The sun was hanging low in a painted sky over the kingdom of Hawthorn when Safiyah drew her cream puffs from the oven. The café was closed for the evening until she opened again for the midnight rush, to all visitors but one. For her peculiar friend who kept peculiar hours, at least when compared to the fairies.
She was just putting the finishing touches on her tray, adding cream to the puffs, pouring tea from a clay pot into her enchanted porcelain set—the kind that prepares the tea for you—when the silver bell chimed, and she turned to her peculiar friend. “Livia—” and her peculiar friend’s lover. Safiyah curled her lip. “I see you brought the daywalker.”
“He followed me.”
“Fine. But I only made tea and treats enough for the both of us.” She narrowed her eyes at them. “What are you wearing?”
Livia had already taken a bite of a cream puff and covered her strawberry cream beard with her hand. “A maid’s uniform.”
“… why are you wearing a maid’s uniform?”
“We snuck into the palace today so we could—”
“Never mind.” Safi forced her eyes shut, waving her hands as if she could brush the words away, “I don’t want to be implicated.”
Ren snorted and Safi glared at him. Livia settled into her chair. “I told Ren yesterday, I could fall in love with your cream puffs.”
If you could fall in love, Safi added to herself. The cream puffs merely filled a “never ending craving.” That was how Livia put it, at least. One of the reasons Safi initially approached their acquaintance with hesitance. Could she truly befriend someone who took no joy in her food?
Safiyah didn’t like Livia when they first met. Though Livia appreciated Safiyah’s baking, she was picky and entirely too open with her honesty. Safiyah didn’t know how to take this, having been raised to hide her truths in veils of formality and politeness. However, she was new to Hawthorn and struggling to learn the new culture of food. No one wanted to try date cakes or her saffron or pistachio flavored ice cream. Livia was the one who suggested she start with more familiar flavors. Pomegranate seeds. Orange peels. Rose water, which was a familiar ingredient in Oak but fascinated the fairies of Hawthorn who associated roses with nobility and the royal family.
Safiyah felt somewhat indebted to Livia then, and to her fortune, Livia could be easily thanked with sweets. Cream puffs dipped in syrup, cookies with their tea. Safi had come to depend on her tea breaks with Livia, just watching the sun set below the hills. Livia was rather picky, but she could drink black tea provided with extra sugar cubes. The enchanted tongs, familiar with her habits, piled them into her cup where they dissolved among rose petals and cardamom seeds. The girls settled comfortably into their regular chairs, and Ren dragged one from a nearby table, the poor legs screeching against the floor until he planted himself next to Livia.
Livia Heartless. Ren Heartbreaker. A peculiar pair. The girl who lost her heart and the boy who never bothered using his in the first place. Perhaps that was unfair. Livia’s heart was stolen from her. Safiyah had heard stories of the Heart Thief and his heartless, but only from a distance. Never imagined one could sit across from her. A human child taken from her world and tricked into a bargain. Livia had escaped, but she could not feel or express emotions. She had to leave her heart behind. Livia trusted Ren, and though Safiyah understood why, she knew she could never trust him herself. He didn’t love Livia, of course he didn’t love her. The daywalkers could not love without consequence. Their hearts would start beating. They would lose their power. They would become… well they would become human. And then there was Ren specifically, who had all the training of a tailor from his father and instead used his nimble fingers to steal stories, bottle Livia’s lies, and apparently to steal themselves into the royal palace. He had too much of his uncle–that bastard’s–influence. No, Ren couldn’t possibly be in love with Livia. But he understood that Livia was his.
“What brings you Ren, to intrude on our peaceful evening?”
He shifted uncomfortably, and Livia tilted her head toward him. They had that way of talking at times without talking at all.
Safi sipped her tea, smiling. This should be entertaining.
“Do you remember the lies Livia brought you a few days ago?”
Of course she did. There was a beautiful lie among them. Pink-orange mist in a glass bottle like floating threads of candy syrup. She had half the mind to throw it away when read the label: “I Love You.” The other was more common in Ren’s line of work, a green lie labeled “I would never hide the truth” with a warning scrawled in tiny letters that whoever consumed the lie may spontaneously claim to like the color yellow.
Safi snorted, looking at Livia, who was licking cream off her fingers. “I remember telling someone she needed to stop letting you use her lies like that.”
“You may have been right.”
“Oh really? What happened then? The bottle was picked up only yesterday.”
“What happened isn’t important,” Ren rushed the words together, trying to mask himself under some air of nonchalance. “I just need to know if there was anything you noticed about the fairy who picked them up. Was it Lord Bainbridge or one of his servants? Were they not a servant of Lord Bainbridge but of someone else entirely? Did they ask you any questions, have you seen then in the café since or—”
Safiyah slammed her teacup into its saucer. The teacup, startled, floated out of her hand and hid on Livia’s side of the tea tray. “Ren Daywalker, I have put up with a number of your inconsiderate, thoughtless—”
“Selfish,” Livia offered.
“Thank you, selfish actions—”
Ren balked. “Don’t help her—”
“—for Livia’s sake or for the sake of my business, but if you have finally put me or my café—”
“Calm yourself. Your café is safe.”
“And I with it?”
He muttered something about what sticklers fairies could be, but nodded. “You and your business are safe. Just tell me if there was anything peculiar about whoever picked up the lies.”
“No. Not that I noticed, at least. Though I believe it was Lord Bainbridge himself who picked up the bottle, and he only took the one.”
“Which one?”
Safi stood and walked to her counter, bringing back the glass with the pink-orange lie pickled inside. “He took ‘I would never hide the truth.’”
“Huh,” Livia went.
Ren smirked at her. “What? Did you doubt me when I said he could still love his wife and have an affair with her?”
“Of course. If you’re truly in love with someone, how can you be happy with someone else?”
“True love is a little rare, don’t you think?” Safi asked.
Ren ignored her. “I’m more suspicious of Bainbridge picking up the lie himself than the theoretical correlation between happiness and love.”
Safi sighed. “Truly, just what kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into?” “We were found out—”
“Don’t—” Ren tried to stop her.
“—by the first prince.”
Safiyah leaned back in her chair. Spinner’s curse. “You—” she pointed to Livia, “— will stop bottling your lies for the daywalker, or even his uncle if the rogue comes knocking, and you,” she spoke directly to Ren, glaring, “will stop using my café as your own personal distribution house.”
Livia’s mouth was too full to respond immediately, and in the interim, Ren handed her a handkerchief for the syrup and crumbs around her mouth. “You agreed to let my clients pick things up here in exchange for a portion of the coins.”
“Once, I agreed once, and perhaps I needed the money then, but no longer.” Ren sighed, fighting to hide his irritation. “Fine, I will find an unrelated location for my ‘distribution house.’ But remember how I helped you with your business, I believe you owe me one favor more.”
“Is one favor all you will ask of me?”
“Yes.”
“And you promise that favor will not endanger my café, my life, or Livia’s?”
“Yes. One favor, and I promise never to bother you again.”
Safiyah reminded herself that daywalkers could lie. Like humans. “I suppose that’s a bargain I can be compelled to accept.”
Ren rolled his eyes, standing, and left the bottle on the table. “I suppose I’ve irritated you enough for one evening.”
Safiyah watched the lie swirl and react almost when he leaned down to kiss Livia. The silver bell was still tinkling when she said over their shared plate of cookies, “He still thinks you’re staying in Hawthorn.” Livia did not answer. “You have told him?”
Livia nodded. “He thinks that when I get my heart back, I’ll fall in love with him.” “Will you?”
“Probably.”
“Then, will you stay?”
The painted sky poured through the window in the last light of the day, coloring Livia’s already painted skin, stained beautifully by the poison flowers that first greeted her in this world. Forever reminding her of the claim this world had over her. She shook her head. “No.”
Safiyah broke apart the last cookie, giving one half to Livia. The two finished their tea in silence as night blanketed the sky. On nights like these, Safiyah wasn’t certain she would see her peculiar friend again.
This story began as a prompt from a creative writing class, a story I kept adding to little by little long after the class was over, curious how it was going to end. Somewhere between a modern fairytale and a rip-off of "The Cruel Prince." This particular scene came from another prompt from another class. I enjoyed focusing in on one of my minor characters, Safiyah, and better understanding her relationship with Livia and the rest of the story. I like to say that every author has a story they can only tell when they’re hiding from a storm, tornado siren’s blaring, in the basement with a laptop and a small bowl of chocolate chips. This is mine.
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