[piosenniel]

scrape . . . scrape . . . scrape . . .

The oven door was full open and Cook was kneeling on the floor, her head poked into the oven itself. The pies she’d made a day ago had bubbled over and their drippings now stood like a carbonized range of smoking black peaks on the oven’s floor. Which would not have ordinarily been a problem, save for the fact that they had taken to reeking of smoke when she’d begun heating up the oven for the day’s baking. The breads that morning had had a slightly smoked taste, which she’d passed off as a new recipe she was trying. But now she wanted to bake up her faery-cake recipe and the charred scent simply wouldn’t do.

The sound of some voice at a distance intruded upon her cleaning frenzy, and she pulled her head a little ways from the oven just in time to hear the word, ‘dearie’. Cook stood up, wiping her hands on the old towel she’d tucked into the waist of her apron and turned about.

‘Violet Greengage! Come in, come in! What brings you from your burrow to the Dragon?’ She motioned for Violet to take a seat at the kitchen table. ‘Here, just let me was up a bit and we’ll have a nice cup of tea and a chat.’