios and Llyris had both been tall and reached their full heights before they were fifteen. He hoped he was the same way. That would certainly make his job of fending off Veronica's unwanted suitors easier.

An unpleasant thought occurred to him. When he left, she would most likely be married by the time he potentially came back to look for her. Fourteen was technically a marriageable age but nearly every woman was married by twenty.

The idea of Veronica smiling at another man the way she smiled at him was physically painful. But why did it matter? Not knowing that bothered him.

"Thanks," she said simply before checking if the cake had cooled.

It seemed that it had so she got to work whipping some cream to put on it with strawberry preserves. The jar was already sitting on the counter ready to be used. She must have gotten it at some point when he was gone.

Rukelion tried to push those unwelcome thoughts out of his head and walked over to her. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Yeah, could you get us each a slice of cake and spread some preserves on them evenly while I work on this?" she requested as she continued whisking with all her might

Her look of fierce concentration was oddly adorable and he couldn't help but smile. "You got it."

"Thanks!"

When Veronica finished whipping the cream, the two of them sat across from each other at the table and were about to dig in when Rukelion remembered something. "Wait! The song you were singing earlier. How does it go?"

She blinked at him in surprise for a moment before explaining. "Oh. It's usually sung before people eat the cake but I didn't expect you to do it for me."

"I want to though. You deserve to have your birthday celebrated properly."

She rewarded his thoughtfulness with a glorious smile. "Alright. It goes 'happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear whatever the person's name is, happy birthday to you."

That was a simple enough tune. He could totally do that. He wasn't a half bad singer, unlike his sister Kessia who had sounded like a dying cat no matter how hard her music tutor tried to work with her.

Rukelion felt a pang of sadness at the reminder that he quickly shook away. No focusing on the dead right now while he was celebrating the living.

"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you! Happy birthday dear Veronica, happy birthday to you!" he sang while she had a wistful sort of smile on her face. She must be having some sort of sad memories right now too, perhaps about birthdays past that were much grander.

When he was in charge, he would throw her a glorious birthday party…provided they were still in contact and she didn't hate him. As she happily consumed her cake, he couldn't help but think about how much he did NOT want that to happen.

===

Daisy had survived her first harvest season by the skin of her teeth. It would have been a million times more difficult without having Leo around. He was an absolute lifesaver!

She really appreciated the kid but she could honestly say she still didn't understand him at all. He was relatively expressionless but sometimes she could see great sadness or rage lurking in his one visible eye.

She wondered if wherever he went every day had something to do with what he left behind but it wasn't her place to ask. Whatever it was seemed to have increased lately though since he was gone longer and always came back exhausted.

Was he out doing something for money? He had given her an unexpected birthday gift.

The fact that he got her something at all was surprising enough since she hadn't thought he had a coin to his name but even more surprising was that he remembered she liked that ribbon. She hadn't said anything to him about it, merely admired it as they passed the stall it was displayed in.

Daisy had no idea what his true personality was since he so rarely spoke when not directly addressed even after spending so much time with him. She had been slowly but surely taking note of traits he occasionally displayed.

Reserved. Diligent. Clever. Fast. She could now add 'thoughtful' to the list.

She didn't know what he liked beyond apple-based desserts since he had no commentary about food aside from thanking her for preparing it most of the time. He seemed interested when she went off on long-winded tangents so she supposed he liked to learn…or simply still needed distracting from whatever was going on in his head.

She wondered where he came from since it definitely wasn't a farm. He might have been a city boy or worked in some sort of factory using child labor given the time period she thought she was in.

Daisy was also becoming progressively more curious where and when she actually was. She had always been more of a numbers girl so any history classes she took largely went in one ear and out the other. She knew of major historical events in American history but none had happened that she was aware of so that didn't help her narrow things down.

She also clearly wasn't in Ohio anymore since the winters here were much milder than she was used to, though she couldn't deny it was rough not having a heater. The fire was always stoked though. Leo had insisted on taking over that duty himself and always got a roaring fire going quickly.

She had never been a Girl Scout or learned to start a fire without a lighter so she was grateful he was here. It was likely she would have frozen to death without him.

One day in the middle of February, he didn't return when she expected him to and the fire died. Try as she might, she couldn't get the stupid thing to rekindle and ended up huddling in a miserable heap of quilts in a chair by the dead fire.

Daisy reached a point where she could no longer feel her fingers or toes despite rubbing them as much as she could. Where was he? And why couldn't she get the stupid fire lit? She would kill for a space heater or electric blanket about now but was a few hundred years too early.

The door banged open and a cold wind blew in with it. Leo stared at her in shock.

"Veronica! What are you doing? Why did the fire go out?"

"I c-couldn't g-get the st-stupid thing to l-light ag-gain," she said through chattering teeth. "W-work your m-magic, please."

Now he seemed even more shocked, to the point that he actually jumped backward. "How do you know about that?! Are you a spy? Has everything been fake to win my trust and then betray me?"

Daisy was tired, cold, and incredibly confused. She couldn't make sense of what he was saying. "C-calm down. I w-was using a f-f-f-igure of speech. What are y-you talking ab-b-bout?"

Leo's frantic face immediately went slack. "Oh. Close your eyes then."

She was too cold to argue with him and did what he said. She didn't say anything because she could barely think straight and didn't want to keep stuttering. He lit the fire seemingly in an instant before turning to her and ordering her to hold her hands out in the sort of bossy way he always did when he was worried about her.

He began rubbing the warmth back into her hands with furrowed brows. Maybe it was because she was freezing but his hands were incredibly warm. He did the same thing to her feet after taking her socks off and put them back on for her after warming them up by the fire.

"You need to take better care of yourself," Leo scolded. "What would you have done if I hadn't shown up when I did?"

"Slowly frozen to death. Clearly I'm fine though. Thanks."

"I'm going to teach you how to light a fire properly in the morning so this doesn't happen again."

"…thanks." Daisy repeated. She didn't know what else to say after being chastised by a child.

She had promised herself not to pry into his affairs so she didn't bring up the fact that this wouldn't have happened if he had been home on time. But speaking of not prying into his affairs…what was with the reaction to telling him to work his magic on the fire earlier?

He had accused her of being a spy and betraying him but that was ridiculous. Even more ridiculous was that the way he was talking made it sound like he actually had fire magic and was afraid of that information getting out. He had been pretty frantic.

But magic didn't exist! Why would he act like that?