Veraisy: Their Story

Vera- I Find a Snack in the Kitchens

Daisy was cute. And I don't mean like when Olive runs around in her onesie, toting her giant teddy bear behind her and shouting nonsense words. This girl was breathtakingly, heartoppingly, oh-my-god-I-think-my-throat-is-closing-up beautiful. I didn't know how I was even forming coherent thoughts with her next to me, much less flirting with her.

Her wheat blond hair fell over her shoulders as she stacked the fallen pots next to the shelf I had broken. Honestly, all I had wanted tonight was a snack. I hadn't expected to scale a shelf of pots and pans, break that shelf, almost get kicked out of the kitchens, and meet what might have been the prettiest girl I'd ever seen.

"Wait," Daisy said, lifting a pot and setting it on the bottom shelf. "You thought a teacher was coming and your first thought was to climb the shelf? Not... I don't know, hide behind a counter or something?"

I shrugged. "I didn't come here to hide behind counters."

"You came to climb shelves?"

"Um..." Daisy's eyes were big and brown. I wanted to study them, but I also found that I couldn't hold her gaze for very long. "Maybe I came to meet cute girls."

Her entire face went red, and her eyes darted back to the pots we were trying to clean up. It looked like she was nervously biting her lower lip as she let her hair fall into her face again. I blinked. Oh, no. Had I scared her? Maybe she didn't like the way I was talking? Okay, okay. I could fix this. Change the subject. Yeah, that'll work.

"Do you think we can fix the shelf?" I asked, studying the broken slab of wood I had been hiding on, maybe six feet up. "Like, find something to brace it?"

"Yeah," Daisy stammered, tucking her hair behind her ear. Her face was still red, but it was starting to recede, bringing her freckles back. That was cool, because I liked her freckles. She cleared her throat. "Yeah, maybe. But what would we use?"

I looked around. I didn't see anything to use right away, but against a corner, past all the elves scurrying to do whatever elves do, I saw a bunch of rusty cauldrons, pushed against the wall and abandoned while the shinier ones were used. Among a bunch of other random clutter (the clutter corner, if you will), there were a few thick sticks of wood leaning against the wall, their bases resting in the old cauldrons.

"Those," I said, dropping the pot I was holding onto the pile we'd made.

Daisy followed my gaze. "Oh, I don't know if those are—"

"Able to be lifted?" I finished. "Sure they are. You're super strong, I'm... not super strong. It's a dream team!"

"No, I mean," Daisy's hair fell over her face again, but I could see she was getting flushed. "I mean, they're probably there for a reason, right? So. They might be broken. Like, um... like the cauldrons."

"Oh," I said, trying to will my own face to not go red. Great. Now she probably thought I was stupid. I tried to find a way that I could tell her I wasn't without it being too obvious. "I broke a cauldron in Alchemy once. The chemicals, like, burned through the bottom or something. I think I added too much hydrochloric acid than the protective coating could take."

Daisy tilted her head, tucking her hair back behind her ear. "They let you use that?"

"Um... technically not." I rubbed the back of my neck, but then I realized it probably made it look like she was making me nervous, which was kind of true, but I didn't want her to think that, so I stopped. "I found a vial of it and I wanted to see how much the protective coating could take."

"Oh." Daisy stood up and examined our work. "Well... curiosity never hurt anyone, right? I mean, except the cat, but they have nine lives so they can afford to die every once in a while and there's really no harm done—"