The ones the village still talks about.

So on your side of the table sits a spoon and a silence. Mine has a village on it. I am winning the evening, Cutlery, and I don't even enjoy winning.

Standing there doing arithmetic.

Mister Standing-Still, your best line yet, and it was about me.

You stand there like a coat rack with opinions.

At last, action—if you count holding up a spoon as action.

Four turns, one utensil, no plan. You've done this before — I said so — and I was wrong. You've watched somebody do this before. That's worse.

A pause, perhaps. If the task could be reassigned, the flames might stay.

Your strategic prowess is as robust as a wet napkin.

You are the sixth thing this village has sent, after a goat, a letter with four spelling errors, a nephew and two years of nobody at all, and you have brought *

Let's total up what you've done since you climbed up here, since you've clearly never negotiated in your life.

Do walk him back, there's a dear. He does this.

You have danced, mangled a lamp, invented a letter, sung at a dead man and posted my telephone into a pillowcase.

A flourish worthy of a children’s party. Alas, the only card I play is fire, and your trick is as binding as a handshake with smoke.

You arrived at my house by accident, ate my soup under a name you do not own, slandered my salmon, offered to cook it, and asked a footman to testify to a face—

A wish for more wishes, however drafted, is refused under the fourth clause, Wendeline.

The Binding demands my ledger record fact, not fantasy.

Bringing the crowd and the soggy promise doesn’t clear Jaspin’s debt, you see.

You've had two hours and produced arithmetic and a cutlery anecdote.

So it's tonight, or it's a kitten, or it's nothing, and I'll be honest with you: I've started to think about the nothing.

You have a talent for paperwork and bedtime stories. But the ledger's ruling stands: 'A late wish counts as irregular and uncounted.'