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It was a generally accepted fact that it was inadvisable to set a flame on top of a pile of wood and paper, unless of course starting a fire was your intention.
Like so many other things Cliopher had once considered generally accepted facts, this did not seem to hold true for anything Fitzroy-related.
Fitzroy's fire-creature was curled up on his desk.
Cliopher stood staring at it helplessly, coffee cup in one hand and a pile of letters in the other, his immediate flare of alarm beginning to fade in the face of the fact that the desk and papers did not seem to be catching fire. He considered going back downstairs to complain to Fitzroy, but his fanoa had been happily engaged in the very first of Enya's baking lessons (which had been put off, and off, and off, by various adventures, emergencies, and happenstance for several weeks after they were supposed to have begun), visibly puffed up with excitement and energy, and Cliopher was loath to interrupt them (or place himself in the vicinity of flying frosting). This meant that he was left to deal with the fire-creature on his own.
"Shoo," he tried, but it lacked anything resembling a threat and had the entirely unsurprising effect of the fire-creature – a tiger, Fitzroy had claimed – just snuggling more comfortably against the stack of papers he had left in the middle of his desk the day before.
Typical, Cliopher thought, torn between feeling disgruntled and amused. He supposed this was Fitzroy's way of telling him that he was retired and should not be working so much.
(He wasn't, he was having fun, he kept telling Fitzroy, but Fitzroy had opinions.)
Eventually he conceded defeat and compromised by moving the entire stack of the papers to the side, fire-creature and all, and set to work on his letters rather than the memoir the not-a-tiger was lounging on.
"Still not a tiger," he told it decisively as he opened a letter and started reading it. "No matter what he says."
The creature snuffled and eyed him sleepily while he wrote.
xxxx
It was there again the next morning, this time sprawled luxuriously across his pens, little paws hugging his ink pot. Cliopher considered it for a moment and then moved it, very gently, into a ceramic bowl he had forgotten on his desk the previous day. The creature was hot to touch but did not burn him. The not-a-tiger made an indignant squeak in protest and attempted to close its little jaws around his middle finger, but was apparently mollified by the few nuts and dried berries that remained in the bowl from the previous day's snack.
Cliopher smiled as he watched the fire-creature curl up around its new bounty with a satisfied air, like a very small dragon around his hoard.
When he returned to his notes that afternoon, it was still sleeping in the bowl. Half an hour into the soft scratching of Cliopher's pen the creature made a questioning sound and peered at him over the edge of the bowl. Another half an hour later it crawled out of the bowl and draped itself comfortably over the wrist of the hand holding the paper in place and, it seemed, fell asleep again.
Cliopher could not bring himself to move that hand to start on a fresh page after he had finished the one currently under his palm, and so he just sat there, humming to himself and considering the contents of the next page, while the fire-creature slept on.
xxxx
By the third morning, Cliopher was concerned to come back from his late morning stroll to find the bowl empty and the fire-creature nowhere to be seen.
He had been around the room three times, lifting books and stacks of paper and kneeling on the floor to peer under the table and the couch, barely a moment away from rushing downstairs to ask Fitzroy if and why he had dismissed the tiger, when he heard faint scratching. He stood up so fast he almost felt faint and yanked open the desk drawer the sound had come from, and there, rolling on the bottom with the force of his unexpected yank, was the fire-creature. It stumbled to a sprawling stop and blinked up at Cliopher.
"Oh, thank goodness," he sighed. It curled up readily on his palm as soon as he gathered it up. "You had me worried. How did you even get there?" Almost before he said the words he suddenly remembered leaving the drawer open for a few moments earlier in the morning, when he had gone to see if Fitzroy was awake for his baking lesson yet. Not-a-tiger must have crawled in then and been trapped when he had returned only to close the drawer before leaving for his stroll.
Feeling guilty, he set the creature back in its bowl and sat looking at it for a long moment. It stared back, little snout quivering inquisitively. Cliopher remembered how gently Fitzroy had stroked a finger between the creature’s ears and found himself reaching out to do the same.
“Well, I can’t keep calling you Not-a-tiger,” Cliopher mused and considered names. He was not great at naming things, he thought; or rather, he was good at giving things grand names snatched out of legends. The fire tiger was much too small for any such name. He toyed with the idea of naming the creature Auri, simply because he could imagine the look of delight on the ancient emperor’s face upon hearing about his namesake, but then remembered the masterpiece of erotica he had been writing down for Fitzroy. Not Auri, definitely.
But it did give him an idea, tugged at a memory of the very first Fitzroy Angursell poem in a thousand years, and so, “I think I’ll call you Limerick. It’s still a little long for such a small thing, but seems fitting.”
Some time later, Limerick was lounging on his lap when his work was interrupted by the loud bang of a door. Startled, he put Limerick back into its bowl and went downstairs to investigate. He found Enya in the kitchen, laughing uproariously as she mixed batter, the kitchen itself looking like a tornado had passed through, and no Fitzroy in sight.
“Oh Kip,” Enya gasped between laughter as she noticed him. “He’s terrible. Oh, that’s not fair, he’s clearly eager to learn new things and listens very carefully and tries to follow instructions to the letter. But somehow he’s still awful about actually following them!” She wiped her streaming eyes with the back of her hand. “He keeps stumbling into the silliest accidents and mistakes, and gets so annoyed about them!”
Cliopher peered into the bowl next to Enya’s; the batter in that one was a gooey substance of a much darker brown than Enya’s. “What happened? Where is he?” he asked, torn between feeling amused and worried.
“He’s gone outside to cool off,” Enya told him, unconcerned, and pointed at a stained and much loved notebook of recipes on the table. “There was a bit of a… mix up. I told him we should halve the recipe, so we don’t end up making far too much. He, uh, struggled with the math of halving everything,” she paused to snigger, “and because he was so focused on halving everything, it seems he missed the decimal point in 2.5 cups of syrup. He was adding cup number seven by the time I realized what he was doing.”
“Oh, Fitzroy.” Cliopher buried his face in his hands for a moment, temporarily overcome by the hilarity of the thought that he, the man responsible for the governmental budgets of the entire world for several hundred years, had somehow managed to find himself a fanoa who halved 2.5 and got 12.5, a fanoa who had approved those budgets for several hundred years. (He knew, objectively, that Fitzroy’s grasp of math wasn’t quite that loose, that he must have simply not noticed the decimal point, but he was also fully aware that this was not how the story was bound to circulate around his family.)
Enya patted him on the shoulder, leaving a floury handprint on it. “He does try, really, and has made a great deal of progress since we started! But I must admit, when you talked about all that wild mage serendipity stumbling him from weird luck to fantastic opportunities to random meetings at Aunt Oura’s birthday, I didn’t expect it to mean that I had to keep an eye on him constantly. He’s like a ten-year-old kid – really, he’s just as ridiculous as you, you two deserve each other – constantly in danger of either hurting himself, falling into some magical adventure – do you know he literally disappeared into the pantry yesterday and emerged two hours later in completely different clothes and with an Alinorel variety of the juice I had asked him to get – or tipping everything to the floor!”
Cliopher wondered idly if it should worry him that he was no longer even surprised to hear that his fanoa had apparently found an inter-mundial adventure in their pantry, but really, it was perfectly on par for a regular day with Fitzroy Angursell.
With some effort, he dragged his thoughts back to the situation at hand and felt his heart squeeze in sympathy as he imagined Fitzroy realizing his mistake. Enya had laughed, of course; not in a mean way, pointing at someone’s mistakes, but with the assumption that they would laugh at this silly mistake together. Fitzroy storming out to sulk had probably only amused Enya even more.
But no one had allowed the Last Emperor to make mistakes, and certainly no one had laughed at him, let alone with him, over any mistakes he had made.
“It’s difficult for him, Enya,” he said, and Enya’s smile became more subdued, the expression in her eyes flitting from mirth to surprise to chagrin. “He knows he’s not infallible, but it’s difficult to shake a thousand years of being told he is. He doesn’t want to act like a spoiled child throwing tantrums when someone tells him he’s done a bad job of something –” Oh, the expression of absolute thunder on Fitzroy’s face when Cliopher had said, mildly, that hanging towels to dry instead of just leaving them in piles on chairs or the floor might go a long way to make the permanent pinched expression on Conju’s face go away! “... But it’s not easy to shake a habit, or to be suddenly amicable about being told off when, for so long, his every whim was obeyed before he even thought to ask for them.”
Enya’s face had been growing more grave with every word, and by the end it was her turn to bury her face in her hands, heedless of the flour and batter stuck to her fingers. “Oh, I’ve put my foot in it, haven’t I,” she groaned. “No, I can’t imagine he’s ever failed much, or felt that it was safe to fail.” She peeked at him between her fingers. “Go find my wayward student and hug him for me, will you?” She sighed and turned a resigned look at their bowls. “I’ll clean up and go back to work. Perhaps we should begin anew tomorrow.”
Cliopher found Fitzroy sitting on a pier a short walk away, hugging a bent knee to his chest, the bare foot of the other leg hanging off the edge and making ripples in the water. He was still wearing the apron Conju had gotten for him as soon as it had become evident that there was no preventing him from attempting to bake, as well as a scarlet scarf keeping his hair out of his face. He seemed to have calmed down from his temper and moved onto a solid, sullen sulk, disconsolate and perhaps a little ashamed. He didn’t look up when Cliopher sat by him, but leaned into his embrace willingly.
They were quiet for a while, and then, in a small, disgruntled voice, Fitzroy grumbled, “No one warned me that baking was about math. That there’s multiplying and subtracting and decimals.”
Cliopher hugged him closer. “Well, not entirely about math, or I would be good at it.”
Fitzroy chuckled, which was at least half a victory. “I thought the decimal point was a smudge,” he said, then, and Cliopher was almost certain that the expression on his face had to be classified as a pout. The Lord of the Rising Stars, the Poet Laureate and legendary adventurer, Fitzroy Angursell, was pouting at him.
But, “I believe you,” he said earnestly, because what else could he say?
(Very little; there was indeed very little he could manage to shape into thoughts let alone words when Fitzroy looked at him like that.)
And Fitzroy smiled a little and let his head drop on Cliopher’s shoulder, flour-smudged scarf and all, and murmured, “I know,” like it was still a treasure to be believed so readily, and it was alright.
That night, Cliopher woke up near dawn to find that Limerick had found its way to the solarium and was curled up to sleep on his pillow next to his face. He reached out to cup a hand around it and went back to sleep.
xxxx
Fitzroy returned to his studies, and after a bit of anxious hovering that neither Fitzroy nor Enya appreciated, Cliopher returned to his study with Limerick for company. Both Fitzroy’s clothes and the kitchen were a disaster zone of baking-related accidents that they agreed would have to be laundered and scrubbed before Conju and Rhodin returned from their trip to Alinor and saw the state of either. Ludvic, after making the mistake of once attempting to enter the kitchen for lunch while a baking lesson was in session, took to vacating the house every morning before Enya appeared and only reappearing when it was “safe to return”, as he put it.
“It’s not that I don’t like your cousin,” he assured Cliopher one day, keeping him and Limerick company while Fitzroy tried to clean the kitchen, Enya having rushed off early to put out some restaurant-related fire or other. “Or that I think the kitchen is particularly dangerous while they’re at it.” He quirked a small smile. "It's important to him that I leave him alone, sometimes, deliberately and showily. Demonstrate that I'm no longer his guard."
Cliopher nodded thoughtfully, stroking a finger down Limerick's curled, spiky back. The fire-creature made a happy sound and squirmed to better offer its back for petting. Ludvic eyed them both with a bemused expression. "You're a good friend," Cliopher said. "Remember that sometimes he would also welcome your company, though."
Ludvic gave him a slanted look that was so carefully neutral that Cliopher almost missed the little smirk. "Perhaps after the baking lessons. I love him dearly, but he keeps trying to make me taste everything."
"Ah," Cliopher acknowledged ruefully, for all of Enya's instruction and Fitzroy's enthusiasm had yet to translate into a delicious treat. Cliopher had noticed Enya visibly lowering her expectations each day, the look of steely resolve on her face growing with each rock-hard bread roll and gooey, floppy cookie. Lately she had been diving into the very, very basics with ferocious determination that she would emerge victorious and drag Fitzroy with her, no matter what. Fitzroy, for his part, puffed with pride at each of his creations, and it had to be said there was steady improvement, but there was a reason Cliopher, too, often found something else to do (and somewhere else to be) while the class was in session.
Ludvic was still looking at Limerick. "Since I notice that you're just as likely to volunteer information as usual," he finally observed, "I suppose I should ask. What is that? Have you acquired some sort of Mdang familiar?"
Cliopher glanced down at Limerick, then back up at Ludvic and, feeling uncharacteristically mischievous, he schooled his face into an expression of complete innocence and said, "Oh no, this is a tiger. I call it Limerick."
Ludvic considered them for a moment, eyes narrowed. "Do we," he said at length, "have differing definitions for tigers and poems?"
This made Cliopher burst out in laughter and ruin any attempt at keeping up the innocence. Limerick uncurled and stood up on his palm to snuffle at him questioningly, which only made him laugh more. He could see Ludvic’s lips twitching as well. “I don’t rightly know what Limerick is, to be honest. Fitzroy made a fireball to just to show off the night we – well, the night he raised Navanoa –”
“Ah, yes,” Ludvic mused. “Making an island is so common. No wonder he felt the need for some additional showing off.”
Cliopher snorted. Limerick sneezed. “Well, this was before Navanoa, so perhaps the showing off just escalated? Anyway, he had the fireball take this form, and told me it was a tiger. And there it was again, about a week ago, sleeping on my desk. I suspect Fitzroy made it to keep an eye on me while he’s busy learning to bake. Possibly he imagines that he’s being extremely subtle about it.”
Ludvic stopped, hand raised and extended halfway toward Limerick. One eyebrow went up in an expression that Cliopher was amused to realize he was not the only one to have adopted from his Radiancy. “You haven’t asked him?”
“No, I’m waiting for him to confess.” Cliopher raised his hand, bringing Limerick on his palm closer to Ludvic. Limerick held onto his fingers with its little paws and reached out to sniff at Ludvic’s. He looked up after a long silence to see that Ludvic was staring at him with an expression of fond exasperation and mild amusement. “What?”
Ludvic shook his head. “You are waiting,” he said, slowly, “for him to confess.” He paused. “Waiting. For the man who spent a thousand years. Pining for you. Without a word. To confess to anything on his own.”
Cliopher paused, blinking rapidly at pining for you. “Oh,” he said, stupidly.
“Indeed,” Ludvic murmured dryly, and reached his fingers for Limerick to sniff at again.
xxxx
Limerick was curled up in its bowl the next day when Fitzroy knocked at the half-open door and peered in hopefully.
“Join me for coffee?” he asked.
Cliopher looked up from his memoir and smiled. Baking lesson was clearly over; the head scarf and apron were gone, in favor of a sarong in a shade of amber (more orange than the imperial yellow) that complimented Fitzroy’s dark skin beautifully, and he had the look of a recently bathed and magically dried person, all airy and fresh. “I’d love to,” he said, stretching a little as he got up and followed Fitzroy.
He had set up coffee on the balcony; Cliopher’s chest felt warm and fluttery at the thought, at how this was almost exactly what he had wished for, except that back then he had not dared to wish, even in the safety of his own mind, that he might share this with a fanoa rather than a friend. It was a lovely day, the sea wind a soft, blessedly cool caress on his skin, the shade over the balcony letting them relax half in shadow, half in sun. Fitzroy had set up coffee, two cups – no one else was invited, then – fresh fruit, so sloppily cut he had to have done it himself, and a plate of cookies. He poured for them both, and Cliopher let him, conscious of how much Fitzroy still relished being allowed to serve and look after others.
“How was your lesson?” he asked as he accepted his cup, feeling absurdly domestic and overwhelmingly pleased with it.
Fitzroy stirred some sugar into his and leaned back, sprawling in his chair with the air of someone taking well-earned rest after hard work. “Your cousin is a veritable slave-master,” he announced solemnly. “I have never worked so hard.”
Cliopher raised his brows. “I should think that working with tectonic plates, typhoons and magma would be more demanding than learning to bake,” he ventured.
Fitzroy waved a hand languidly, lion eyes sparkling with mirth. “I’m good with magma. Terrible with dough.” He eyed Cliopher speculatively. “Perhaps if she let me make a lava cake with actual lava…”
“No,” Cliopher told him firmly. “No lava in this house. If you want to play with lava, we can go visit Navanoa.”
Once more, that pout. “You’re as bad as she is. I don’t see how you can call yourself a Mdang and say no to a real lava cake. I’m a better Mdang than the two of you combined.”
“Baking,” Cliopher informed him decisively, “does strange things to your sense of humor.”
“You,” Fitzroy countered with a grin, “do strange things to all my senses.”
Which shut up Cliopher because, well, what was there to say to that except splutter and blush into his coffee?
Fitzroy laughed and, looking suddenly a little bashful and shy himself, pushed the plate of cookies closer. “Would you try these? They’re mine. There are more, downstairs, and made by Enya, in case you…” he trailed off, shrugged awkwardly, and grinned again, looking a little embarrassed. “But I was presumptuous enough to only bring these.” He very carefully did not say because I was proud of them or because I hoped you would like them, but it was all there in his eyes.
Cliopher raised his brows. Fitzroy had made him try bits and pieces, but this was the first time he had felt confident enough to bring anything he had made himself as the sole offering to a coffee table. Steeling himself to only show pleasure no matter how hard or salty the cookies were (and oh, it had been hard to look happy that time he had bit into what he had expected to be a sweet pastry and discovered that Fitzroy had managed to replace sugar with salt), he took a cookie – a perfectly innocent-looking chocolate chip one – and bit into it.
It was… good. Perhaps not delicious or Sardeet-worthy or Jullanar-worthy, but definitely good, a cookie Cliopher was pleased to eat and would not have been ashamed to serve with coffee for any guests. Fitzroy gave a slanted smile at his unflattering look of surprise, but preened happily at his praise as soon as he had finished it, beaming even more when Cliopher reached for another.
“Perhaps by the time Pali and Jullanar come to visit, I will be confident enough to ask Jullanar for her ginger biscuit recipe.” Fitzroy sounded enthusiastic about the idea. “They’ll never be as good as hers, of course, but if I could make at least something like them…” He went on for a while, waxing poetic about the famous ginger biscuits (which Cliopher had tasted and enjoyed very much, but he and Jullanar had privately agreed that Fitzroy’s fixation on them had more to do with happy memories associated with them than with them being the very best cookies in all the nine worlds).
“I hope you’re not feeling too neglected, though,” Fitzroy finished his wandering ginger biscuit-related tale, eventually. “I’ve had so much fun, but I’m sorry I haven’t had more time to spend with you.”
Cliopher smiled and sipped his coffee. “Don’t worry, I want you to have fun. I’ve been focusing on my memoir. Besides, Limerick has been keeping me company.”
Fitzroy paused. “What?”
It was Cliopher’s turn to grin at him. “Well, I couldn’t keep calling it Not-a-tiger.”
Fitzroy blinked, considered, then blinked some more, looking baffled. “I feel I must repeat myself: what?”
“Your fire-creature.” Cliopher raised his brows. “I named it Limerick.”
“Kip.” Fitzroy was beginning to look alarmed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Now it was Cliopher who was beginning to feel baffled. “You sent your fire-creature to keep an eye on me, didn’t you?”
“No, Kip, I did not!”
They stared at each other for a long moment. Then, “Show me,” Fitzroy demanded, and they were off, walking towards Cliopher’s room.
Limerick was still asleep in the bowl, now on its back with all four paws sticking up in the air, the very picture of comfort and enjoyment. They stood there just looking at it, Fitzroy looking inscrutably blank and Cliopher feeling decidedly mystified.
"I'm." Fitzroy sounded subdued. "I'm very sorry. It seems my magic has been entirely out of order." He looked up at Cliopher, golden eyes wide and apologetic. "I didn't mean to – I'm so sorry, Kip."
Alarmed, Cliopher grasped his shoulder to turn them more properly face to face. "What are you talking about, Fitzroy? I don't see why you should be sorry about anything."
Fitzroy looked distraught and embarrassed. "I – I've been letting my magic… float free, I suppose. There isn't so much for it to do around here, and it's used to working on Zunidh continuously. So I've let it float a bit, covering a small area around the house, fixing little things…"
Cliopher imagined, absurdly, a massive blanket fluttering above their house and the surrounding area like a bat. "What do you mean?" he asked, curious. He kept his hands on Fitzroy's shoulders, rubbing his skin gently with his thumbs.
His fanoa looked sheepish. "You, ah, may have noticed that the doors don't squeak anymore? The flowers are blooming more brightly? The light charm in the bathroom and the bath house no longer flickers when it comes on?" He rubbed the back of his neck. "The boards of the nearby plankway are smoother, someone who passed the house in a wheelchair with very old enchantments now has fresh enchantments on it, and the cooling charm on the cold box of the lemonade vendor out on Zaviya Square works reliably again." He looked down at Limerick. "And, it seems, my magic has also been following you around."
"You could say that," Cliopher said, puzzled. "It's been sleeping on my pillow for the last few nights."
"It has?" Fitzroy looked mortified. "Kip, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to be so – so pushy, or to ignore your boundaries like that. It's just – my magic is so very fond of you, and…"
"You didn't even know it was here?" Cliopher considered that perhaps he should be more alarmed that he lived with a mage of immense power who seemed to go entire days without having a clear idea of what his magic was doing.
Fitzroy eyed Limerick guiltily. "No, I've wrapped you in so many layers of protective enchantments that I genuinely didn't realize. I knew I had a vague sense of you working in your study, but I imagined it was the… usual connection." He cringed. "I'm making it worse. Telling you that I'm so used to being aware of you constantly that I didn't even notice an extra spell isn't exactly going to convince you that I'm not spying on you or keeping you under constant surveillance." He grimaced and reached down for the sleeping fire-creature. "I'll take care of it, don't worry."
"What?" Cliopher snatched up Limerick just before Fitzroy could touch it. The fire-creature and his fanoa both made a startled noise as he cupped it against his chest. "No, I think not! This is my tiger now. If you want one, make another one."
Fitzroy blinked at him. "Kip, that's my magic you're holding."
"Well, if you didn't send it to keep me company, it chose me on its own, so it's mine, now," Cliopher returned. He was almost certain that this was not how magic worked, but he was equally certain that he wasn't going to let Fitzroy guilt himself into feeling bad about this any more than he was about to let Fitzroy dismiss the fire-creature.
He held Limerick carefully between his palms and his chest, and heard Fitzroy's breath catch. Cliopher looked back up, ready to argue some more, and found Fitzroy staring at him with his lion eyes very soft and a little glassy.
"That's," Fitzroy started, swallowed and then went on in a slightly breathless voice, "really my magic you're holding, Kip. A piece of me. You know that, right?"
"Yes." Cliopher clutched Limerick closer mutinously, and Fitzroy sighed, almost dreamily.
"I feel warm and, well, safe, when you hug it."
“Oh.” Cliopher took a moment to panic at the implication, before deciding that Fitzroy did not look at all uncomfortable about being hugged by proxy. “Well, good.”
Fitzroy smiled a little, and then blinked again as realization struck. "You've been holding it and petting it, haven't you? That's why I’ve been feeling so cheerful and comfortable during my baking lessons."
"Well. Yes? You let me hold it on Piripiki," Cliopher protested, feeling suddenly defensive. Was it very bad manners to cuddle someone else's magic?
"I don't mind," Fitzroy replied quickly, that slightly abashed look on his face again. "It feels nice." He paused. "Kip, are you sure you don't mind? That a part of me has been staring at you even when I wasn't here?" He scowled at the fire-creature like it was an unruly child.
"No. Of course not." Cliopher deemed it safe to hold out his hands, to let Limerick sniff at Fitzroy. In all fairness, though, he felt he had to confess, "I did lock it in the drawer, once. By accident. I thought you should know, so you can make an informed decision about leaving part of your magic in my care."
Fitzroy snorted. "Trust me, if it wanted out, your drawer would not have stopped it.” He considered them, the look in his eyes at once fond and a little suspicious. “Well. If you're sure, and promise to tell me at once if it starts getting on your nerves? Or you begin to feel at all uncomfortable with it?”
“Of course,” Cliopher promised, privately certain that nothing of the sort would occur but fully aware that his fanoa needed the promise.
“Very well, then. It can stay." Limerick made a happy noise when Fitzroy finally stroked a finger down its back and leaned in to kiss it on its snout. He glanced up at Cliopher, golden eyes now full of mirth. "I do have one question, though. Limerick?"
"Well, it's tiny and amusing."
"It's terrible. Your rights to naming anything in this household are revoked indefinitely."