kitchen_maid | Christmas Party! Millitimed Vaguely to "Sometime Around Christmas"

Christmas Party! Millitimed Vaguely to "Sometime Around Christmas"

Anne and Amy have been very very busy over the last week or so, transforming their usually simple white room into the perfect place for a Christmas party.

There are garlands of holly and balsam strung around the room, leading away from the wreath between the windows (and there's a grumpy looking crow, perched in the middle of the wreath, trying to figure out how to get the red ribbon from around his neck). A Christmas tree, candles ablaze, stands in one corner, with presents tucked under its branches.

Welcome, dear friend, to Anne and Amy's Christmas party.

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"She was," Logan confirms. "She was totally a Beverly Hills princess. Cept in Neptune. Not a bit like a real princess. Real princesses are better. Unless they're Lilly."

Logan knows exactly one real princess, and she's hardly typical. He's not making sense, even to himself.

"Hardly," Perry says, with a quirk to his smile.

"I have found them all to be vapid and conniving at worse, and boring at best. I think you and I must know very different princesses."

Logan's eyes widen. "No," he says. "We know the same princesses. Well, one, anyway. I don't know any other actual princesses. Just the Beverly Hills Neptune whatever kind. They're too tan. Sometimes they're kind of orange, and it's scary. Not like Amy. Amy's very pale. And she has freckles. California Princesses do not have freckles. They have them surgically removed."

Amy, at this moment, is very pale, and the freckles stand out in a way that would horrify a Neptune princess.

"Well," she says. "Hello."

Perry's eyes go from Logan, to Amy, and back again.

Simon Perryvall, taking advantage of his frozen state, runs away.

Softly, but intently, "I think one of you had better explain."

"Logan, would you excuse us, please?" says Amy, with a small and very forced smile.

Composed, if a little shaky.

Logan, who's been shocked speechless since Amy's arrival (a very rare event), nods and leaves, a horrified expression on his face.

Perry watches him go, and then leans agains the table, and watches Amy silently.

Amy has the good grace to look rather ashamed of herself.

Amy also has nothing to say.

"A princess?" he asks, gently.

"Yes," she says, quietly but clearly.

A deep breath.

"Princess Amethyst. Of Phantasmorania. I'm sorry."

"I see."

He is silent for a long moment, looking at her closely.

"And being a kitchen maid?"

"Everything I told you was true. I am the fourteenth assistant kitchen maid in the palace in Amber. I'm just also a princes, which is not my fault, but there's really nothing I can do about it. You're not too mad, are you?"

He gives her a thoughtful look.

"Mad? No, not in the least. Surprised, though. And a little embarrassed, to tell the truth."

"Embarassed? Why?"

He rubs the back of his neck.

"Here I've been going on about princesses, and how they're all the same, and you were one all the time."

"It's all right," she says. "After all, we are for the most part, and I'm supposed to be just the same, but you have fairies at your christening and these things will happen, and before you know it they're hiring dragons and then there's nothing for it but to run away because I was not about to marry some silly dragon-slaying prince."

It's the least helpful exposition ever, really.

"I think," he says, after a silent moment spent trying to work this out, "that you should begin at the beginning, and tell me the whole story."

She laughs. "All right," she says.

The window seat is empty, and she leads him over there.

"How much do you know about the Royal House of Phanff, and Phantasmorania?"

He shakes his head, and sits down after her.

"Almost nothing at all, although I've heard of the princesses, of course."

He has the grace to color, a little.

"Everyone has, I imagine."

"My mother and father were always fairly discreet, on the subject of me."

A breath.

"It's the tradition, in Phantasmorania, for fairies to be invited to the christening of a seventh princess. To bestow gifts. You're supposed to get, well, Charm. And Grace. And Cheerfulness, and Health, and Wisdom, and Wit. And Courage. All of which I got. You're also supposed to get Beauty, which I did not. And you're not supposed to get Ordinariness, but that's what Godmama Crustacea gave me, much to the horror of my parents, and the Court.

"It wasn't too bad, for them, when I was little, but after Pearl, the last of my sisters, got married, well, then the problems began. Because forty-three suitors came on friendly visits, and the only one to stay more than one night was the one who fell down the stairs. No one would have me.

"There has never ever been an old maid in the family. And so, the dragon."

He nods, listening carefully.

"The dragon."

"My parents, or rather some councilor, came up with the perfect scheme. Lock me in a tower, hire a dragon to lay waste to the countryside, and wait for some brave gallant ridiculous prince to slay the dragon and rescue me. You cannot rescue a maiden and then not marry her. Very bad form, really.

"Only . . . I found out. And I didn't much care for the idea, and I suspected that the countryside and the dragon would agree with me, and so I ran away to live in the Forest."

"A sensible course to take," he agrees.

"Yes. And after a couple of months my dress was in quite a state, and I needed to replace it, and that's rather hard to do in a forest and with no money, and I ran into Godmama Crustacea, and she sent me to Amber, and I got a job at the palace, and then I came here."

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