Rip dad. You were a great person, slightly absent, but your jokes were funny whenever you cracked one. Not that that ever happened though … overall, ten out of ten points for being my non-existent dad, dad. The sad message arrived us by an urgent messenger and was apparently given to Mary first. She apparently didn’t cry, but took the news with a rather stern face.

She still wore this face as she entered the kitchen where I was baking a few cookies. Her state was already enough for the maids to stop baking and they didn’t resist as Mary shooed them out. As the door closed behind them, her facial expression relaxed considerably and she sighed quietly.

“Soo … your dad died.” She said quietly.

“Kay. So this is the time for me to be shocked, isn´t?” I whispered.

“You would normally expect that from a ten-year-old, yes.” I nodded a few times and already started to press a few tears out.

“Hmm … and now I have to cry, don’t I?” As soon as she nodded, I wailed loudly for everyone to hear. The fact that a few of my cookies were too long in the oven certainly helped to put up this show for the maids. I cried for quite a long time and changed into sobbing as soon as we stepped out of the kitchen and Mary guided me to her own room while being watched by quite a few shocked maids. These poor things were so captivated by our performance they didn’t even know what to do.

In any case, I was in Mary´s room not too long afterwards and threw myself on the bed while she locked the door behind us. At first, I muffled my sounds with a pillow but stopped after several minutes. Enough is enough. They shouldn’t be able to hear me in the first place.

“Does that mean I can wear black for a while?” I asked, finally finding hope in the darkness.

“Four days. And after that I expect you to attend your lectures again.” She said, rolling her eyes at my fashion tastes.

“Oof.”

“Don´t ‘oof’ me.” She said, strangely angrily.

“Sorry. Do I even have a black dress?” If not, I could finally pick one out on my own. The possibilities were endless!

“I bought clothing for every occasion.” I bit my lower lip in frustration as I missed out on a huge opportunity.

“Yay! Did you make sure that the maids know of my poor father´s death?” I asked, already imagining frills without end.

“The messenger is a chatterbox. Don’t worry, everything is dealt with.” She said, strangely convinced the messenger would speak to the maids.

“Oh? How?” I asked, rather interested in how she dealt with problems like these.

“Okay, so first of all I burnt down a house that belonged to a father with a child. Interestingly enough, the girl looks a bit like you apparently. They both moved into my domain where I can have an eye on them. Currently, whoever goes to the hut in the woods, will find a completely razed farmland, anything of value missing and I am sure we can find a few elven arrows if we really look closely. The townspeople even buried a burnt man a second time …” She had an interesting approach. It was certainly not the way I would deal with this issue of presenting my non-existent father´s death to the world as she left quite a few loose strings in the process. Nobody died this way though which was apparently a plus point for her.

“You approach isn´t half bad, even then I would have killed that man and disposed of the daughter as well. Soo …” we had to wait for several hours anyway for me to ‘calm down’ and so, I was presented with a rather difficult choice. To nap, or to play a few games with Mary. “… want to play chess?”

“I don’t have a chessboard inside this room.” She said and shook her head.

“You don´t?” I leaned over the edge of the bed and retrieved one of the boxes I put underneath it a few days ago. “That suspiciously looks like chess…”