Batshit Mages - 4. Cake of Kindness

"Somehow, I just never expected this." Teague's brow was carefully furrowed and his slightly wary, doubtful glance around the room betrayed precious little of the discomfort he felt at this very moment. He had left the door behind him wide open, just in case, and had not moved far into the room yet. He had made his own experiences with Mala, after all. Kjeld's predecessor as occupant of this dorm room had had a knack for lures, traps and unpleasant surprises. Something she called 'a party' wouldn't necessarily be a party. So, naturally, Teague had been skeptical when Kjeld had invited him to one. A 'private' one, no less. One whose invitation he 'could not possibly turn down.' Given that it was Kjeld, the friendliest and most open person he had ever met in his life, a far cry from Mala in every respect, kind, funny, generous, considera-hrrum... well, it made sense to give this a sincere chance, Teague figured, so after careful consideration of all the odds and Kjeld's bright, expectant beam, he had complied and shown up at the appointed time. Now he was still scanning the floor, ceiling and walls for anything worth knowing about before it would jump out and attack him. But there didn't seem to be anything. And Teague didn't want to insult Kjeld by casting a search spell. Not when he was grinning happily like that. And looking as giddily excited as Teague had never seen anyone before.

"But it's good, right? You said you'd never had one, so I wanted to show you what it's like!" said Kjeld with a big wavy gesture around the room, loosely indicating the leaf-and-blossom garlands all around the walls and ceiling and the very colourful and tastylooking display on the table at the foot of his bed.

"Alright... So this is a birthday party?" Teague ventured further into the room. He had really never had a birthday party before. And he hadn't even known that it was a thing that was done, especially for children. Not until Kjeld had started ranting about it. Now Kjeld nodded.

"Yes, yours! Ordara-style!" Ordara was the part of a large forest where Kjeld hailed from. Teague knew that by now. He also knew that the food there was better than here at the tower, and it had less fish in it. And he knew that Kjeld's clan was the most patriotic and most useful in providing resources for the war effort. Apparently they were the best at birthday parties, too.

"I don't think today's my birthday," Teague said simply. He didn't really know, to be honest, so it may as well be, but with hundreds of days in a year the odds were slightly skewed against it.

"Who cares? You have to make up for all the ones you've missed up to now anyway!" Kjeld exclaimed. He was far too enthusiastic, Teague found. And now he pulled out a chair in a rather aggressive manner. "Sit. Eat cake," he commanded. Teague complied and sat down. The sound of the door slamming shut made him jump a little. He hoped Kjeld hadn't seen that. He looked at the cake before him.

It looked... like a proper cake. He swallowed.

"Go on, try it. It's a special recipe of my family's, passed down for generations – what's wrong?" Kjeld frowned at Teague, who looked a little distressed as he was staring at the cake and the other food arranged around it.

"Nothing," he lied with a strained whisper between clenched jaws. He couldn't tell Kjeld what his personal experience with 'special recipes' entailed, it would insult him and this impossibly kind gesture.

Kjeld sat down in the second chair. He picked up a knife and cut two slices out of the round, soft, yellow, sugar-iced goodness that released a small twirl of steam when he pulled the two pieces out to put them on the two wooden plates before them. Teague examined it. It smelled very sweet, still steamed a little bit if you looked closely – it looked as soft as it felt when he prodded it with a finger, and it had tiny pieces in it – crumbs of nuts, maybe, and dried fruit. The icing was thin, white and a little transparent.

"Are you scared of cake?" Kjeld sounded a little impatient. Teague looked at him. Then at the desk, which happened to stand behind Kjeld's chair.

"No, I just..." He was clearly overwhelmed by this situation. "We don't usually eat... we don't usually have sweet... uhm, we don't have cake... usually... or birthday parties... or I haven't... uhm..."

"Alright, just shut up. Eat," Kjeld said in a kind tone with a warm smile. Teague looked down at the cake again and chewed on his lips a little, to distract himself from that strange worm that was starting to squirm in his stomach. It wasn't very unpleasant, just... strange. Distressing at the moment... but not necessarily bad.

And it wasn't the cake that caused this, of course. Or not just the cake.

It tasted magical. It tasted like a sweet, juicy fruit of some kind, but it was warm, soft and squishy. Teague's eyes widened and his hesitant chewing slowed down even more until he was only staring at the food on the table.

This was not what he had learned a party was, this was strange. It was nice.

Some of the things that Mala had been doing in here, in this very room, things she had called 'parties', had been quite different affairs. There had always been blood, pain, screams and fear. Not cake, roast fowl and flowery decorations.

"... Teague? Are you alright?" Kjeld looked at him worriedly. He looked a little blurred. Teague blinked.

Oh damnation. What am I doing? He wiped at his cheek to check. Oh damnation.

"Why are you crying?" Kjeld looked really worried. "I've got this spell down since I was ten, so it can't be the cake," he offered lightheartedly.

But it is the cake. I've never eaten anything this... nice. This is like solidified happiness.

"No, it's really – I mean somehow yes – I mean it's really good. It's like edible kindness." He was half aware of how stupid that should have sounded. "This is the opposite of a party. This is nice."

"The opposite? A party's supposed to be nice," said Kjeld with a raised brow. Then he lifted a finger. "And it gets better. No birthday party is complete without games and a birthday present."

Teague stared. The two conflicting feelings of pleasant surprise at the mention of a present from Kjeld and terrified apprehension at the mention of games clashed in his brain and froze him for a few seconds.

"What do you mean by 'games'?"

Kjeld shrugged. "To be honest, I couldn't think of any good ones you can play with only two people. Well..." He smirked a little. "I could, but I don't think you're quite there yet. That leaves the present." He got up and reached behind his desk, where a thin piece of blue cloth was covering something roughly candelabra-shaped. Teague watched silently as he lifted it over the desk and put it on the table with great care. "I reckon it wouldn't be very kind to let you wait until after we've eaten, if you're going to cry through the meal." He smiled at Teague and sat back down.

Teague took a fold of the cloth between two fingers, then paused and eyed Kjeld.

"This is the present? You're giving me what's under this?" You always had to make sure. Kjeld lifted his brows and nodded encouragingly. Teague decided on the quickest shield spell he could think of and prepared himself to use it. Just in case. Only then did he lift the cloth, quickly and with the opening facing away from him. The spindly metal contraption before him gleamed in the light.

"Scales!" He gaped. Copper scales! Inscribed with runes! "You're giving me enchanted scales?!"

Kjeld beamed and nodded. He was just leaning back with his cup in hand like a king and watching Teague gleefully. As if he got a kick out of this.

Teague examined the scale set. It came with exchangeable bowls and disks of different sizes and materials, to hang up on chains so delicate they looked like wires at first glance. The base was solid copper and polished to a mirrorlike shine, and ridged with the rune inscriptions and their elegant directing lines. The drawer with the extra disks and bowls also held the weights. There were only five, and they, too, were made of solid copper. Their size and mass was the same, but the lines and runes in them differed. As Teague had suspected – but not dared believe – as soon as he had seen this set, these were not used to measure mass. This was something rare and extremely valuable.

He looked at Kjeld. "You're really giving me this? As a present?"

Kjeld nodded and sipped. He was smiling.

"This is really expensive, you know?" Teague said carefully.

Kjeld nodded again.

"I mean, really expensive. I couldn't afford it. The whole tower has only three of these."

Kjeld nodded and shrugged. "So don't break it."

"I won't!" Teague sat and stared at the copper scales some more. "Are you absolutely sure you want to just give me these?"

"Yes!" said Kjeld with an impatient laugh. "And I want you to keep eating, too."

"Alright, I will! Thank you! Thank you." Teague picked the set up and carried it back to the desk carefully, before finishing the baked kindness in utter bliss and then digging into the roasted bird dish. Kjeld kept watching him with that triumphant smirk of his the whole time, but Teague didn't mind. He had his own wide grin on.

By the time he was utterly stuffed with all this foreign goodness, the last shard of his cautious mistrust had melted away and given way to the most comfortable happiness he had ever felt. Not that he had been unhappy before. Or constantly afraid. There just hadn't been anything like this before, this combination of only great things directed at him: A friend, coziness, the best food, an incredibly generous gift, all this as a friendly gesture... and to top it all off, he actually trusted Kjeld, so he did not have to stay wary all the time. Any surprises coming his way would be good.

"Now I can really believe you grew up in here. You're so used to this frugality that anything nice and good puts you on edge," Kjeld said.

"It's not just that. The girl who had this room before you was the one who first taught me what a 'party' was. Her version." Teague shrugged and rubbed his belly.

"Mala the Malicious." Kjeld knew some of the colourful stories by now.

"Yes. So you can see why I was apprehensive at first."

"Apprehensive? You cried."

The embarrassed Teague looked sideways, at some ivy leaves.

"Why?"

"I don't know," lied Teague. He had been genuinely stirred by this whole gesture, as soon as the taste and texture of that excellent cake, something he'd never had before, had convinced him of the sincerity of it. It had been a revelation. This was real, this was honest, and it was for him. He had even inwardly apologised to the cake for not trusting it at first, in those few paralysed seconds of eating it.

"Because you were scared? Thought I was going to poison you?" Kjeld seemed to really want to know. Teague shook his head slowly. Because of what he knew, he had been wary and suspicious of all this, but never of Kjeld.

"No. I wasn't scared of you. If I didn't trust you I wouldn't have come. I just haven't made the same experiences as you. A 'party' isn't a party and an 'invitation' you can't say no to isn't an invitation." He shrugged. "Words don't mean the same for everyone."

"Isn't that the truth," Kjeld agreed wistfully and lifted his cup to Teague before sipping again. Teague didn't know what was in that clay jug his friend kept using but he was beginning to suspect it was wine. Kjeld was starting to look a little drunk. He suddenly realised that he didn't know how old Kjeld was. He had answered all of Kjeld's very curious personal questions about himself truthfully, but while Kjeld had always been liberal with anecdotes from home, he had hardly ever confessed anything personal.

"How old are you?" Teague was not one for unnecessary tiptoeing around a subject, and usually just traipsed right into it.

"Sixtyseven," said Kjeld into his mug.

Teague blinked slowly. He had forgotten about that. The Ordarans were all extremely longlived. They matured and aged very slowly. "You have fifty years on me," he said.

Kjeld nodded. "When I became an adult, you were just being born," he said, pointing at Teague.

Teague had to grin. "I never did play well with kids my own age."

"I noticed that. You're too far ahead of them."

"That happens if you start studying at three." Teague pushed his empty plate away to lean on the table and rest his chin on his fists. "How come you start at sixtyseven? Isn't that a little late to discover you're a wizard?"

"I've been a mage as early as you." Kjeld poured himself more of the presumed wine. "I've even been a warmage. We have our own schooling system for magic, you know."

"Then why come here at all? If you're already a war veteran... obviously you know everything you need to know." Teague couldn't quite help the glimmer of wondrous marvel creeping into his mind as he became gradually more aware of who and what Kjeld was.

"Ah, but what is it I 'need' to know? There are things we 'want' to know, things we 'must' know, things we have a knack for, and some things we just stumble upon, and then we have to figure out how to handle them – not all schools of magic are accepted everywhere," Kjeld finished.

"I know. The practice of necromancy and summoning are illegal," offered Teague helpfully. This was a wellknown fact, a common law all over the continent. Kjeld nodded.

"Yes. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not a necromancer or a demonologist. Well, I am a demonologist, but I'm not going to actually summon anything." He looked at Teague and gestured vaguely. "Spirit magic is what, exactly?"

"Superstitious humbug for the stupid."

"It's dangerous," Kjeld corrected.

"It's a fantasy," Teague insisted. Kjeld help up a hand that shut Teague up.

"It's forbidden in Ordara, or at least in my clan. Which is strange, because Ordara's supposed to be so spiritual." He grimaced when he said that word. Teague laughed.

"You can't outlaw something for being stupid."

"I said! ... It's dangerous. Because it works." Kjeld frowned at him seriously.

Teague snorted. "You're so drunk."

"I am. And I'm also a spirit... ist."

"And delusional," Teague said with a fond smile.

Kjeld nodded. "Very much. Cheers."