The Winds of the Past [Rune Factory 4]

Chapter 58

Porcoline was preparing most of the food, and Dylas would be assisting—that is, he’d mostly be standing guard to be sure his boss didn’t eat every dish as soon as he cooked it. In addition to Porcoline’s dishes, Avani was making the desserts for the party, as she had acquired quite a reputation for her baking skills. Furthermore, while Lumie offered to provide the flowers, it would be Margaret and Avani who would actually decorate with them, making garlands and floral arrangements to brighten up the restaurant. However, since Margaret was also in charge of the music, most of her time lately had been spent rehearsing with Deasún, who apparently had some skill with a small, end-blown flute known as a feadóg as well as with the mandolin, and had offered to share entertainment duties with her. That left her with little time for decorating, so most of that task fell to Avani as well. Fortunately, Nancy and Dolce offered to decorate the cakes for her, otherwise, she likely would have been too worn out to enjoy the event.

The next two days she was in a flurry of activity, baking up a storm, and in between, busily arranging flowers in large vases borrowed from the castle’s storerooms and tying more flowers into yards and yards of garlands. There wasn’t much I could do to help her, since my cooking abilities were far beneath hers and I had no talent whatsoever for flower arranging. So instead, I offered my services to her as errand-boy, running to the store when she ran low on ingredients, delivering messages, picking up additional flowers or other materials, and delivering things to Porcoline’s restaurant to be set aside under Dylas’s watchful eyes for the party.

At the end of each day, I forced her to sit back and put her feet up while I cooked a simple meal for us. And in the mornings, I made her breakfast in bed, and afterwards I did what I could to help with her chores. I had a black thumb when it came to growing things, but I did have some talent with animals, if less than her own, so I cared for her beasts while she tended her crops and orchards. Most of her monsters had come to accept me, even if they didn’t feel the deep affection for me that they had for her. One or two still held out against me, though, and could become belligerent at times when I entered their barn alone. But I could cope with the occasional aggressive cluckadoodle or wooly, though it did make grooming them a challenge.

The morning of Venti’s birthday dawned bright and clear—a gorgeous spring day. Signs went up in all the businesses warning tourists that they’d be closing early that day. Most had chosen to close at 17:00, an hour before the party was to begin, but Porcoline’s closed a few hours before everyone else to allow time for the last tourists to finish their meals and leave and for the restaurant to get cleaned and decorated before people began to arrive. And Lin put up a notice that the baths would be closing promptly at 16:00, to be sure the last patrons had time to finish bathing and leave before they shut the doors. She also set out a sign that no one would be available at the front desk after 17:00, in case any late arrivals came in search of a room for the night. Finally, Arthur posted a notice at the airship dock, cautioning tourists that businesses would be closing early, and he had warned the airship pilots that stopped in our town, as well.

Nancy and Dolce had picked up the many cake layers Avani had baked the night before and intended to spend the day decorating them together. I noticed that Nancy was radiant at the thought of spending the day thus occupied with her adopted daughter, and that Dolce, despite her sarcastic, cold demeanor, nevertheless seemed quietly pleased at the prospect, too. I thought it was wonderful that the two had found each other: the childless woman with a mother’s heart, and the orphaned girl who secretly longed for a mother’s tender care. Yet another example of the joy Venti had brought into our lives, both directly and indirectly.

After the morning chores were done, I helped Avani carry the last of the desserts and flowers to the restaurant. We left them with Dylas, then we hurried over to the inn to bathe, so that she could have a soak before Lin had heated it up all the way for the day’s patrons. Lin had been very obliging, refraining from heating up the ladies’ bathing pool until after Avani had her soak. Very few tourists came to the baths so early in the morning, and the few women in town that bathed early just waited a little longer if they wanted a really hot bath. I thought to myself that you’d never find that sort of consideration in a large city, where nearly everyone was a stranger. You needed a small-town environment to foster relationships of that caliber.