The Dragon Prince Stuffs

Homely

I'm running down the hallway on small young feet, giggling like life is a coin in my hand and the world is a candy store with a million options. I'm surrounded by the sounds of laughter in other rooms and an instrument I cannot name playing through the varnished ebony walls. It chimes like a bell and whistles like the wind and hums like happy people all at the same time. I reach a door on my left, slowing to a creep and peering around the corner.

My father is standing in the kitchen, a little bow tied in the black ribbon of his apron. the air sizzles like fireworks with pots and pans and hissing fire in the oven, filled with so many lovely smells that I can almost see them in the dancing sunlight of the afternoon.

The gold of cinnamon and burnt sugar. The poppy red of cooking apple. The sap yellow of stewed peach. They twist and turn in on each other, moving like water and ink and oil swirled together into something beautiful.

My father turns, hearing the little squeak of excitement that I let slip out of me. His smile mirrors my own; ever so slightly lopsided, mischievous and bursting with compassion. It creases in every line on his face like he's the bird's eye view of a gorgeous canyon.

"Callum?" He asks, letting the beginnings of a laugh take root in his voice, "You know you can't sneak very well, right?"

I burst into the room, giggling up a storm, and fling myself onto his leg making sure to stick like glue. He chuckles with me and brings me up to sit on his shoulders so I can see all the bubbling pots. 

I watch as he works, like he's making a whole world with his hands, kneading shortbread pastry and stirring browned butter in this lovely ebony kitchen nestled between a clothing store and saddlemaker's workshop.

And it feels so good to be at h-

Rayla POV

Katolis is nothing like home. That's all that's on my mind as I pad softly down the hallways. The SilverGrove is small, safe, nested in little green hills and made so anyone can disappear if they want to. The Castle, however, is the opposite.

The ceilings are so high that at night you can't see the corners, the wood dark and straight and designed so that there aren't enough good hiding places. But at the same time you can feel that they're hollow, and that makes you feel like you're being watched. Or at least, that's how it makes me feel.

I'm walking like a shadow towards the baker's kitchen, that's where the guard said Callum had run off to before we were even awake. I'm struck again by how strange humans are, why would Callum ever need to go to the Kitchen? He's a prince. He can say the word and be given whatever he wants!

I drift down the halls like a falling feather. I turn corner after corner, left, right, right, left. So pointlessly confusing.

I stop when I smell something sweet.

I can tell, even from here, that if I could see whatever I'm smellin' it would be warm and bubbly and gold-orange-brown. Whoever is cooking clearly knows what they're doing.

"I wonder if..." I trail off as I keep walking, following my nose rather that the meaningless human words etched above doors. Yea' I can't read human. Wha'd ya expect? I peek around the doorway into the room I'm looking for.

Callum's standing at the long wooden table of the kitchen, pots bubbling on the cooker behind him. He's got something the consistency of thick mud, and the color a sand, between his hands and the table, and he's folding it over and over again.

Human's make no sense.

I silently walk to where he's doin'... wha'ever it is he's doing, and peer over his shoulder. I will admit, it's fun to watch how the mud-stuff molds and smooths around him hands, more elastic than I expected. he's humming some human tune that honestly sounds pretty nice. Compaired to other human music that I've heard.