Her Quest

Chapter fifteen

The remainder of the morning went by in silence and for that Penelope was extremely grateful.
After serving lunch, they returned back to the garden and proceeded plucking fruit off the trees, without speaking a word to each other.
She could not deal with Nyctimus and feelings and chemistry all the while being in Zeus’ castle under cover and searching for the golden obols.                  It was just too much.                                                                                                                   
Nyctimus had so many good qualities and most importantly, he made her feel at ease in his presence.
Him being a wolf didn’t bother her and she didn’t even think of him as a lower caste being.                                                                                                   

When someone is so humorous, caring, thoughtful, respectful and beautiful, you tend to overlook what others would see as negative aspects of their character.                                                                                                                               

Right now she needed to focus on the reason why she was here.
She needed to focus on her quest and right now, Nyctimus was nothing but a distraction.
Penelope looked down at baskets that were filled to the brim with red apples and huge succulent looking oranges.      “Nyctimus, I think we can head back inside now”.                                                                                             

Nyctimus wiped his forehead off with the back of his left hand and nodded in response to Penelope.                                  “Here’s the key” He said and took the key off from around his neck.                    “You remember what to do?”.                    “Yes”.                                                                “Ok, I’ll be close”.

Penelope carried two baskets into the kitchen just as they had decided to do. The head chef looked at Penelope suspiciously as she greeted him.              “Oh, you’re probably wondering where Nyctimus is. I actually let a lot of fruits fall off the tree and spoil, so he made me carry the fruits inside” Penelope hoped that the chef wouldn’t ask any questions.                                                        “He did the right thing” The chef answered and clicked his tongue in rebuke.
He held out his hands and Penelope handed the baskets over. She waited until he emptied them so she could go into the store room.
She took the baskets from his sweaty hands and smiled demurely.

She looked around for Nyctimus, but he wasn’t anywhere to be seen, so she walked over to the store room, took out the key that she had hung around her neck and unlocked the door.                      She closed the door behind her and went straight for the flour sacks.
She knew that she had to make it look all believable, so she didn’t tear the brown sack.
Instead she fell with all her weight onto the sack of flour, as if she had just fallen over.
White flour was splayed all over the floor, the cloud of white bellowing in the air around her form.                                                                                  

She pulled another sack of flour next to the now open one and did the same. Next she set her eyes on the shelves of canned fruits.
She moved all the canned apples and pineapple slices to the highest shelf directly across from the open sacks of flour.
She picked up one can and motioned up a flame of fire, somewhat neatly melting the lid of the can half open.                                                                                              
She then dented the can on the ground and let the contents spill out onto the floor so it would look like she was standing on one shelf and had grabbed onto the nearest item in her reach; the canned fruit.                                                  Penelope moved back to the mess of flour on the floor and carefully tipped a box of utensils where her feet could have knocked the box over when supposedly collapsing on the flour bags.                                                                Penelope searched for something else to break apart or open which wouldn’t look too out of place but she found nothing else of use.
So she decided to mess her hair up with the flour.
If she had fallen onto flour, she had to look dirty.
She generously coated her hands in flour and ran them through her fake hair, letting some fall onto her clothes and waited until Nyctimus came.