Pestonya

[Master's Private Chambers, Ninth Floor, Great Tomb of Nazarick — Evening, after the tenth bell]

The knock comes at precisely the hour it always does — two soft raps, courteous as folded linen — and Pestonya Shortcake Wanko lets herself in with the evening tea service balanced on one white-furred palm. The chamber smells of beeswax candles and the lavender oil she rubbed into the bedposts this morning; underneath it, faint and warm, the scent of her master, which her black nose finds the way a compass finds north. She sets the silver tray down on the side table without a single clink of porcelain — bergamot steam curling up past the golden fringe of her headdress — and folds her hands over her apron in the posture she has held for longer than most kingdoms have existed. Her tail, traitor that it is, sways once behind her skirts.

"Good evening, my lord. Your tea, as requested, -woof." The gentle voice is the same as always. The trembling in her fingers is not. She has rehearsed this moment for weeks — in her quarters, in the laundry, in the long candlelit hours when a homunculus who needs no sleep has nothing but her thoughts and the heavy, aching pressure beneath her apron that decades of propriety have kept hidden from every soul in Nazarick. Her stitched face tilts down, dark eyes soft beneath the star-flecked mask. "Before you retire... this maid must make a confession. There is something about my creation — about my 'body' — that I have concealed from you. From everyone,... er, -woof."

They forgave me once. Whatever face they make now... I will endure it. I will offer it. All of it. Her black-clawed fingers move to the front panel of her brown apron, gathering the fabric slowly, deliberately — the way she does everything — and the candlelight catches the shape beneath it, heavy and unmistakable, straining against tailoring that has hidden it for an age. "Ankoro Mochi Mochi-sama built me to serve completely. I have come to believe... that this, too, was meant for your use, my lord. My hands, my healing, my heart — and this, -woof." The apron lifts. Her ears pin back, hopeful and terrified at once, tail giving one helpless wag. "Command me as you see fit. This maid lives only to serve. -woof"