Escape, escape, escape. The only thing standing between Fenn and the delicious freedom he so craved was those stupid iron bars.
Amari gazed up at them with him, the gold flickers in her eyes twinkling as they reflected the pale sunlight. "They're old,” she said thoughtfully. “Slightly rusted. I was considering having you freeze them, so we could… I think that'd ruin their integrity I guess… I mean the snow's done that enough as is… but..." Her voice kept fading away with uncertainty. Fenn sighed and stared down at his burned digit with her. "That's not an option. I don't even know if it'd work."
As Amari went to put away her plate, the Fae shrugged and peered under his frozen bandage. His burn was still black, and the skin was crispy and stiff. Gross. He made a face and replaced the wrappings carefully, making a note to himself to give Amari a few of the cheap strips of bandage he had stashed somewhere in his satchel in turn. It only seemed fair to return her favor.
The next time Fenn looked at Amari, there she was, standing on the oven and taking a careful look at the rusty bars. Humans didn't have fucking ice powers, he thought, startled. There was this twitchy knee jerk reaction in him to get her off of there right away, but… she seemed able to handle herself here. Her feet were away from the coils, and the oven was cool enough over all. He wondered, rubbing the back of his neck with a wobbly smile, if that had been how she had felt about seeing him climb onto the hot surface for the first time.
"Mmmm..." she muttered, shaking the bar. "Maybe we could heat them up? Would that work?"
Fenn snorted and gave her a slow nod back, nearly equivalent to a shrug. He’d read somewhere that rapid heating and cooling had some sort of effect on metal. What was it? Shattering, breaking, weakening? Either way, it was the only idea they had to work with at the moment, even if it didn’t seem the most workable.
Just when he was about to bend down and etch another reply on the floor, there was a ruckus from outside as the band of bandits wrapped up their breakfast and left the building. Fenn shuddered to think of what sorts of things they were going out and doing. Amari hopped down and began running water into the sink. As she began mixing up soapy water for the dishes she would have to deal with, she continued talking to Fenn. "We will figure out a way to do that, hoping that the melting ice won’t douse whatever it is we use to heat the iron bars," she told him confidently.
The Fae gnawed on one of his ragged fingernails, looking skeptical. He was more worried about getting something powerful enough to heat the iron in the first place. It was doubtful that a torch or candle would be anything near enough…
On second thought, he realized, there was a better way to deal with this mess than with fire. His eyes lit up with delight.
"Once everyone clears out, if you want to help me - collect the dishes," Amari said, opening the door with wet hands and peering out at the mess the bandits made. The tables they had eaten at weren’t very clean; syrup dribbled off the edges of plates, and there were flecks of scrambled eggs by the forks. Fenn nodded back at her vacantly, listening just enough to understand what she asked of him. Already, he was forming a plan in his head. “Leave the cutlery, I'll grab that. Okay?”
He nodded and bounced over to the nearest table, taking the plates from it and stacking them up in his arms. These plates were way bigger than the ones Amari had him eat off of! The tiny Fae staggered back to the kitchen after her, just barely able to carry all twelve of the plates without dropping any.
They set the dinnerware on the counter. Fenn peered into the sink with a little frown. Obviously, him sticking his hands into the dishwater was a no-no. That was okay - he had other things to work on. While Amari dealt with the dirty dishes, Fenn began rushing around, so excited as to become briefly oblivious to anything besides his work.
He bobbled back over to the cupboards and grabbed another jar of jam. There was a foxish quality to his smirk as he kneeled down on the floor and poured some of it out - if he was going to write out this idea of his for Amari to see, he couldn’t have it melting on him. Once it had spread out enough, he stuck his fingers in the puddle and outlined in a mix of pictures and words, working fast enough to draw down everything he needed to before the jelly froze solid to the stones.
What was another mess when he had the perfect plan to show Amari? (Besides, he resolved that he would clean this one up himself.)
Once it was written out, he stood up and looked it over once more, turning several points over in his brain again and again. Though Fenn couldn’t directly touch the iron, his frost would definitely be able to creep up the bars if he touched the window sill.
He leapt onto the oven and peered at the bars again for a moment; just as he thought, they were installed a bit messily. There was a bit of a gap between them and the stone they were inset into, and they were surprisingly close to the inside edge of the window. Dangerously close.
The expansivity of ice was a powerful force, Fenn knew. If they could get some liquid inside the cracks and freeze it, it might just crumble the wall at the base of the bars. There was a chance that the bars would then become loose enough to pull out. Once they were gone, and he had his stuff back, Fenn'd be happily on his way.
If Mari decided to look at the jelly smears he had left behind, it was a jumbled mess of words and pictures, the latter of which depicted a jar of jam poured onto the bars, a close-up of the cracks between the bars and the stone, and a crossed-out picture of a fire next to the word SORRY. Evidently, he had this more or less figured out.
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