Work Text:
Winter came to the Eastern Coast of the Western Continent with a slow, serene certainty. It felt no need to rush forth in great fury, no — it came in its own time, its own rhythm, all in accordance with the cycle of Perpetua Itself. In another time that would have been with crashing gales, or blizzards so powerful they buried entire villages, but this year was kinder. The farmers in their terraced fields praised merciful Ryme. Snow settled on barren tree branches and rocky crags, little by little, until the whole world was painted in shades of frosty white.
The Little Snail took care as it made its way through the landscape, weaving around frozen rivers and towering snowbanks. The journey was an opportunity for the crew to catch their breath; with the cold temperatures and the snowy paths, there were hardly any customers to serve. They could take their time to relax, each in their own ways: daydreaming, sleeping soundly, gathering ingredients, burning the midnight oil.
On one such afternoon, when the sun was bouncing sharp and bright off the snowdrifts, Elena was writing in her diary. It had started as a travelogue, something to send home in letters to her family — and secretly fantasize about publishing in the broadsides — but over the months of her travel it had taken on a more personal character. She still took care to describe all the unforgettable experiences she had along her journey, but she interspersed it with her own thoughts.
Like today, for instance: after some description of the weather and the peculiarly-shaped crag they had just passed yesterday, Elena moved to more intimate reflections.
And it looked exactly like a massive flegg, I swear!
Anyhow… it’s been nice to have a break from the lunch rush, but I'm not sure if Veile knows what to do with herself. She does whatever Nicky and Jonathan ask her to, peeling potatoes and plating meals and all that, but whenever we aren't busy she just sits and stares out the window. And it's fine if there's stuff out the window, but when she does it she looks sad. That's no good.
Elena tapped her pencil to her lips, thinking back to when they'd first met Veile. She was shaking, fists clenched and eyes watery, and still she asked how she could help out.
She likes to have something to do, I think. I can't blame her, I do too! It's boring when we're just sitting around the Little Snail. But she might as well talk to me, right? We can play cards or something, at least.
She's probably played cards, right? Do they let priestesses play cards? I bet she has. I bet she's great at it, too. And it wouldn't have to be cards, it could be dice or charades or anything. (I just want to spend time with her. Is that weird?) It's been a while since I talked to a girl around my age, and she's cool. Sure, she's got a destiny and a quest, but she's also got bright eyes and a pretty laugh. And when she smiles I can see the gap in her teeth, and her
The door to Elena and Veile’s shared room swung open. “Elena?”
Elena slammed the diary shut and sat up in her bunk. She could feel herself blushing; hopefully Veile didn't know how that looked on tesserae. “Oh! Hey, Veile. What do you need?”
“Oh! Um.” Veile ducked her head, bashful. “Sorry, I didn’t realize you were busy? I, um, I just wanted to ask you…” Her voice trailed off into unintelligible murmurs.
Elena swung her legs over the side of her bunk and hopped down. “Come on, speak up!”
Veile looked up again, big black eyes sparkling wide. “Doyouwanttomakecookieswithme?”
“Uh.” Elena blinked. “What?”
“Well, Nicky is so good at cooking, and he and Jonathan have been so nice to us, and I just felt, um… what if we surprised them with a treat?”
“Oh!” Elena parsed back what Veile blurted: making cookies with her. “We absolutely should. I haven’t got my mum’s recipe book, so it’ll be a bit of improvising, but I’m sure we can figure it out. Baking’s tricky, though, things’ve got to be very precise.” As far as she was aware, anyway; she was half-bullshitting, but Veile seemed inclined to take her at her word.
“I know how, don’t worry.” Veile nodded vigorously. “One of the nuns at the temple taught me. And look at this!” She pulled a sachet out of her dress pocket.
Elena squinted. “What’s in there?”
“Sparkling sugar, from Salann. I saw it in the market when we were passing through the last town, and it reminded me how long it’d been since I had these cookies.”
“What’s sparkling sugar? Is that another one of the crystals from Corru or something?” Nicky liked to stop by Corru Grove when he could to harvest their nice salts and the special bicarbonate he used for his bread.
“No, no, it’s, uh… it’s just a fancy sugar, you use it to put on top of things to make it shiny. They used to say it was so shiny Lucenna could see through it.” Veile giggled at the absurdity of the claim, and Elena laughed along.
A thought came to her. “Is that it, though?”
“Hm?”
“For the sugar, I mean. If we’re making a full batch, surely we’d need more than that little pouch.”
“Oh! No, you put regular white sugar in the dough.” Veile thought for a moment. “I guess you could put regular sugar on the top, too? Or brown sugar? But the sparkling kind is definitely better, that’s how we do it in Salann. It has big grains? And they treat it with… wax, I think, to make it glitter.”
“Oh, neat!” It sounded like a similar process to some of the glass refining they did in Rillspur, albeit with sugar instead of sand. This would turn out great, she was sure of it. “Let’s get started.”
Veile nodded. “Nicky and Jonathan went out to look for ingredients together — at least, um, that’s what they said they were doing? — so we should have enough time to get things started.” She frowned. “I just hope they don’t get chased back by a monster again…”
“They’re both good at what they do, I’m sure it’ll be fine. I certainly wouldn’t want to get in the way of Nicky’s cooking knife.”
“Yeah, that’s true…” Veile considered it for another moment, then shook her head. “They’ll be okay. But we have to go fast, okay? So we can put the cookies in the oven before they come back.”
“Mhm! Let’s go!”
The girls made their way to the kitchen. Veile set the sparkling sugar on the counter, then put her hand on her hips. “Um… right. Ingredients. Elena, could you get them from the shelf?”
Nicky stored the Little Snail’s baking supplies on the highest shelf in the pantry. Elena thanked the Ennead that she was tall enough to reach; it would have been an indignity to fumble for the stepstool, especially in front of Veile. “Okay! Just let me know what we need.”
“Flour, and white sugar,” Veile started. Elena got the bags out and set them on the counter. “And vanilla. Do we… have that? It was expensive when we had it in Salann, we sometimes had to skip it if we didn’t have any left…”
“Yeah, I think we’ve still got some left over from what I brought from Rillspur.” Veile was right that vanilla was hard to get on the Western Continent, but people traded lots of things to pay for a warm meal or a decent map before they tackled a Pasikan megadungeon. She set the little bottle on the counter. “Anything else?”
“No, I’ve got the rest,” Veile said. Elena looked over. While she was getting things from the pantry, Veile had grabbed the fresh ingredients. An egg sat on the counter, along with a few sticks of butter from the supply Nicky kept out to soften.
“Great.” Elena surveyed their ingredients. “So, where do we start?”
“Um… Well, we should preheat the oven first, so it’s ready. But, uh…”
The two of them looked over at the oven. The stove made some kind of sense — it just had fire burners, same as anywhere else would — but the oven was… weird.
“Veile?” asked Elena, sotto voce, “do you know how the oven works?”
“Um!” Veile squeaked. “Well — I’ve — I’ve seen Nicky turn it on…?”
“So have I, I’ve been working here for months, but he’s never let me touch the damn thing.” Elena prodded the dials and gauges on the side of the oven. She knew it was some sort of steam power, same as the Little Snail’s propulsion engine, but she wasn’t sure how that translated to a numbered gauge.
“We can figure this out,” insisted Veile. “The cookies bake at a medium temperature. When we made them in the chapel, we would put them in at the same time as we were roasting vegetables. So… we just need to remember how hot it was when Nicky was roasting vegetables. You cut and peeled the carrots last night, right Elena? Did you see what he put them in at?”
“Hm… let me think. It was in the middle, so…” Elena fiddled with the knob, twisting it until the arrow pointed at 6. “Like that? I think that’s how I remember it. And if we’re off, we can just make sure to keep an eye on them.”
“Got it! We’ll watch them just in case.” Veile came back around to the counter. “Now we just need to mix things together.”
“I’ll stir, you add?”
“Sounds good!”
They moved into position. Elena grabbed a wooden spoon, and Veile set a bowl on the counter. “Butter first,” said Veile, plopping pats of butter into the bowl. “A cup of it.”
“A cup? Two whole sticks?”
“Well, they’re butter cookies, it’s important.”
“Right, right, guess so.” Elena didn’t think she’d ever used so much butter in a recipe at this scale. They mostly used olive oil in Rillspur, and Nicky’s cooking was similar. Then again, butter was a must when baking, so she guessed it made sense.
“Then the sugar, that needs a cup too.” Veile scooped it into the bowl, and Elena got to work mixing them together. The soft butter made it fairly easy, but Elena still wished she could have used one of Jonathan’s machines for it. He had a contraption that would stir for you, and that sort of thing would’ve been a blessing for Elena’s stiff arms. Still, better not. Elena had learned through experience that using Jonathan’s machines without him around could have explosive consequences.
While Elena mixed, Veile added in the egg and a few pinches of salt. It started to turn a pale yellowish color from the yolk, and before long the mixture didn’t have any chunks in it.
“Can we swap places?” asked Veile.
Was she worried? Elena’s arms were getting stiff, sure, but she’d keep on stirring for as long as Veile needed her to. “I’m not that tired yet, I can keep going. Really, it’s fine!”
“No, it’s just — the next step you have to do with your hands.”
Ah. Elena grimaced. The fine seams on the sides of her fingers had an irritating tendency to get gunked up, and the last time she helped Nicky make soda bread it took him and Jonathan half an hour to scrape the dough out. No thanks.
“Go right ahead.” She set the spoon aside and let Veile take her place over the bowl. Veile looked down with a focused expression, a strand of her hair falling in front of her face. That wouldn’t do. Elena reached out to tuck it back behind her ear.
“Um?” Veile turned to Elena with wide eyes, a bit of color in her cheeks. Right, she probably didn’t expect Elena touching her without warning. Actually…
“You should have something for your hair, to stop it from getting everywhere while you work.” Elena fished around in her skirt pocket, pulling out one of the ribbons she used to keep her hair up when she wasn’t wearing her usual sprang hairnet.
“O-oh! Right. Yes, that’s smart.”
“Can I…?”
“Um! Sure! Yeah, go ahead.”
Elena stepped behind Veile and gathered her hair in one hand. Their hair was of similar length, so it would be easy to give Veile an updo like hers. Much as she would have liked to take the time for a proper style, she did a simpler version given the time constraints. Just a bun, pulled back and tied off to get Veile’s bangs out of her eyes.
When she was finished, Elena appraised her handiwork. Veile’s deep green hair looked good ornamented with Elena’s yellow ribbon, and it was secure enough to keep flyaways out of the dough.
“Are you done?” Veile reached a hand up to feel for what Elena did to her hair. Right, she couldn’t see it.
“Yep! It’s just a bun, nothing fancy.” She waved a hand, playing it off casual.
“Thank you, Elena.” Veile smiled, genuine as always.
Elena blushed, looking back to the dough. “So what comes next?”
“Two cups of flour.”
Elena cleaned the measuring cup on her apron and scooped out a cup of flour, dumping it into the bowl. Veile mixed it into the butter-sugar-egg mix with her hands, and Elena added the second once the first looked mostly combined.
It was interesting to watch Veile work the dough. Her hands were dusted in flour, a stark contrast with her dark skin and the darker birthmark on her finger. She put her whole weight into it, and before long it formed a shaggy dough. Veile squinted at it. “Hm…”
“Hm?”
“A little more flour? Just a handful, so it holds together more.” Elena did so, and Veile mixed it into the dough.
“Now what?”
“Now…” Veile’s eyes widened in a sudden wave of shock and horror. “Oh no!”
“What? What’s wrong?” Elena looked toward the cookie dough. “Did we forget an ingredient, or?”
“No, but, um… I forgot to chill the pan...”
“Well, isn’t it going in the oven?”
“No, it’s… you need to take a baking pan, the kind with sides, and usually we put it in the icebox while we make the dough. It’s so it doesn’t stick, I think? I can’t believe I forgot, that was stupid of me.” She wilted, eyes downcast. “Now we can’t…”
“Wait, is it just a pan like this?” Elena grabbed a glass one from the cabinet where they kept cookware.
“U-uh huh. But we don’t have time, and they’ll be back soon, and —”
“Veile!”
“Wh-what?”
“I have ice magic, remember?” Elena smiled. “I can do it really quick, trust me.”
“Oh! Oh, right! That’s — you can really use your magic for something so precise?”
“Heh. Just give me a second, I’ll see what I can do.” Elena concentrated on the pan, feeling the icy cold flowing in her veins. She coaxed it out — gently, mind, no need for an iceberg in the middle of the kitchen — and before long a thin coat of frost spread from her fingertips across the glass of the pan.
Once she was done, she glanced up and met a pair of eyes staring intently at the pan. Veile blushed when Elena saw her looking, averting her gaze. “Um! Good work, Elena!”
“Thanks!” Elena set the pan down, oddly proud. The crew of the Little Snail was always appreciative of her ice magic when they were fighting, but this was a different sort of pride. Veile looked at her like she had done a miracle.
“Um.” Veile curled the end of Elena’s ribbon around her finger “Let me just…”
She took the pan from Elena, their fingers brushing. Veile’s hands were warmer than usual.
“Now I'm just going to press the dough in,” she explained.
“You don't need to grease it?” Elena raised a skeptical brow. She'd gotten baked goods stuck in their containers too many times before.
“That's what the cold pan is for.” Veile nodded authoritatively. “And there's so much butter in the cookies already, it'll be fine.”
“Right.” Elena watched Veile press the dough into the pan with her fingers and smooth it out so it was the same thickness all over.
After she finished, she stepped back and turned to Elena. “Do you want to put the sugar on?”
“Me? It’s your special hometown sugar, don’t you want to do it?”
“Well… I could, but don’t you want to give it a try? This part is… special, I guess, or, um —” she paused, collecting her thoughts. “When we made this together, me and the other kids in the temple, it was always a lucky day when I got picked to sprinkle the sugar. So… I thought it would be nice, for you. If you got to do it. Um — unless you don't want to, I mean —”
“I do, I do!” Elena smiled. “Thanks for thinking of me.” She picked up the pouch of sparkling sugar, handling it gingerly. “Do I have to do anything special, or just sprinkle it?”
“Well, we usually say a prayer to Lucenna, but I know you aren’t, um… well, I know you don’t know it so much, so you don’t have to worry about it, I guess…” Veile frowned, a little disappointed.
“You might be right there.” Elena hummed a laugh. “Why don't you do it while I put the sugar on?”
“Sure.” Veile brightened up at that; good. Elena took a pinch of sugar from the pouch and sprinkled it over the dough, and Veile bowed her head in prayer. It was interesting the way her mouth moved in her quiet devotion, the syllables just barely breathed out, the purse of her lips as she said Lucenna. She was so…
“Um… are you finished, Elena? I think that's enough…?”
Elena looked back to the pan, where she had sprinkled a large handful of sugar on one corner of the pan. Rubbish work, she would’ve been chewed out for that kind of plating back in Rillspur. “O-oh! Right! Um — I must've gotten a little distracted. It's very pretty sugar.” That part was true, at least. “Let me just…” she brushed it across the rest of the surface, careful not to get dough stuck to her hands.
“Great!” Veile didn't seem to notice anything weird. “Now we just put it in the oven and wait for…” she thought for a moment. “A quarter hour, maybe a little less? Just until the edges turn golden brown.”
For all of the mystery of the Little Snail’s oven, at least it had a window. Elena put the tray in the oven, and they both spent a few moments peering at it through the glass. The sugar shimmered in the heat, and the butter started to melt. Once staring got boring, they stepped away. Veile sat down at the table, wiping her hands off on one of the Little Snail’s everpresent kitchen rags. Elena started drawing water to clean their dishes, though she privately hoped they’d be able to ask Jonathan if they could use his mechanical dishwasher.
“Elena?” Veile’s head perked up. “I think they’re coming back…?”
“Oh!” Yes! She didn’t have to scrub the bowl completely by hand! And — after a moment to remember herself — they got to give Nicky and Jonathan the cookies they made! That was also good. She stepped away from the sink and wiped her hands on a cloth, leaving the dishes to soak.
The door creaked open, and Elena could hear Nicky’s stompy footsteps along with Jonathan’s careful, lumbering tread. Nicky spoke first, with his usual gruffness: “Who’s cooking in my kitchen?”
“Just us!” Veile called back, getting out of her seat to poke her head into the hall. “Um — I hope that’s okay? We wouldn’t want to…” she trailed off, her words fading to a mumble, as Nicky brushed past her into the kitchen.
He crossed his arms and peered into the oven. “This your doing, Elena?”
“It was Veile’s idea, actually.” Veile gave Elena a wide-eyed glance over Nicky’s shoulder. Elena held her hands up, helpless — what was she supposed to do, lie?
Nicky took a deep sniff, nostrils flaring. The room was rich with the butter-sugar-vanilla smell of fresh cookies. She and Veile both watched with bated breath, awaiting his judgment.
“Smells nice.” Yes! Elena met Veile’s eyes with a conspiratorial smile. “Looks like they’re just about done. You ready to take them out?”
“Already on it, Nicky,” Elena said, pulling a pair of pot holders from her apron pocket. They were her favorites, made of material from an old pair of Jonathan’s work gloves and stitched with Veile’s careful embroidery. She took the glass tray out of the oven and set it on the stovetop to cool.
“What’s all this?” said Jonathan, ducking into the kitchen behind Nicky. “Oh, y’all made cookies? You didn’t have to do all that, really.”
Veile blushed. “Well, yes, but you two always cook for us, and help us out, and you’re taking me on this journey, and…”
Nicky patted her on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it, kid. You’re…” he frowned. “Well. You’re free to stay here as long as you like.”
Elena’s lips quirked into a smile. Nicky might not have said it, but his meaning was clear: Veile was family.
“Now, are y’all gonna eat those, or…?” Jonathan reached toward the pan.
Nicky smacked him with a towel. “Not yet! They need to cool.”
“It ain't that bad, Nicky, I touch hot things all the time.”
“Absolutely not. If you eat them right away, they'll fall apart into a hot buttery mess. They need to cool if you want them to hold together at all.”
Jonathan shook his head, fond. “Alright, we'll give it a sec.”
They waited another few minutes before Nicky let Veile do the honors of cutting the cookies into squares. Elena was surprised he let her cut anything in his kitchen, but she supposed Veile was using a butter knife instead of Nicky’s massive cleaver. The image came unbidden into her mind, Veile swinging a butcher’s knife bigger than she was, and she stifled a laugh. Jonathan gave her a look; she waved away his concern.
To Elena’s surprise, Veile offered her the first piece. She should have demurred, refused, given it to Veile instead, but it smelled so good. Before she knew it, Elena had already shoved the cookie in her mouth. And what a cookie it was! Buttery and sweet, as she could have guessed from its ingredients, but with a melting softness and delicate crumb that sat indulgently on her tongue. The sparkling sugar was the slightest bit of texture on top, just enough to remind Elena of its glittering presence.
Nicky and Jonathan each got a cookie after Elena, and Veile fisted her hands in her robes as she watched them eat. “Is it… do you like them?”
“They’re incredible!” Elena reached forward and pulled Veile into a hug, provoking a startled squeak.
Jonathan nodded agreement. “These’re good, Veile. Thanks again for making ‘em, you really didn’t have to.”
Nicky closed his eyes with the demeanor of an experienced critic. “Hm… the vanilla we've been saving?”
“Y-yes,” said Veile.
“And this topping, what is it? It’s not one of the crystals from Corru.”
“Oh, that’s actually, um — it’s from my hometown? It’s sparkling sugar, it’s nothing too fancy, but…”
“It adds a nice touch. Good work.”
Veile blushed and looked down. Elena knew the feeling; the first time she had managed to impress Nicky with her feta salad, she’d preened for days.
“Still room to improve, of course. You probably should have sifted the flour for lumps, and —”
Jonathan's webbed fingers brushed his face, interrupting his critique. “You’ve got crumbs in your mustache, Nicky.”
Nicky rolled his eyes, but he stood still and let Jonathan wipe the crumbs away. Elena thought she spotted a blush rising in his weathered cheeks.
She took her opportunity to compliment Veile while Nicky and Jonathan were busy being sappy. “You did great, Veile, this was such a smart idea.”
“Well — you helped too, Elena! So shouldn’t it be, um — shouldn’t it be we did great?”
Elena tilted her head, faux-considering. “I guess it’s that we did great… and Nicky and Jonathan should be thankful to us for making them delicious cookies… and we’re amazing bakers and valued members of the Little Snail… if you insist…”
Jonathan snorted. Nicky crossed his arms. “Real valued. Now, since you both made this mess in my kitchen, you can both clean it all up. Heard?”
They replied together, prompt and eager. “Yes chef!”
Later, once all the washing-up was done and they were warm and cozy in their bunk beds, Elena lit a candle and continued in her diary.
She actually asked to hang out, can you believe that? She doesn't talk about her home that often, but she shared her special recipe with me. She even let me do the sugar thing! (Ennead, I made a fool of myself… can you blame a girl for getting distracted?)
Veile seemed happier after that. It probably helped that Nicky liked her cookies. And Jonathan and me too, but Nicky’s got a way of just barely smiling and going “hmph” that makes you feel on top of the world. (I should start cataloging Nicky’s different hmphs. Maybe Jonathan has a system already?)
Anyways, cooking with Veile was super fun. It was nice to cook without anyone bossing me around and making me do all the boring bits. We were a good team!
She chewed her eraser, thinking back to their adventure in the kitchen.
She acts gloomy, fated priestess and all, but she's so bright. When she grins and her cheeks dimple just a bit, or when she gets so excited over the littlest things, it's so easy to get caught up in it. She let me put her hair up and she gave me the first cookie and I could just have kissed h
Elena snapped the diary shut before she even finished the sentence, blushing furiously. She? What?? What??? No, that was… That’s silly. She didn't… except there was Veile’s blinding smile, and the constellation of moles on her cheeks, and the plush curves of her body, and the way she only came up to Elena's shoulder, and — fuck.
She flopped into her pillows, putting her hands over her face. Ryme save her.
“Um — Elena? Are you okay?”
Right. Veile was sitting in the bottom bunk, completely unaware of Elena's present crisis. She pinched her candle out and replied, in perhaps too high a voice: “Fine! I'm just, uh, tired! And I'm going to bed.”
Veile yawned in that cute forest-creature way she did sometimes. “Okay. Goodnight, Elena.”
“Night!”
Elena dreamed of laughter like bells, thick curls she could sink her hands into, soft skin pressed against her own. And through it all, rich and decadent, the sweet taste of butter cookies on her tongue.