This Tower, I Swear!

 While I’m on a rant about the tower, let me tell you about the time it decided to trap me in the kitchen. Now, you might think, “Oh, being stuck in the kitchen doesn’t sound so bad. There’s food, right?” But no. No, it’s not fun when the tower’s doing it out of spite.

It started innocently enough. I was baking bread—one of my favorite things to do when Father is out and I’ve got time to myself. The dough was rising, the oven was preheating, and the whole kitchen smelled like warm yeast and anticipation. Blissful, right?

Wrong.

As soon as I opened the oven door to check the temperature, the tower did… something. I heard this low, groaning sound, like stone shifting against stone, and suddenly the door slammed shut. Not just the oven door—the kitchen door. At first, I thought it was a draft. I mean, magical towers are drafty sometimes, aren’t they? But when I tried to leave, the door wouldn’t budge. Locked.

"Okay, tower," I said, hands on my hips. "What are we doing here?"

No answer. Just silence and the faint crackle of the fire in the hearth. Fine. I figured it was a minor hiccup and went back to the oven. But the moment I turned my back, I heard another groaning sound. The pantry door swung open by itself, and an avalanche of flour bags tumbled out, covering me in a white, powdery cloud.

“Really?!” I yelled, shaking flour from my hair. Blizzard, ever helpful, scampered in, sniffed at the mess, and promptly sneezed, sending a puff of flour into the air. She thought this was hilarious, by the way. I, however, did not.

I spent the next ten minutes trying to open the kitchen door. I used every spell I could think of, banged on it, even tried reasoning with the tower. “If this is about the time I spilled soup on your floor last week, I apologized! What more do you want from me?” Still nothing.

Then I had an idea. I pulled out one of the freshly risen loaves of dough, shaped it into a little smiling face, and set it on the counter. “Here. A peace offering. Now, can I leave?”

Nope. If anything, the tower seemed offended. The flames in the hearth flared up, and the oven started rattling. Blizzard whimpered and backed into a corner while I tried not to panic.

At this point, I started wondering if the tower had trapped anyone else in a room like this before. Were there other victims—poor souls who hadn’t made it out? Was I going to be that person? Sarra the Skeleton, forever holding a loaf of bread?

Just as I was spiraling into full-on despair, the door creaked open, as if it had never been stuck at all. The kitchen went quiet again, as if nothing had happened.

I glared at the empty doorway, grabbed Blizzard, and stomped out. “You’re lucky I like living here!” I yelled over my shoulder.

When Father came home and saw the kitchen disaster, he raised an eyebrow. “Rough baking session?”

“Your tower hates me,” I muttered, pointing at the flour-covered floor and the now-ruined dough. Father just shook his head, muttering something about “mood swings” and promising to “have a word” with the tower, as if that would fix anything.

The worst part? After all that, I forgot to put the bread in the oven. So now, whenever I bake, I keep a snack handy—just in case the tower decides to lock me in again. I refuse to let it win.