Mister Thistlewood,
I regret that I am unable to attend our meeting this morning. If you would consider rescheduling to four-o-clock today, I would be most appreciative.
Cordially yours,
Lady Sephimara Arazniros
Wow.
I didn’t like being stiffed, but she really did it in style. I blew out a long breath, rubbing her note between thumb and forefinger. Finely textured parchment. A hint of peppermint scent?
It would be an awkward time for me. If our session went the usual time, I’d miss dinner at the cafeteria. There was usually a plate of biscuits and fruit provided at the dormitory lounge for just such occasions. But I liked treating myself a little on weekends.
I snorted.
Plans, meals, it didn’t matter. Whatever I had to skip, it’d be worth it to see her. The note. It was… nobody had ever sent me anything like this. Was it simple common courtesy among the nobles? Or something else?
A voice broke the intermittent silence many hours later. “Mister Thistlewood, wouldyou mind assisting me with the door?”
“Uhh, sure.” I stepped to the crafting room door to find Sephimara with a wicker basket in one hand, a satchel in the other.
“Thank you.” She set both atop one of the workbenches, composed herself, and addressed me. “I appreciate your accommodation of both my schedule and ill manners.”
“Ill manners?” She had literally sent me an engraved note to reschedule.
“I was rushed as I sent the note and did not think to ask for a reply. I simplyassumedthat you would…”
I smiled, shaking my head in disbelief. Talk about class. Sephimara truly embodied the finest aspects of elven civility my brother had told me about. “Lady Arazniros. Your apology is most accepted.” Wait,wasthat an apology?
“I thank you, Mister Thistlewood.” The wisp of a smile graced those voluptuous lips as she nodded lightly.
Please call me Theo.
“However,thatwas not an apology.”
Ah.
She opened the basket and removed a red and white gingham cloth. “I have caused you to miss far too many meals.Thisis the apology.”
I glanced at a selection of breads, cheeses, a jar of olives, grapes, little pots of vegetable paste. “Wow. That looks… amazing.”
“But I believe we have some studying and woodworking to do first,” she said.
I nodded.
Since I’d already completed my homework for the weekend, I decided to work on a piece alongside hers to better demonstrate. You can never practice too much.
“So you believe this box joint you showed me will be sufficiently durable for the term project?” She clamped a piece of poplar in a miter box and began cutting along the pencil marks.
I’d called her princess on our first meeting, a name which I regret now. Her hands were not those of a princess. Not that I’d met anyactualprincesses.
The jacket of her uniform tossed over the back of a chair, she’d rolled the arms of her white, long-sleeve shirt past the elbow, exposing tanned forearms with notable muscle showing on every vigorous stroke of the saw. Long, elegant fingers gripped the saw handle. Nearly everything about her was long and elegant. Yet she was no pampered flower.
She glanced at me. “Is my technique incorrect?”
I shook my head. “Not at all. You’re just… not what I expected?”
“Expected?”She spoke with a slight lilt. “So our encounter wasnota coincidence after all.”
