Millie's Garden
Millie grew up outside of the walls of the kingdom's castle. Her father would travel into the castle every day and do manual labour jobs, while her mother would do odd jobs around the village to get food and other necessities. She spent her free time in the garden, and now, as she comes-of-age, the garden has grown quite large. It brings her joy to spend time tending to it, but the family plot would never be large enough to contain her ambitions, and she dreams of bigger opportunities. Her father was able to use his connections inside the castle get her a job working in the King's kitchen, so she has been spending less time in the garden.
Today, she is up early because there is a large meal to prepare and serve. As she arrives to the kitchen, the head chef, Daniel, is in a panic. "We have lots of potatoes to peel today! The merchants are meeting for lunch, and I don't want to disappoint them!". Although Millie had only been working at the kitchen for a few weeks, she had come to expect Daniel's panicky moods. There was a large mound of potatoes in the corner and the entire kitchen staff were focused on peeling while Daniel paced around the room. She picked up a knife and started quickly whittling a potato, flicking the skins in a wide dispersion all around her. Daniel ran over to her and yelled, "Don't peel like that, you will make a mess, peel slower and into a bucket". Millie responded, "I don't want to spend all day doing this, surely we can make a mess and clean it up when we're finished". "NO! I am the head chef, I decide how you peel. This is the King's kitchen and it must be pristine!". And so, for the next few hours the entire staff peeled potatoes perfectly. The lunch was so late that the merchants left to eat at the market instead, and the kitchen's food was sent to the pigs.
Tired and exhausted, and with sore hands, she trudges back to her home outside the castle. The garden is a bit neglected; more weeds are popping up, a parasitic vine from the neighbour's yard is creeping up her tree, and a rabbit seems to be sneaking into the yard and nibbling at her plantains. Recognising that she doesn't have enough time to fix everything up before the sun sets, she snips the vine to let it die on the tree, kicks a stone into the hole in the fence to block the rabbit, and has a quick pass at some of the larger weeds, putting them in a rough pile at the side of the yard. She wakes up the next morning, and before heading to work, yanks the now wilted vine off the tree and brings it along with the weeds down to her compost pile in the creek. While down there, she notices a nice flower growing that had a wonderful, strong aroma that she hadn't seen before and quickly digs it out of the ground. She brings it up to the garden and puts it in a bucket with some wet soil. "I'll plant you later", she mutters, and then heads to the castle.
The kitchen brought a new challenge today, the pantry is out of potatoes, and Daniel was frantically trying to arrange a solution. "We need potatoes! We all need to go out to the markets today and find as many potatoes as we can. But first, I will need go to the treasury and get some coin for us". "I don't want to spend all day waiting for you and milling about the markets. We have lots of parsnips and carrots, could we adjust the menu to use those instead?", Millie asked. "No!" shouted Daniel, "I create the menus and today we are serving potatoes". The staff spend the morning waiting for Daniel to return with coin, and then they head out shopping. Most return late in the afternoon, with scant supplies to show for it. There aren't enough potatoes to serve the full guest list, so Daniel advises the King's aide to reduce the head count to avoid embarrassing the King with a paltry meal.
Exhausted again, Millie heads home. A storm had blown through during the day and many plants in the garden were damaged. She makes a quick pass at the damaged plants, trimming off the damaged flowers and sweeping the scraps out of sight under the foliage. Wanting to plant the flower she picked this morning, she grabbed her bucket and looked around the yard. The sun had set and there wasn't much light to see where to plant it. She also noticed the rabbit had moved the stone she kicked into the fence hole, and in a fit of distress and exhaustion, laughed about planting the flower near the rabbit's hole so it could have something beautiful to smell and look at while it ate her plantains. "Why not..." she gasped, and planted it near the hole. The next morning she awoke and walked into the garden fully expecting to see a new round of nibbles from the rabbits. Much to her surprise, there were none. "I guess they didn't like my gift", she chuckled before heading to work.
The kitchen is putting on a small dinner for some locals tonight, and the king will not be attending because he has just left on a brief diplomatic trip. Daniel has used this as an opportunity to take the night off and left Millie in charge. While preparing the appetiser, one of the chefs asks Millie about a problem with the salad. They don't have enough lettuce, but they have plenty of tomatoes and cucumber. "Ok, don't use the lettuce, let's just serve a cold vegetable dish with some salt and oil", Millie instructed. Another hiccup occurred during the main course when a vegetarian diner demanded an alteration to the dish which couldn't be met. Millie asks another chef to put together a quick dish using the leftovers from the appetisers. During dessert, they ran out of icing sugar, so Millie grabbed a mortar and pestle a ground up some regular sugar, dusting it on the remaining pastries. "Sugar is sugar", she chuckled with the rest of the staff. The meal went off without a hitch, and some of the diners visited the kitchen to celebrate the food and share drinks with the staff. Millie headed home long after the sun had set and entered the garden. Woo'd by its comfort and serenity, she laid down on the grass and drifted into a wonderful sleep under the stars.
Weeks pass, and Millie's experience in the kitchen, aside from that one night when Daniel was gone, could now be affirmatively cast as negative. Daniel is stubborn and authoritative and most of her's and the staff's time is spent answering his moods. While it often felt like wasted time, it wasn't without its benefits. In the brief time she has in the garden before and after work, she managed to curate it enough to attract gossip from the whole kingdom. A new flower here and there, the occasional pass at weeds, the odd trimming... It all had amounted to something very notable. At a recent dinner, Daniel overheard the king and his entourage talking about Millie's garden and returned to the kitchen, seething with jealousy. "How did you come by such notoriety? We fail so often here that you are completely unremarkable as a cook, and yet your garden attracts the attention of royalty". "It's not my garden", Millie replies cheekily, "I just tend to it".