“Adiradeth!” The little wooden creature yells from across the lively banquet, meeting not his desired ears but all those nearby. A few finely dressed men look to their companions to measure their distaste, in which a few respond by kicking the poor servant a few feet away into the crowd. 

Adiradeth stands to her feet a little off-kilter. “If you’ll excuse me, friends, I believe my Bauble has just been unwillingly propelled across the room,” she says, not making eye contact but instead adjusting her dress and the several coiling snake heads embroidered into it. Her eyes flash pink as she walks forward into the fray, traversing directly toward her tentative friend but primarily servant. 

“Well? Quicken it up, Bauble,” she demands under her breath. 

The bead-covered, finely decorated, and dark-brown automaton focuses intently on the two spilled glasses between a woman’s heels. 

He forces the glasses to mend in mid-air and refill with a violet mixture, floating them gently towards the awaiting hands of Adiradeth. 

“Thank you, Bauble, now come! I’ve a few friends that wish to meet such a creature. And you can teach these rowdy serpents they pay for what they bite,” she says, jolting her finely curled, deep-purple hair toward where she came. 

During the walk, Bauble does as he’s told and uses his psychic magic to calm the many serpents along her dress. 

“Oh! This is the little fella you mentioned,” a gentleman on an exquisite couch exclaims, nearly letting the last of his violet drink leave his manicured mouth in surprise. “You’re the one to have slain The Great Mother Martha?”

“That’s him alright,” Adiradeth answers, sitting back down and handing him another glass.

“Gods above, I had always known she wouldn’t go willingly, but I would never have thought something under… what – two feet? Would do it? Let alone one of her own creations.” He says. 

A woman in a similarly alive dress, although with ladybugs adorning, straightens on her side of the couch. “This is one of her earlier designs, though, no?”

“Yes, the sixth or so, I believe,” Adiradeth answers.

“Remarkable ironwood construction; you can see the magic pulsate. They were always so vigorous and pungent compared to the later ones.” The lady says, bending down to scratch Bauble with an extended fake nail. 

“What is he to you now?” The gentleman questions, staring at his wife’s nail as it breaks in half from the rough ironwood. 

“Well, Morose Lightfeather, Bauble is functionally my servant nowadays, much like he was to my… mother. But affectionately, he is my companion and friend. I had always felt bad for his lot in life until he took it into his own hands to alter his fate. Now, well, in our off-time, we traverse the continents as he searches for his scattered brethren and I, my foreign hexes, you know,” she says through bitter lips.

“That is very interesting! And if a little courageous for such a little guy, aha…,” his voice trails off nervously. “You know, now that I think about it, I believe a business partner of mine once saw one of these come through his shop the other day!”

Bauble uses the recoil and diverted attention of Mrs. Lightfeather to shine his eyes deep pink, making her sputter and squabble until she falls over unconscious into the lap of her husband. “What! What has... Wha–” Morose tries to get out through the gurgling violet liquid in his mouth. 

“Just go to sleep, Mr. Lightfeather. Don’t even try to fight it,” Adiradeth warns in a soft, controlled tone. 

Bauble quickly follows his eyes as they shut, and his head falls atop his wife’s. Then, he focuses on his bejewelled right pinky ring, pulling it off and holding it aloft.

 Adiradeth plucks it gingerly from the air, placing a hand on Morose’s shoulder. 

The four of them vanish from sight, leaving only a gust of wind filling the space they once occupied.