Chương 45: Vol 1. Servant Hell: Part 1

For the last few hours, Tahir and Kurik had been arguing back and forth nonstop. The first thing Kurik did was strip Tahir bare and have the male servants come in and brush and bathe him profusely, slathering him in only the most expensive soaps and using the finest brushes at his disposal. It took at least an hour and a half of intense scrubbing, brushing, and drying before he was placed before Kurik, who examined him.

He took Tahir by the chin and turned his face towards the light, where he inspected Tahir's face with an intensity that made him look like a serial killer. After inspecting the fur beneath Tahir's eyes, then running two claws along the edge of his muzzle, he pinched a tuft of fur near his shoulder between two of his digits. He nodded disapprovingly, making little tsk-tsk-tsk noises.

"Still too coarse!" he declared.

"I agree," Tahir said.

"But… sir," one of the servants said choppily.

"We have been thoroughly scrubbing and brushing him for a good long while. Any more, and we are practically going to be taking off layers of his skin."

"Come here," Kurik said. The servant did so.

"You see this? The fur around his neck is still tangled."

"H… hardly, sir." Kurik pulled out a tiny, almost microscopic knot. He crushed it between his digits.

"That looks tangled to me."

"S-sir," one of the servants begged, "that is just one knot!"

"And one knot is the beginning of many."

"But… sir, at this rate, we won't be having dinner or going to our chambers—""I'm sorry, is your sleep more important than a fashion emergency?" The servant looked away, defeated.

"No."

"Exactly. Now, another bath!" Kurik commanded. The servants got to work, filling a second tub, heating the fires beneath it, and dropping Tahir in. As they brushed and scrubbed at him once more, Tahir's nose was overwhelmed by the smell of rose oil, mint, lavender, and other essential oils. Warm steam billowed up and clung to the ceiling while loose marigold hairs lazily drifted across the surface of the water as autumn leaves do in a pond.

Once they had finished, they put him before Kurik again, who said they needed to do more—which they did for another hour. Only then was Kurik satisfied, running his paws over the new softness of Tahir's fur. Next, they began cycling through outfits until two hours of nonstop bickering had taken place. The servants stood in a line near the wall.

Their postures remained courtly, professional, and straight, their tails and ears held in polite positions, but the expressions strewn across their visages had gradually deteriorated into uncourtliness. Dresses and skirts and tunics lay discarded across every possible surface. There was a lavender gown that hung from a hook just as a hunter hangs their hides. Three vehemently rejected bodices had been thrown across a chair. A heap of silk stockings was spilling onto the floor beneath it.

There was one servant—a poor soul, with her eyes sunken inwards and her ears flattened against her head in a way that silently said, "Please end my suffering now"—who held six pairs of shoes against her chest, their colours mushed together in a way that made them look like a ball of rainbow from a near distance.

Each outfit had been discarded for one reason or another: The first was a pale-blue dress with darker blue swirls around the hip area, which Tahir requested be torn off him immediately, for it made him resemble "a horribly cheap decorative vase you would only see the daughter of a merchant buy when trying to be decorous." The second was a deep crimson one, which the servants had been zipping up for less than thirty seconds before Kurik decried that it clashed too violently with Tahir's fur.

A gold brocade caused the pair to begin skittering and chasing each other in a manner that resembled Tom and Jerry. The moment Tahir saw himself in the mirror, his ears shot upright, and his muzzle writhed into an uncharacteristic snarl.

"Take. This. Off. Now." Kurik clasped his paws together. He tried to say sweetly, "No, wait! Hold on, give it a moment—""By the gods, I look like a window curtain!"

"A very expensive window curtain, may I add." Tahir's head was quivering in a fit of pique.

"That does not improve this matter!"

"Now, wait, let me…" Kurik attempted to adjust the sash, only for Tahir to slap his paws away and begin searching for the fastenings himself. Kurik skittered behind him, attempting to stop him from undoing the lacing, and the two began to get into a wrestling match—one just as noble and filled with honour as Morton and Korra's duel, I'm sure! Tahir broke free, and the two started to run in circles, knocking into things and pushing over chairs.

"Will you stop moving?" Kurik shouted.

"Stop trying to dress me like furniture!"

"You said a window curtain earlier!" Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

"That I did!"

"Window curtains are not furniture!"

"That is beside the point." The two went back into a ball of fur.

"Come on, it emphasizes your waist!"

"So would just tying a rope and loincloth around me!" The servants watched them complete their revolutions around the room.

"Vikura," one of the servants said to another.

"Yes?" Vikura said.

"We aren't going to be going back to our chambers tonight, are we?"

"Most likely not," Vikura said.

"May Seroth help us." Eventually, Tahir caught the brocade by the collar and quickly dragged it over his head. He threw it at Kurik.

"Burn it."

"We are not burning it."

"Then bury it somewhere—anywhere. Throw it into the sea. Just make sure no one has the indecency to ever look at that thing again." The white bodice made Tahir look too young, said Kurik. The light-pink, form-fitting one was far too sexually provocative, said Tahir. The [this], the [that], this-that-this-that-this— When Tahir had rejected the seventeenth outfit, one servant's ears lowered fully.

Swiftly, another servant ran up to him holding a cup of water and began patting him on the back, saying, "We can get through this… we always do." Finally, Kurik brought out one final outfit. He apologized profusely, saying he was sorry for how plain it was, before getting the servants to fasten the dress on Tahir. Tahir looked at himself in the mirror. It was, as Kurik said, a dreadfully plain dark green, tight around his waist, then flowing around his legs.

Scattered around it were a couple of shallow pockets, though for what, Tahir could not say. He opened his mouth, ready to find some defect that Kurik had overlooked, but nothing came out. The dress did not make him look younger than he was; it did not make him look like a Serothtine ornament, nor was it overly decorous. No, there really were few faults. It was…

"Ugh, I… actually," Kurik began, placing his hands on Tahir's shoulders.

"I actually like the colour… oh, but it is just so, so dreadfully plain. Perhaps there are some alterations I could make, like…"

"No," Tahir interrupted.

"Do not change anything. I like this one." Somewhere behind them, a servant released a tiny, trembling sigh of relief. Kurik blinked.

"I… this one?" Tahir smoothed the fabric around his stomach. The wool was warm and soft beneath his pads.

"Yeah, I feel as though the subdued nature of it stands out against the rest of my form. It does not appear to be trying so desperately." Kurik stepped around Tahir, looking him up and down. The dress was made from dark angora wool, woven and dyed by the Urita Elvin Tribe near the western border of their territory. Trade with them was one of the few legitimate commerce routes between the elves and the Kharani, which only increased the material's rarity.

The wool of their domesticated rabbits was, bar none, among the comfiest and warmest, even more so than sheep's wool. The bodice fit snugly beneath Tahir's ribs, narrowing around his small waist before the skirt fell in long, clean folds around his legs. Its neckline revealed a tasteful sliver of chest, not too flirtatious and inviting, and not too prudish and over-modest. There were no embroidered images, flowers, religious symbols, etc.

; no silver thread ran through it, and there were definitely no decorative pearls—only a row of buttons and several shallow pockets placed about. Then Kurik said, "My, you are not wrong! With how plain it is, and how dark it is against your brilliant fur, it just makes your gorgeous face shine! Oh, you're a genius, Your Highness."

"You know, you do not need to call me by honorifics. I am fine with just Prince Tahir."

"Oh, yeah, sorry. Yeah, I was not born into royalty, so I grew up always being taught how to address them, you know? Plus, I know that Korra would have my tail if I did not use respectful language." Tahir flicked an ear in acknowledgment.

"I suppose that is usually the safer bet. Then I suppose I should call you Consort?"

"I… I suppose so, yeah," Kurik said.

"Though very few people actually ever call me that; it is usually just the more generic 'Sir Kurik,' and, of course, Korra calls me 'husband,' 'darling,' or 'I swear to the Great Mother, Kurik, I will flay you alive.'" Tahir flicked an ear.

"Do you often get that threat?" Kurik shrugged.

"Only when I make her mad."

"And how often is that?"

"Pretty often."

"And why do you make her mad so often?" Tahir asked earnestly. Kurik looked at him for a moment, then grinned.

"Well, it is just our love language. Korra is a hard-ass woman, very stern, very formal. The Seran family is part of a long line of warriors, you know, with many, many, many of them being members of the Queen's Guard. And she really inherited that personality from her mother, I think, you know, back when her mother had a personality. But fighting and teasing… that is just our love language."

"I do not understand," Tahir said.

"How can domestic violence be a love language?"

"Oh, no, no, no, it is nothing like that; it is just… well, we both are fine with it. It is how our personalities mesh, you know? I… love is a complicated thing." Tahir flicked one ear and let out a sad little chuckle.

"Yeah, love." Wanting to change the subject, he slipped two claws into one of the pockets.

"You know, what are these for, Consort Kurik?" Kurik looked at what he was referring to.

"Oh, well… things?"

"What things?"

"You know, practical things."

"Such as what? Keeping three-quarters of a cough rag?"

"Prince Tahir, you know, in Seroth's holy name, the reason they never give men pockets."

"I wish I did not," Tahir grumbled. Kurik looked over Tahir's dress one last time and grinned. He put his hands on his hips and said, "Excellent. Now that we have that sorted out, we only need to select the earrings, necklace, bracelets, rings, hair ornaments, sash; we've got to get your makeup sorted and—" They stared at each other.

"We have chosen nothing, have we?"

"Practically nothing, no." One of the servants placed her paws against her face and quietly sobbed. And thus, the bickering began once more.