A pie for Rupold

(Late, as always, but here's the sequel to my previous Sunday Scribbling, The New Leaf).

The shimmering dust slipped out between her claws like a tiny, sunlit waterfall.
- Yes, Adalee said.
When Cander’s eyes widened, she added: - Yes, it’s true. It’s a diamond crust.
Cander recovered quickly.
- Goodness, she said, leaning closer while she twirled her whiskers between rapid, bony fingers. – I’ve never heard of a pie coated with diamonds before. Won’t it hurt your belly?
- They’re not real diamonds, silly, they’re ground up diamond apple seeds.
- Still pretty, though.
Adalee carefully covered the last of the pastry with the sparkling powder and wiped her paws on her apron.
- Anyway, it’s not for sale.
- Oh, Cander said, then fell silent. Adalee picked up a thin brush, dipped it silvermelt and commenced painting the stem of the crowning cherries. A muted wave of laughter seeped in through the door to the common room. There was quite a crowd every evening these days. Maybe people needed to talk to make sense of things. They even had a name for the horrid little alarms leaves now. Snitcher vine. Cute.
- That’s a shame. I bet it’s worth a fortune. I think it’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever made, Cander said at last. Adalee fixed the cherries to the top of the pie with a spot of burnished caramel and stepped back. It was, at that. A perfect, pale crust with just the right golden blush at the edges. Sweet and tart fruit within. And around the plump, blood red cherries, a cover of diamond grains sparkling demurely like fresh, cold snow. Pretty? Pretty was not the right word. The pie looked like a star plucked out of the night sky.
- I bet Odar will want you to make more, then. Yesterday, he had to kick out a nasty piracat who threw a fit when there wasn’t any diamond apple pie. Said he’d come all the way from Broken and wouldn’t leave without. Odar wouldn’t have it and fetched his great mallet. But I bet he’ll want you to make more.
- There won’t be any more diamond apple pies. Not after this one.
- But Adalee…
- I only had the one apple.
And how she wished never had turned back to pick it up. It was only one apple, forgotten in the middle of the path in the middle of the skirmish, not worth risking her life for. But it seemed such a waste. She didn’t know that there was an opening in the fence right there, nor that the moonlight was bright enough to see across the yard. Adalee eased the pie onto a delicate silver plate. Odar’s finest. He would be furious when he heard she’d taken it, but that didn’t matter much.
- I’m going out, she said and untied her apron. She felt Cander’s eyes on her back as she stepped through the kitchen door and out into the crisp autumn dark.
The streets were empty as she snuck toward the huge, overgrown fence that separated the Freeground from the Farm. Only one apple, only one pie, and only one looter headed for the Jewel Gardens, for the house on the hill and the barn behind it, and the lonely, scruffy shape nailed to its wall.
- Yes, she whispered softly, as if speaking to the softly gleaming masterpiece. – That’s the word they’re all dying to hear, isn’t it. Is it true, is it true, did you really see it, is your heart broken now? Well. Never mind them. But you did ask me if I would save you some pie if you saved me first, Rupold.
She covered the pie with a piece of dark cloth and bent down to slip through a hole in the fence.
- And I think we both know the answer to that.