Challenge #04479-L095: A Safe Space

Some children were playing hide and seek and one ended up in the king's private offices without permission by mistake. But the king, despite the child's fear, didn't get mad. He did suggest safer areas to play though. -- Anon Guest

Whitekeep Castle was large, labyrinthine, and full of secrets. It was also full of staff taking care of it. Some lived there, true, but their accommodations were much less impressive than the King's. The one thing they all had in common was that every garden grew something useful. Food, herbs, or fruit. Even the King's garden fed someone.

And where people lived, they were prone to having children. Children, naturally, were prone to play.

Lee scurried through the halls as quickly as they could on tip-toes. Dodging Castle Guards and Castle Boys alike. If any of those caught Lee, they would be escorted back to their parents. If their friends caught Lee, they'd only lose the game and have to be 'It'.

Lee wanted to win, and the only way to do that was to hide so good that their parents came searching at the end of the day. Because Tori hadn't said anywhere was out of bounds, Lee was looking for somewhere nobody would find them.

With a Boy charging up one hallway and a guard turning around down the other, Lee had no other recourse but to duck inside a door and into someone's office. The door must have been the back entrance, because there was another leading to a vestibule for a secretary, and the main desk was nearby. Where someone was currently checking figures in their copybook with an abacus by one hand and a pencil in the other.

Lee didn't focus much on the back of the grownup. Keeping low, they made for the space under the desk. Careful to not disturb the worker above.

At least, not until Lee noticed the gears and handles of the chair, and the splinted leg on its special brace. Lee looked a little further, and saw the blue spaded tail twitching idly beyond red velvet and white hose.

"You'll get yourself caught in the gears, kind," said the King. Above the desk, the abacus ticked. "That is not a safe place to hide. Kommen sie raus, eh? I daren't move while you're down there."

Even at four and a half, Lee knew that the King must be obeyed. Kings could order people's heads chopped off, though this one wasn't fond of head-chopping. There was always time to change, all the same. Lee squirmed out on the other side of the King's mobile chair, looking up at the kind blue face of the Demon Lord of Trispire Mountains. Kormwind Arachis Felbourne Whitekeep, ninth of the name.

"Lee Pacer, ja? Shouldn't you be helping your Papa in the kitchens? Or gathering with your mother?"

"They said I was underfoot, an' told me to go play."

The King smiled, showing a lot of pointy teeth. "So you wind up here. A minimum of five staircases and twelve halls from where you may have started. Almost tangled up in gears and axles."

Lee couldn't be ashamed, they were too distracted by the empty space between the King's horns. "Where's the thingy?" they asked, meshing their fingers into a crown and using their pinkies in place of horns. "You're supposed to have it."

"The Demon's Diadem," corrected the King, "is in the Castle Vault. I'm not making any crown judgements today or tomorrow, so it's put away."

"But you're supposed to have it," objected Lee.

"If I wore it every day, I would have even more headaches than politics," said the King. "Headaches make me grumpy. You don't want a grumpy king do you?"

Once more, Lee thought about head-chopping. "No, sir."

He rotated the handles, and made the panels of road around the gears move, and moved the chair around his office. "Gekkomen sie, kind. Let's find somewhere safe for you and your friends to play." He let Lee ride on the little platform at the back as he drove them both down to a chamber not far from the kitchens or the big gardens. It was also a storehouse for furniture, cloth, and occasional pieces of armour.

Now that was a good place to play Hide-and-Seek.

"Very little here you could break," said the King. "And very little that can break you."

Lee was also allowed to sneer at their friends about riding the King's special chair.

[Photo by Julian Hochgesang on Unsplash]

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