The Skillet and the Dragon Priest

 

The Skillet and the Dragon Priest

Here—pull your chairs closer to the hearth. The wind snakes under the door on nights like this, and the stones hold the cold if you let them. There’s stew enough for all, cider warming gentle in the back of the fire, and bread on the board. You’ve come a fair way to reach Suncrest, and you’re welcome at the Golden Apple Inn.

Do you see that skillet hanging on the hook over the flame? Black as a storm cloud, handle still wearing a stubborn stripe of red lacquer despite a lifetime of scrubbing? Aye. That old pan has turned more suppers than I’ve had birthdays, and I’m an honest man about my years. It’s iron and it’s memory, and it’s the reason I still believe a shared meal can turn despair into courage.

If you’ve a mind for a story, I’ll give it to you whole—no chapters, no breaks, the way a long winter evening ought to be filled. It begins when I was a boy with a scarf twice ’round my face to catch a cough I could not shake. We were three: my father Jeth, my mother Mira, and me, Revi Tarn, small as a fence post and just as stubborn. We had walked farther than wisdom would advise because we had nothing left where we’d been, and nothing waits kindly for a family with nothing.

Winter had teeth that year. The orchard hills went quiet under a crust of white and stayed that way. Frost laced the bare branches in the mornings like cobweb silver, wrong and spiteful, and the Starlight Pippins went queer on the boughs—fruit tasting of winter when winter hadn’t rightfully earned it. My father slipped in the north rows trying to beat the blight and came down on his ankle hard enough to make a sailor curse. You see him limp when I remember him because that’s how the season took him. We sold the mule to keep the fire eating and the wolves out of our thoughts. When the coin ran low and the cupboards thinner, we turned toward Cobblecrest to try our luck. Suncrest lay halfway, a bright rumor of ciders and warmth, and that rumor saved us.

We came through this very door with snow melting in our boot seams, and the room turned its eyes as rooms do when strangers bring winter in with them. The Golden Apple has always been a place of laughter, but laughter goes quiet when hunger crosses the threshold. I knew even then that pride is a heavy coat—my father wore it like armor and my mother wore it like a weight—and neither of them had hands free to catch me when I stumbled in the doorway looking at pies cooling on the counter.

Mistress Anabelle Pippin ran the inn then. If you’re from around here you know the name; if you’re not, you’ll know the woman by the end of this bowl of stew. She was halfling height and mountain-hearted, rosy-cheeked with eyes like pins—sharp enough to tack your excuse to the wall. I thought she was carved from applewood: polished, sturdy, and likely to rap a set of knuckles that got too near the honey jar. She could fill a doorway without filling the lintel, and she loved this town the way a beekeeper loves their hives—fiercely and with a smoker in reach.

She looked up from her ledger and didn’t ask what we needed—she could already see it written plain enough in our faces.
“Sit,” she said, and when my father hesitated, she added, “that wasn’t a question, love. Cobb, mind your bulk. And if anyone objects to a family keeping warm in my house, I’ll educate them with a ladle.”

Her voice could butter bread from across the room. She cleared space like a general shifting troops and set us near the fire where the heat might argue our shivers down. Then she bustled away and returned with a round of bread and three mugs of steaming cider. She set them firmly on the table.

“Here. Fill your bellies enough to chase the frost off,” she said. “The stew’s not yet ready, but you’ll not wait empty-handed.”

The bread was coarse but honest, the cider hot and spiced just enough to warm the throat. My cough softened under the steam. I held the mug like a treasure, sipping slow, careful not to lose a drop. My mother’s hands shook as she broke the bread for us, but she smiled as if the warmth had already given her back something she thought was lost.

Anabelle lingered just long enough to give us a sharp-eyed once-over, then turned back toward the kitchen. Over her shoulder she called to the room, “We’ve had a mean harvest, but Suncrest hasn’t yet learned the trick of letting folk starve within arm’s reach of cider.”

The talk had started up again around us—old Farmer McGregor on about a silver flower left by thieves no bigger than your hand, Cobb arguing the proper angle to roll barrels, Mara Wren tuning her fiddle with the patience of a saint—when the door opened once more and let a bite of night through. The room didn’t fall silent so much as it remembered something, and all the talk folded softer.

A dragonborn stepped under the lintel. Steel-grey scales caught the firelight and kept it, and if you’ve never seen one of his kind you might think they arrive breathing smoke and thunder. Some do, I’ve heard. But this one carried quiet like a lantern—steady, warm, and with a glow that softened the room. His cloak was powdered with road dust, and at his chest rested a simple holy symbol: twin scales in balance, the mark of Bahamut. His gaze swept the inn, not claiming it, simply observing where the weight lay. His eyes lingered on my father’s ankle as though they had already measured its hurt.

“I greet you,” he said, voice low as a hymn. “I am Draxan Lightbringer, servant of the Platinum Dragon. The Path set my feet here, and I am grateful for your fire.”

Anabelle Pippin lifted one brow so fine you could embroider with it. “If the Path led you to my hearth, it can lead you to the woodpile too,” she said, brisk as ever. “You’ll find no shortage of bellies around here. Hungry, priest?”

“I am,” Draxan admitted with a small, unshowy smile. He paused, considering the room before speaking again. “But before I take from your table, allow me to give thanks with more than words. If you will permit, I would prepare something for your hearth. Not as intrusion, but as gratitude. A prayer can be spoken—but I believe it is stronger when shared.”

That earned murmurs under the rafters. A priest offering to cook? Suncrest folk were practical to the bone, but faith came in many shapes, and this one was new.

Anabelle crossed her arms, eyes sharp, testing him like she’d test the worth of apples at market. “My kitchen’s no chapel. What makes you think your hands belong there?”

Draxan bowed his head, not proud, not timid. “Because I’ve walked many roads, mistress, and every one of them taught me this: a meal given to the weary is as holy as any sermon. If you’d rather, I’ll carry wood or mend what’s broken. But if you allow it, I’d place my thanks in a pan and share it.”

Something softened in her then, though she would never admit it plain. The corner of her mouth twitched, not quite a smile, more the shadow of one. “Well, then,” she said. “But if you scorch my stewpot or crack a handle, priest, I’ll make you pay for it in ledger-work until your scales dull.”

A chuckle rippled through the room.

Draxan inclined his head with the gravity of a knight accepting a charge. “Then I’ll tread carefully.” He moved toward the kitchen not like a conqueror but a guest, steps measured, shoulders lowered as if mindful of the rafters and the eyes upon him.

He passed his hand over the pots and ladles hanging from their hooks, not choosing the shiniest nor the newest. Instead, his gaze rested on an old cast-iron skillet, its black iron seasoned by years of smoke and fire, its handle still bearing a chipped coat of red lacquer. It was the pan every cook trusted when nothing else seemed steady.

He lifted it with care and set it on the hearthstone. For a long moment he studied it, the way a craftsman regards an elder’s tools. His voice was quiet, almost to himself but clear enough for the room to catch.

“Every hearth has its memory. This pan has seen more suppers than any one hand alive. In kitchens like this, the skillet is the true master, the true chef.”

He laid a clawed hand gently on the rim, bowed his head, and spoke softly—words meant only for the iron itself.

“Yes, chef.”

It was not spell or boast but acknowledgment: that this skillet had borne more meals than any person, that it had carried warmth through winters and fed mouths in want, that it had already done more good in its life than many sermons could claim.

The room hushed without being told. Even Anabelle, arms crossed at the kitchen door, tilted her head slightly as if to hear better. Then, after a pause, she gave a short snort.

“Never thought I’d see the day my old pan outranked me,” she said. But her eyes stayed fixed on the skillet, and her voice carried more respect than jest.

Then Draxan worked. He set bacon ends to crisp, and they gave up their fat with a happy hiss. Apples went in sliced thick enough to hold their dignity. Onions followed, sweetening as they met the heat. Bread toasted in the drippings until its edges browned and curled. He pinched salt like a blessing and added cider with a hiss that made the inn’s rafters smell of autumn. A ribbon of dark honey followed, molasses-rich, and a crack of pepper crowned it. 

The skillet glowed faintly at the edges, not hot alone but with something remembered—something more than iron and fire. The smell filled the Golden Apple, and every conversation slowed, then softened, then stilled. My stomach growled loud enough to draw laughter from men who hadn’t laughed in a week.

When the food was ready, Draxan did not portion it. He carried the skillet itself to the trestle, heavy and gleaming, and set it in the center. The firelight kissed the iron, and steam rose like incense.

“Food,” he said simply. “The kind that remembers you.”

Anabelle shot him a look that might have meant don’t get poetic in my dining room, priest, but her mouth softened at the corners. She handed a spoon to my mother.

My father ate like a man who had been bargaining with his own hunger and finally agreed to terms. My mother took slow bites at first as if her jaw had forgotten, then small quick ones as if she were afraid the bowl would vanish. And I—well, I laughed. Not because anyone made a joke, but because warmth went all the way down and found a place it had missed and the relief of it made sound. I remember Draxan hearing that laugh and turning his head slightly, and there was a look in his eyes like he’d just remembered a prayer he loved.

Bowls went hand to hand. People who had come in muttering about barrels or bees found their talk loosening around the hinge of that meal. The room did not go holy—Anabelle wouldn’t have allowed it—but it paused in the right places. Draxan took a plate last and ate with the contented quiet of a man who has seen grand tables and knows the better of them.

When the skillet had been scraped and the pan lay bare except for a memory of bread stuck in the corner like a stubborn thought, the inn exhaled. Then something happened that I have seen only a handful of times, and every time it has changed something that needed changing.

Generosity found its feet.

It didn’t stand up and make a speech. It stood in the voice of Old Widder Bran’s neighbor who said, “Bran passed with the first frost. His mule and cow have sat too long in a barn only mice visit. It hurts me to see it. If this family will have them, we can yoke hope to a little muscle.”

Cobb, who plays at being gruff like a child plays at being fierce, cleared his throat. “My cart’s been lazin’ under the hazel lane. It’ll roll that way in the morning, and I’ll roll with it. And I’ll lift the heavy end of whatever needs lifting if it keeps the lad laughing.”

Mara Wren, fiddle tucked under her arm, said, “I’ve two blankets my Aunt Tessa knit back before we were born. They’ve got more warmth than memories left in them and I mean to spend both.”

McGregor harrumphed and said it only because the cider had loosened him: “The bees can spare the dark honey. And if this boy can keep quiet for five minutes together, I’ll teach him the hum that keeps them gentle.” He looked at me when he said it. I tried to look like a boy who could keep quiet for four minutes in a row and made it to three.

A handful called out for seed barley—I remember the sound the sacks made when they thumped against the floor the next day as clear as I remember my own breath now. Someone promised kindling. Someone else, a side of pork not yet salted but worth the risk. Anabelle didn’t offer anything aloud because she knew the place itself was already on the table, but she banged a spoon against the skillet once, hard, and the clang sounded like a bell you ring to call your people home.

Draxan had sat quietly through all of it, and when the last offer had been made and the room’s courage had settled into the shape of plans, he rose. He walked to my father not as a hero and not as a savior but as a man adding one more right thing to a room full of them. He knelt—not slowly, not with show—but as if his knees had been waiting to do it all night. He put his hands around my father’s ankle where the swelling showed ugly above the boot.

“Bahamut blesses bread and muscle both,” he said, voice low enough that it felt like a secret told to be kept. “We’ve filled your bellies. Let mercy finish the work it began.”

No light split the rafters. No trumpet announced what followed. It felt, and that is the only word I trust here, right. My father hissed between his teeth, then let out the breath he’d been holding since the fall. His foot flexed careful, then with more faith than caution. The pain didn’t vanish; it put down some of what it had been carrying. He wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand like a man who would prefer to be caught in the rain than in tears, and my mother, who had run out of words when we came through the door, said, “Thank you,” with a care that made the words a deed.

Anabelle sniffed as if something had blown ash toward the kitchen, and banged the spoon again on the skillet. “This pan stays,” she said. “And so does this lesson: we are at our best when the stew is shared before it is asked for.”

Draxan turned his head toward the hearth. His holy symbol rested quietly against his breastbone. He looked at the skillet and inclined his head one last time, a soldier’s courtesy given to a steadfast friend. “Yes, chef,” he murmured so softly I might have imagined it if the iron hadn’t answered in the way iron does—by holding heat a breath longer than it ought to.

The next morning the promises put on boots. Cobb’s cart took the dew-lane under the hazel, and he swore at the ruts with a patience I learned was affection in disguise. The mule and cow were led like reluctant dignitaries from Bran’s barn, and my father laid his hand on the mule’s neck and wept into its mane when he thought no one was looking. McGregor put a brood box in our yard and showed me the difference between bees that mind their business and bees that have been told it’s time to mind someone else’s. He made me hum, and I failed at quiet, and the bees forgave me because I forgave them for putting their feet on my fingers. Seed sacks went into our hands, and a side of pork went into our pantry. 

Cider went into our cellar because winter doesn’t care if your heart is warm when your bones are cold.

Draxan stayed three days, which felt like a year and an hour together. He cut wood like a man who had learned how from someone he respected. He mended a fence post with my father, the two of them talking in the way men do when the work gives them an excuse to say things that matter. He prayed at the little roadside shrine on the east lane without asking if anyone wanted to watch. He ate what Anabelle set before him and remembered people’s names the first time and the last. When he left, he told my mother that the Platinum Dragon liked kitchens better than altars that forgot hungry people, and my mother did the dangerous thing of believing a priest.

As for me, I came back to the inn the day after we were given the mule and cow, and then the day after that, and then nearly every day there was a reason to come and many days when the reason was only that I had learned the smell of this place and it smelled like safety. Anabelle let me sweep because she liked her floors cleaner than her ledgers, and then she let me fetch wood because I could be trusted with sticks, and then she made me stir when the pan was on the fire. She never once said, “This skillet is special,” because she had sense and she knew that calling a thing sacred is an easy way to keep people from using it. She said, “Mind the heat,” and, “Salt until your shoulders believe it,” and, “Food is not finished until the room has gone quiet once.” She smacked my fingers with the spoon when they went where they didn’t belong and praised me with silence when I did something right, which is the kind of approval a boy treasures more than coin.

I watched that skillet like a sailor watches sky. It taught me how bread sounds when it is ready to turn. It taught me where the pan keeps its heat and where it shares it. It taught me that apples forgive more mistakes than onions and that bacon forgives almost none. And when I grew bold enough to lay my hand lightly on the rim before I cooked, I said, “Yes, chef,” and didn’t meaningfully understand it and said it anyway. Sometimes the iron kept the heat a heartbeat longer and sometimes it didn’t, and I learned that miracles are not for summoning but for recognizing.

We weathered that winter with grace borrowed from our neighbors, then paid back in sweat and careful counting. My father’s ankle healed into a better shape than we’d feared—he never ran a race afterward, but he walked a field with a stride that didn’t shame him. My mother’s laugh returned by inches until it was the sound I measure comfort by still. In spring we planted with seed that had been in other hands first, and in summer we watched rows come green where frost had argued there would be none. In autumn we carried bushels that felt like benedictions. We boxed jars of honey darker than a night without a moon and brought two to the inn because gratitude is a language you must keep in practice or it forgets you.

From then on, the Golden Apple was more than a place to us. I found myself drawn back day after day, not just for the warmth of its hearth but for the welcome that waited there. Anabelle let me sweep because she liked her floors cleaner than her ledgers, then fetch wood because I could be trusted with sticks, and at last stir the pan when it was on the fire. She never once said, “This skillet is special,” because she knew better than to put holy words on iron. She simply taught me to mind the heat, salt until my shoulders believed it, and listen for the silence that tells you a meal has done its work.

She was not soft, and if you thought she was stubborn you weren’t listening. She had a mind like a ledger and a heart like a hearth, and either one will burn you if you are careless. She missed nothing. She knew when McGregor lied about how much mead he’d sampled before he arrived. She knew when Cobb would apologize before he knew it himself. She knew when a young boy who coughed in winter needed the first bowl from the pan and the best piece of bread, and she made it look like she was simply doing her job. 

I learned the songs of this room—the scrape of chairs, the clatter of dice, the crack of wood settling, the fiddle finding its note, the long sigh a room makes when a story earns it. I learned the names of the people who spoke up when it mattered and the ones who held their tongue until someone else gave them permission to be kind. I learned what courage tastes like: onion sweetened by apple, meat given up to fat, bread toasted in a pan that remembers too much.

Years wore on. The Apple Harvest Festival came and went with its contests that mean everything and nothing, and the Golden Apple’s sign was polished until it caught dusk and held it. I grew into my limbs and then past them. My father let me make decisions about rows and grafts and my mother let me make decisions about jars and lids, and both pretended they didn’t see me making decisions about coming to the inn every afternoon whether there was a reason or not.

People came to Suncrest with stories and left with different ones. Some things followed them: the rumor about tiny winged thieves with glowing eyes who hummed like hives, the memory of a mead that put courage in the knees, the tale of the skillet that made a meal into a blessing if you treated it like a partner and not a tool. Draxan walked the Pilgrim’s Path and came through town twice more in my youth. He never sat in the center of the room. He took the corner nearest the door and listened as if he were measuring a room’s heartbeat. He cooked once each visit, and each time he laid his hand on the iron and said those three words, and each time the room went quiet exactly once, which is how you know something true has happened.

If you want to claim a miracle ended with one night’s meal and a priest’s quiet hands, you can say so and I won’t fight you. If you ask me, the miracle never ended. It only put different clothes on—sometimes a sack of seed, sometimes a steadying hand on a ladder, sometimes a pan that refuses to burn a stew when you’ve been pulled to the door three times by gossip and twice by need and once by a fiddle that found a reel you can’t help but dance to. Bahamut’s blessing of hospitality, we called it because we like names that reckon with the sacred when it visits, but it was Suncrest’s blessing too: we learned how to be ourselves more fully.

Time does what time does. Anabelle grew older and no softer—she was soft enough when she began. She taught me everything she believed could be taught and made me learn the rest by watching. She trusted me with the ledger before she trusted me with the honey jar, which is sense, and she trusted me with the skillet before she trusted me with the cider fire, which is kindness. When she died—and even telling it now makes my hands want to find something useful to do—she went with her apron folded and her mind made up. She left the inn to me because I had already been carrying it, and she left me the skillet because she had already left me its lessons. She wrote a note that said, “Don’t say ‘no’ to help when the room offers it. Say ‘yes, chef’ to the pan and ‘yes’ to the people,” and I have tried to live in those two yesses since.

My parents lived to see our orchard bear right again. My father’s limp turned into a story rather than a hindrance. My mother’s hair silvered in the way that looks like moonlight found a home. We put their names on the first row we harvested each season and poured the first cups of cider to the ground under those trees because gratitude needs to touch dirt as often as it touches tongues. I married late and well and lost earlier than sense would allow; that is another night’s telling. Children came through this room who had no business calling me anything but “sir,” and I let more than a few call me “uncle” when they needed to.

And the skillet? It hangs where you see it now. It sits on the fire when it’s called to and rests when it isn’t. It has a temper and it keeps its counsel. If you treat it like a thing you own, it will prove you wrong. If you meet it like a comrade who has been under more fires than you have, it will forgive your small mistakes. It has never glowed like a saint’s halo for me, and it has no need to. Sometimes it keeps heat a heartbeat longer when I lay my hand on it and say, “Yes, chef,” and sometimes it doesn’t, and either way the stew feeds the room that needs feeding.

I have seen the circle close enough times that I am no longer surprised when it does. A family is fed and then feeds. A hurt is soothed and then the healed find other hurts to put their hands on. Draxan taught me that Bahamut’s justice smells like onions and apple and a little honey if you’ve got it and salt if you don’t. Anabelle taught me that hospitality is what you practice when no one is watching because they will be hungry then too. My parents taught me that pride can be set down long enough to pick up a bowl and still be there when you need it. Suncrest taught me that generosity does not require a speech, only a start.

You’ve nearly finished your stew. That’s my sign to stop talking and let your bellies have the floor. The wind has quieted a touch. The cider’s warm enough to call itself friendly. The skillet is ready again—hear that small spit and hiss? That is iron telling you it remembers and is willing to do its part once more.

Before I put the bread in, I lay my hand on the rim out of habit and respect. I say, “Yes, chef,” and the room goes quiet once, as it always has on nights that matter.

Eat, and see for yourselves.