“Yogurt?”

“Apparently,” said Dabney, checking his list. Unnecessarily, for so unusual was the request that he recollected it perfectly well. Which is not to say that yogurt was unusual. Yogurt is normal. No, the novelty here was the source of the request.

Tatiana, Dabney, Jo, and Donnelly were nearly finished with their round of deliveries. If you’re wondering who Donnelly is, don’t worry. You haven’t missed anything. He’s just the donkey pulling the milk cart. He’s not relevant to anything so hasn’t been mentioned before and wont be mentioned again after this paragraph. Say your goodbyes to Donnelly now if you were a fan. From here on out his textual presence reverts to being implicit. 

The group were approaching the Willowish Grinnigog, where the milk round normally concluded, and what would happen when they reached the tavern had been concerning Tatiana. So far the morning had brought her many challenging conversations - the Mulberries’ distress over seeing a skeleton, the Cook’s anxiety over the local stability of the feudal system, the Miller’s contention that the amoral freedom offered by art can lead to moral liberation, etc, etc. But she expected that the scenes that would play out at the Grinnigog would be the most awkward of all.

There was no putting it off any longer.

It was time to tell the Innkeeper that his tomboy daughter had been transformed into a fairy.

Or at least it would be… if there wasn’t one extra order on the list this morning. One extra stop to make. 

“Yogurt?”

“Yogurt.”

“Who wants yogurt?”

“Madame Sausages,” said the old careworn farmer. “She asked special.”

Huh, thought the Milkmaid. Madame Sausages never ordered anything from the Lever Dairy. She had her own goats.

“She’s got her own goats,” she mused aloud. Something wasn’t right.

“Well, she wants yogurt.”

“Can you make yogurt from goat’s milk though?” asked Joanna. The little fairy was sat between the long furry ears of an implicit textual presence. 

Tatiana smiled and nodded encouragingly. Sometimes she forgot how much younger her gf was than her and how many ways in which she was still quite naive. Goat’s Milk Yogurt was especially delicious!

“So if Madame Sausages never usually needs anything from us… and if, given time, she could make her own yogurt…” the Milkmaid was trying to figure it out, “This must mean that Madame Sausages is having a yogurt emergency.”

“We should go at once,” said Jo, who had found the milk round to be much more exciting than she had expected.

But this was what it meant to serve a community. 

The reunion betwixt fairy and father must wait.

They had responsibilities.

The party passed on by the Willowish Grinigog and headed for the tree line where the fungible fortune teller’s vardo was parked.

NEXT CHAPTER: She doesn’t actually want yogurt.