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Daleth, who had been happily snoozing away on his side, grumbles incoherently at his wife's attempts to wake him at the first blush of dawn. He grabs pillow, placing it over his head to block out the light. Dammit woman, let me sleep a little bit more. He almost mutters out loud but instead drifts off again to sleep.

Lymerris sighs, knowing this will take a more drastic measure. She gets up and moves to their chest of drawers. On top sits a ticking clock. Their room had five such clocks as Daleth could not sleep without their mechanical cadence in the background--another holdover from his childhood days in Ak'Anon. She picks up the clock in her hands and chuckles at the memory of the first time she learned, quite by accident, how to make it ring.

Many years ago when her children were young, some dusting around the house lead her to move the miniature clock. Her finger accidentally pressed against a button, and at once it began screaming this horrible, earsplitting sound. Lymerris had dropped it in terror and panicked when the sound continued unabated. Of course Daleth was out of the house running an errand with this happened. Desperate to stop it, but scared to press the button again lest she'd make it worse, she grabbed it and tossed it out the window. However, her defenestration only worsened the situation. One of the long tree limbs underneath the house that used to be their home stopped its fall. So not only could it continue with its deafening cacophony, but now it could reach a larger audience, out in the open for all their neighbors to hear.

Other than the lifts (gnome constructed of course) that make it easier go from the bottom of the forest into the high tree built city, Feir'Dal generally are very disdainful of tinkered, mechanical contraptions. Daleth's fondness for them has always been seen as a strange personality quirk--an aberration of Feir'Dal nature. So, understandably, the sight and awful sound of this strange mechanical little thing caught in a tree branch attracted a crowd of curious gawkers. A ranger was about to shoot at it to stop the infernal noise when Daleth finally arrived home from his errand.

"What! Shoot a perfectly good clock? Are you bloody mad?" Lymerris remembers Daleth declaring to the ranger. "Lymerris, what in the blazes of Ro happened here?"

Her face must turned a thousand shades of crimson, but before she could stammer out an answer, he held out his hand to stop her.

"Tell me later. I've got a clock to fetch."

Daleth's Ak'Anon childhood hadn't ruined his innate elvish agility and grace. Back then he could navigate the tall trees with the best of them, but still Lymerris felt her heart churn as Daleth stepped out onto that tree limb. The forest ground beneath them was far, and there would be nothing to break his fall. Fearlessly and adeptly her husband did with ease what he could never hope to repeat in his current old age. He kept his balance on the slightly wobbly branch and took the few steps needed to get in reach of the clock, slowing bending his knees in order to bring it within his grasp. Immediately he shuts it off and makes his way back onto the platform.

"Come on, move on people. Haven't you ever seen a clock before?"

"Well, no actually." Someone in the crowd piped up, but Daleth wasn't in the mood for show-and-tell right then, so he shooed them on.

Thus, Lymerris learned how to make it ring. Apparently it can be set to emit the sound at a predesignated time, but Lymerris does not need some mechanical device to tell her when to awake, so the clock is not set up in the manner usually. A condition Lymerris demanded before she would agree to let Daleth keep the clock after all the embarrassment it caused her was for the volume to be lowered, so it would not ring as loudly if accidentally touched wrong. She takes it over to her recalcitrant husband, places it by him and activates it. The ringing sound finally gets Daleth to sit up, scowling, his dark graying hair in disarray.

"Gods damn it. I was gettin' up. I just wanted a bit more sleep." He reaches over and turns off the clock, and then suddenly notices the time. "Gah, dear Mother, woman! Why didn't you tell me what time it was? I have guests to make breakfast for."

"I know you do, which is why I was waking you up in the first place."

Daleth did not indicate if he heard her. Instead he dressed with haste and hurries into his kitchen. His wife could only shake her head and laugh. I wonder if I'd be so tolerant of him if he weren't such a damn good cook. she ponders.

Breakfast has always been Daleth's favorite meal of the day. The smell and sight of the food always brings back fond memories of breakfasts shared with his parents and sister. Neither of his parents worked in the morning, so breakfast was their leisurely meal together, and so he loved all the foods associated with it too.

His kitchen was a sight to behold--a veritable conglomerate mass of gears and other mechanical parts mixed and combined with normal cooking utensils. He had rigged up all sorts of things around the kitchen to make cooking easier, though Lymerris of course had trouble understanding the benefits of some of his modifications. Daleth begins with the flour, but instead of using a spoon and making a reasonable estimate of the amount, he turns a dial on the wall to indicate the amount of flour he wants and then flicks a switch. One of the containers in the kitchen makes a humming sound, and the clear tube connected to the container soon fills with flour and empties into a large metal bowl. He repeats this for each ingredient until satisfied he has enough for his special pancakes.

Then came time to mix it, but why mix anything by hand when you could make a machine that could do it for you instead? Daleth hums a cheery tune to himself as he puts the bowl underneath another machine and flicks the switch. The robotic like arm attached to the wall lowers itself into the bowl, and the small table upon which the bowl is situated spins rapidly. When satisfied the ingredients have been thoroughly mixed, he turns it off and moves the bowl into the oven. He had an elaborate, tricked out oven back in Ak'Anon, but Lymerris put down her foot and refused to let him rebuild it here. Although he had assured his wife over and over again that just because it caught on fire twice in Ak'Anon did not mean it would happen in Kelethin, because he had learned from his mistakes, but Lymerris refused to see reason. Gods, I love her but man she can be so stubborn sometimes.

He lights the coal grumbling about how much faster and quicker his old oven was back in Ak'Anon, but soon his attention is focused entirely on his pancakes. They grow warm and golden, and the delicious aroma fills the house. One last step remains. He carefully lays out pancakes, four at a time, on a flat table with markings.. He presses a button and down from the ceiling comes his automatic food shape cutter. He has a smaller one to cut smaller shapes for things like cookies, but this was especially designed for larger pancakes, and he had selected what he knew would be Starlene and Lettie's favorite shape. Of course, the extra parts of the pancake that were cut away to make the shape are eaten by him, so they would not go to waste.

Lymerris had already set the table and was chatting with Thalisa who had already woken and dressed. They stop talking though when Daleth brings the star-shaped pancakes beaming with the pride of a father showing off his newborn child.  Thalisa smiles and takes a deep breath. "Oh those smell and look so delicious, Grandpa!"  He beams at her words and returns to kitchen to fetch syrup and butter for them.

Chortling as he puts down the bottle of syrup, he says, "I bet Keats has never had pancakes as good as this, or syrup as well. No one knows how to extract syrup like us Feir'Dal. The swill they try to pass off for syrup in the human cities is dreadful. Hey, where is Keats and the Starry girls?"

Lymerris laughs, "They're half elves. They'll sleep the entire morning away if you let them."

"Didn't I give Star one of my clocks?" Daleth asks Thalisa.

"Aye, and she uses it."

"Good, good, guess I should put one in each guest room too."

"Lettie is usually an early riser actually," Thalisa explains, "but she really must have been worn out from the excitement last night."

"I'll get them up." Lymerris offers and goes over to one of the guest rooms' doors and knocks.

"Keats, Star are you two getting up?" She calls out to them.