Once A Tale (MXM, BXB)

Cap-o'-Rushes

         

Once upon a time, there lived a wealthy gentleman and his family. He was well-off and happy, with a loving wife and three children who he was certain loved him more than anything. He had two daughters and a son who was the youngest of the three.

One day, this gentleman turned to his children and asked, "Will you three tell your Papa how much you love him?"

The eldest sister replied, "I love you more than anything in the world, Papa."

The middle sister replied, "I love you even more than I love life, Papa," with a pointed glance at her eldest sister.

And then came the son's turn. He thought to himself that asking your children how much they loved you was a mite egotistical but nevertheless replied with sincerity and heart, "I love you as much as meat needs salt, Dad."

While his two sisters put their faces in their hands, the gentleman was shocked and hurt by his only son's response. "You don't love me at all!" he exclaimed, leaping to his feet. "Leave my home at once!"

"No, Papa, Braxton didn't mean it like that," the elder sister tried to protest on her aghast brother's behalf, but it was already too late for the son. With little more than a pack of paltry supplies and what little money he had amassed in his life, the son was forced to leave his home and thus struck out into the foggy fen.

He spent days getting lost and, when the fog's chill seeped into his bones he wove himself a cloak made of rushes, donning it as he approached the light of a castle...

"There he is, Wicker Will," Braxton said, peering through the narrow lens of a spyglass. It was aimed at one of the enormous windows that looked into the castle ballroom. He spoke softly, to company somewhere in his cloak of reeds, a docile garter snake who he'd found when lost in the fen. "The man we need."

Wicker Will poked his head out from Braxton's collar, tongue tasting the cool evening air, before he decided that it was too cold out here for him and slithered right back down.

"Now all we've got to do," Braxton said, "is get in there to talk to him. If it's him, there's no doubt he'll understand."

He frowned, lowering his spyglass and tapping it against the windowsill.

"It's just the 'getting in there' part. I guess he's bound to talk to me if I'm dressed up fancy, right?" he asked the snake cheerfully, looking to where his pack sat up against the loft's wall. Within were his fine clothes from home—they'd been dirty when he first arrived, but now they'd been cleaned and carefully hidden away while he played the part of a poor wanderer. He did favours and chores in exchange for the barn loft he lounged in and it wasn't a terrible gig, but... he needed something else to carry out his plan.

That something was him. The most important man in this whole place.

The cook!

No-one could understand Braxton but another person as passionate about food as he was. For that, he needed a cook—nay, a chef! Surely a man as esteemed as the one who owned this castle wouldn't waste his time hiring just any old bumpkin to do the cooking, right? Right. That's why Braxton needed to get to him.

If he understood, if he could sympathise with Braxton's predicament, then...

"I can show that ass what's what," he muttered, stifling the pained twinge in his chest.

Looking to his pack once again, Braxton made up his mind and smiled.

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