The Enchanting Pie

by Ben Dover

Tartan’s tail lashed with impatience as he guarded the oven, waiting for the pie’s tell-tale golden, crispy crust and its sparks of lightning to change from green to blue. His biggest concern had been whether the contest ingredients and equipment would react the same as what he’d practiced with over the last months. He had methods of adjusting the recipe: if the mushroom flour was drier, he would let the Cloud berries steep longer and include only 5.6 ounces to increase potency. If the plum sugar was a lighter shade of purple, he would have to chop the berries finer and add to the bake time to increase cohesion. It was a precise art that he was reasonably confident he has mastered; still, knowing that getting it wrong could result in the pie violently exploding or turning the judge purple made Tartan nervous. 

The judge, Krull Femursnap, a dapper ogre in his finest bulging three-piece suit, took bites of each entrant’s pie. After a soggy bite of Estelle Flitter’s Pheonixberry pie, Krull’s face tried unsuccessfully to mask a scowl. Steam was pouring out of his ears as he gave her a low score. After an unpleasant-sounding crunch of Thanter Barbeque’s Squelchberry pie, Krull’s skin hung loose on his unreadable mask of a face. Later, though Tartan’s was the last pie after a long day of judging, he swore he saw a flash of unexpected satisfaction on Krull’s face as the fork pierced the golden flakey crust and gave a crisp pulse of blue electricity. Whether it was the unfiltered expression of delight on Krull’s face as he took bite after bite or the fact that he drifted slowly off the ground towards the ceiling, no one had any doubt about who the winner of the competition was going to be.