The party lasted until late into the night. Some of the villagers pulled out musical instruments and led the tavern in increasingly bad renditions of songs Runa had never heard, and some she thought she might have, but sung in several different keys and occasionally backwards. Tam tugged on her sleeve and tried to tell her about something called First Loaf Night, but she couldn’t hear him over the noise and the hum of alcohol in her blood.

  The pig whisky was truly terrible. And they were all doing their best to get rid of it, as a community service.

  Runa had lost track of the time, the song, and whatever conversation Tam was trying to have with her when the door cracked open.

  Severine gasped. “Wyd!” she exclaimed, to the surprise and mild terror of the bashful woodsperson standing in the doorway. “Wyd’s back!” She tugged on Runa’s arm and added, with the wide-eyed sincerity of the sincerely drunk, “Tell them to make you a beeeeed.”

  And then she fell over.

  Runa knelt and scraped her off the floor. “It’s time to get you into bed, I think.”

  “Oooh,” Severine said, from somewhere in the vicinity of Runa’s armpit.

  “Not like that.”

  Severine moaned with disappointment. And she stayed disappointed, all the way back to the bakery, and kept moaning about it as Runa shoved her up through the trapdoor.

  “You’re going to make me sleep up here all alone?”

  “You’re drunk,” Runa said firmly.

  “That’s not my fault. The drink was so awful, I had to get rid of it. ‘s a public service.” She leaned over the trapdoor, got what if she’d been sober might have been a sly expression on her face, and began to not-so-subtly slide back through the trapdoor towards Runa. “Oh, noo….”

  “I’ll close the trapdoor after you so you don’t fall down.”

  “Spoilsport.” Severine huffed her hair off her face. “Didn’t mean to get so drunk. Just so relieved.”

  “That we found Widow Tremblewood’s pig?”

  “Didn’t get eaten by a pig. That. An’ other things.” She slumped down at the edge of the trapdoor, chin on her hands, gazing down at her. “There’s this girl. I’ve been annoying her for days now, and she finally admitted she might like me, too.”

  Runa’s heart flipped over. “She did, did she?”

  “Argh! You’re impossible.”

  Runa relented. “I’m slow. Deliberately slow. I don’t want this to end up the wrong way because I rushed it.”

  “What would the wrong way be?”

  “Any way that ends up with everything going wrong.” She reached up and put her hands on the edge of the trapdoor hole, either side of Severine’s face peeking over the edge. A ribbon of hair coiled out to tickle her knuckles. “I never had a home base before. The guild hall at Sollus Gate doesn’t count. Anyway, people don’t stick around there. If something didn’t work out, I could run off to the Cauldron for half a year and by the time I came out, I wouldn’t recognize half the faces on the street. Here… if things go wrong, I can’t just run off.”

  “Can’t you?”

  “No. And I don’t want to.”

  “Neither do I.” Severine blinked slowly, like her brain had to patiently remind her eyelids how to do it. “I like it here. It’s insane, a village on the edge of the Cauldron, and you’d have to be mad to live here and everyone is, but… I’d like to stay here, too. S’long as the swords keep off my back.” She smiled, and it lit up the world. “So… slow.”

  “Slow,” Runa agreed.

  “But you will ask Wyd to build you an actual bed?”

  “I will.” She grabbed the trapdoor to swing it shut.

  Severine moved with her, drawing close like the sparkle sprats swimming towards warmth. She stopped, her lips a breath away from Runa’s.

  “Slow,” Severine said, soft and muzzy, and her lips just brushed against Runa’s as she formed the o.

  She moved away, before the word kiss made it past the fireworks in Runa’s head.

  “Now get some sleep,” Severina commanded, her eyes dancing, and shut the trapdoor.

  ***

  The volcano sprite introduced itself to Severine the next morning.

  Severine climbed slowly down the attic ladder, searching at length with each foot for the next rung. She’d already dressed, or—more likely—had never un-dressed after Runa shut her away upstairs the night before. She looked as rumpled as though she’d slept upside down in a haystack.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Except for her hair. No hangover could get in the way of nymphish magic.

  Severine found the final rung, and then the floor. She hesitated.

  “You’re on solid ground,” Runa called over.

  Severine tried to glare over her shoulder at her, found herself with a faceful of glossy locks, and swept her hair back with a groan. “And you slept on the floor last night?”

  “Windowseat.”

  Her only response was a voiceless grumble.

  Runa stretched leisurely. “How are you feeling? Want me to roll you back up that ladder so you can sleep it off?”

  “There’s nothing to sleep off.” Severine straightened, which only drew attention to the way she’d been slowly drifting off on a diagonal. “As we established last night. ‘m a grown woman. And actually have a very high tolerance for… whatever that was. What was it?”

  “Everything Giblets the pig refused to eat, put in a barrel and left to go fizzy.”

  “Ugh…”

  “You need a bucket?”

  Runa was having far too much fun. Severine seemed aware of that, and shot her another glare.

  A glare that drifted sideways, and staggered to a halt a few feet beside Runa, at the mouth of the oven.

  “Uh,” she said. Her mouth hung open. “I’m. I might be. Still drunk?”

  “Blop.”

  “Is that really there? Am I seeing things?”

  “Blop!”

  What are you doing? Runa stared at the sprite in surprise.

  It blinked innocent eyes at her. Why wouldn’t it introduce itself to her room mate… companion… date?

  She took a deep breath. “Severine, meet our resident volcano sprite. Volcano sprite, meet Severine. You’ve probably noticed her hanging around already. Might as well get introduced.”

  Severine blinked owlishly. “A… volcano sprite? Where’d come from?”

  “It’s been here the whole time.”

  “Oh??”

  “Biding its time until it figured it could trust us.”

  Severine cast her a deathly look. “Trust me, you mean. You already seem to be acquainted.”

  “Took it a while to get to that point. I had to lure it out with the worst bread it’s ever seen in its life.”

  “But you’ve come out to say hello to me?” Severine stared hard at the little sprite, blinked, and had to put some effort into refocusing her eyes. “Is that trust, or is it waiting until you were sure I was too pathetic to pose a threat?”

  “Blop.”

  “Oh, thank you. I entirely agree. It’s a strategy that I’ve done very well out of, actually. I can also recommend being chased by an undead abomination and flailing uselessly about it until someone big and strong steps in to fix things.”

  “Blop!”

  “I am sorry about the mess. In my defense, I helped clean it up, and have spent long hours thinking deeply about flour at the sieve.” She smiled, slightly greenly. “Do you have a name, or do I just call you… volcano sprite?”

  She flicked a glance to Runa, who said, “Uh…”

  “Blop blop.”

  Severine frowned. “Nobody?”

  “Blopb lop blop.”

  “Nobody… In Particular?” She shook her head slowly. “I think… I think I left some of my brain in the drink last night. That doesn’t make sense, does it?”

  “You can understand it?” Runa asked, astonished.

  Severine rubbed her forehead. “Not words, exactly, but… I’ve spent how many years having a full armory in my head? I guess it left some holes for meaning to get in.” She yawned hugely. Her hair swept itself across her face, as though to preserve her tonsils’ modesty.

  Runa really had to ask about that. Soon.

  “Hot leaf water?” she said instead.

  ***

  The bread ran late that day. And was scones, not bread, because what with the pig and the whisky, she’d forgotten to get the dough on the night before.

  The morning was full of wincing, slightly staggering customers, and when she finally took her delivery around to the tavern, there was another surprise.

  Junilla.

  “Aha,” the tavernkeeper said dryly as Runa pushed the door open. She was standing behind the counter, wiping a mug with a clean cloth, and even Runa could see she’d been on the lookout for someone to glare at. “So you’re the one I have to blame for my empty cellar, is it?”

  “What?”

  “You’re the only one still walking straight. I assume that means you drank the liquor made from named substances, not Audella’s liver-melter.”

  “Maybe I just have a tougher stomach.”

  “Huh. Or a harder head. Ah, well. At least someone has something to celebrate.” She grimaced.

  No luck with the catbirds yet, Runa guessed. “One of your catbirds made it up here,” she said.

  “Oh? Someone told you about that, did they?” Junilla sniffed. “I don’t suppose it had anyone in tow?”

  “No.”

  Junilla hissed out a frustrated breath.

  “Think it got a bit lost,” Runa said. Something about the whole situation with the catbird was still itching her the wrong way, and maybe Junilla would be able to explain it. “It dive-bombed me. I checked the note on it, but it didn’t say anything.”

  “Hah!” said Junilla. “Which one was it? Oh, the little one. Well, they do go astray sometimes. And it swooped you…?” Her bad mood broke apart briefly, like storm clouds making way for a ray of inquisitive sunlight. “Hm. You’re not hiding a talent for spellwork behind those muscles of yours, are you?”

  Runa shook her head.

  “Too much to ask for, really. Well, that one always was the smallest and most distractable of the litter. Hopefully the others stayed better on track.”

  “On track for…?”

  Junilla snorted. “As though the gossip mill here isn’t as well-attended as the actual mill. Speaking of which, I hear we have another new face in town. But not staying here at the inn. Taking over the bakery and guesthouse businesses, are you?”

  “It’s not like that,” Runa protested.

  “Oh? What is it like then? Throw a bone to a poor old woman waiting for her seasonal boyfriend to notice the season bloody changed two months ago.”

  Seasonal boyfriend? “It isn’t anything,” Runa said out loud.

  Junilla waited.

  “Yet?” Runa added, feeling like she was venturing out onto dangerously uncertain ground. “How do you know when it is anything?”

  Junilla shrugged. “Ask our happily married Millers. I’m not the one to give advice on anything long-term. So, when will I meet this Severine?”

  Tonight, Runa assured her.

  She meant to tell Severine that the near-mythical Junilla was back in town when she returned from delivering the bread, but Severine was asleep. Runa left her tucked into the chair by the warm oven and kept herself busy with the constant little jobs there were to do around the bakery. She was still feeling the effects of the night before herself—obviously not as deeply as Severine—and a few hours’ quiet pottering, to the musical accompaniment of some light snoring, was just what she needed.

  Still, when evening began to draw in and Severine was still dozy, she began to worry.

  “You feeling all right?” she asked.

  “Just tired.” Severine yawned.

  Runa made some hot water, and by the time it was hot enough to start debating over what really was in Audella’s herbal teas, Severine was asleep again.

  She woke long enough to drink, and fell asleep again with the cup falling from her hand.

  Runa frowned. “Severine?”

  “’m fine. Sleepy.”

  “You want to head out for dinner?”

  “I do love to be fed,” Severine said with absent cheerfulness.

  “Junilla’s back—”

  “Oh-h.” Severine blinked. “I meant to ask…”

  Runa turned to grab her cloak, and by the time she turned back, Severine was asleep again.

  “That’s it,” she said. “I’m taking you to the apothecary.”

  “Oh?” Severine murmured as Runa shouldered her upright. “Why? Does he want a sword?”