Chapter 2
765 Words
One day before the festival of the blades was set to commence, Pen was doing what he always did at the castle. Working like hell to keep up with the demands of all the royal families and all their guests.
Pen needed a break so he exited the dish room without telling Shane and leaned against the wall, trying his best to straighten out his raw, waterlogged hands.
He"d never used gloves. He tried once but the water always found its way in. It just made the skin worse. He was tired already but there were many hours to go, the three days of the festival had begun and his normal six hours could easily turn into twelve if royalty decided to party a bit more than usual.
“Are you alright?” a female voice asked him.
Pen didn"t look up he didn"t recognize the voice, but likely it was just one of the servers hired for the extra traffic of the season.
“Yeah, I"ll be fine. Just taking a quick break,” Pen replied, he looked up and his eyes widened and he stood straight up immediately.
“Princess Tatiyana, I didn"t realize it was—“ she cut him off. She was a high elf, from the Kingdom of Vanir in the south, tall and as beautiful as Pen had always seen her on television. He expected a different personality, but never had any real opinions about her.
“It"s quite alright. I just couldn"t stand all the royal arrogance in one room and I too needed a break,” she replied to him with a smile. In all his years, he"d only been in the presence of King Lom and he"d never once spoken to him, this was new, he was stunned.
“Call me Sarah, the princess thing is for the knights and royal subjects, I"m a guest in your house,” Sarah said to him and looked him up and down. It was hard to miss that he was a walking wet disaster.
“I"d shake your hand or something but I"m quite the mess as you can see, um, hi,” Pen replied, nervously trying to keep his cool.
“You look like you know his place pretty well, is there a good place to get a better internet connection, the guest room sucks in this castle,” Sarah said to him and Pen was still stunned, but he shook himself out of it.
“Yeah, actually the break room is pretty good, just down the hall. I use it to play Snowcraft sometimes on really slow days,” Pen said and Sarah"s eyes lit up. “So, you play too, well that"s cool. Look me up some time,” she replied when someone came running down the hall.
“Princess, thank Loa I found you,” the man said and he was out of breath.
“The King requests your presence in the hall, the ritual blessing is about to begin,” he said urgently.
“It was nice meeting you,” Sarah said to Pen as she turned and followed the man out, down the hall.
“She plays Snowcraft, and I didn"t even get her account name. Man, you"re an i***t, Kenders,” he said and smiled.
“Oh well, it was for the best anyway,” he said as she turned down the hall and disappeared. With that, it was time to get back to work. He hoped they were about halfway done with their work for the night, at least he hoped. He opened the door to go back inside.
“Hey Shane, you"re never going to guess who I just met, not in a million years,” Pen said, excited to tell his dish partner about his brush with greatness. “Yeah, who did you just meet?” Shane asked him as he closed the dish machine.
“Princess Tatiyana, she was right outside,” Pen was overly excited. “Dude, that"s awesome, did you ever think about introducing me, too,” Shane took a good thing and twisted it as soon as he could.
“Well, no it was not a long visit I didn"t really have time,” Pen replied to him and Shane just shook his head.
“Alright, let"s get back to work so we can get out of here at a decent time, anyway,” Shane was feeling left out.
“Yep, we"re totally going to do that,” Pen agreed with him and knew now that it was a bad idea mentioning anything at all.
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