On a night like any other in the village of Caladon, Janick works the kitchen of a local inn, where weary travelers are looking for food and shelter before continuing their journey. But the inn also attracts regular customers, either living in the village or regularly traveling across the region. Her workday starts with the conjuring of a barrel of mead, which is almost empty. I guess, some days, it's going to be ale or red wine, but today it's mead's turn, Janick sighs, before casting the spell to refill the barrel of mead.

Next, comes her turn to cast a fire spell to start cooking the dish of the day. Some kind of soup apparently. Once the soup is cooked:

"Hi Janick; food please..." Nyagullah, a road-weary bard, asks her while she's cooking.

"It's not ready yet, you arrived early. In the meantime, you can always drink" Janick reassures the bard before resuming the cooking of the soup.

Once the soup is finally cooked, the tavern fills up with more patrons, who all seem willing to drink and eat, too. It's then that she starts serving the soup to the patrons who ordered it.

"Do you find that sometimes, it can get tiresome to just conjure alcohol or cook for people at the same place day in, day out?" the bard asks her while serving the soup.

"You probably remember my life as an air superiority witch then. But I am in service as such for forty days per year and these forty days of adventuring are expensive" Janick tries to remember the costs of adventuring.

And it's not just because I am responsible for the cost of gear and supplies, so I end up spending the rest of the year working in this inn to pay for 40 days of adventure a year, Janick starts to think about what she could do before another patron interrupts her.

"Air superiority?" another patron gasps upon hearing about air superiority wizards, since the very concept of one may appear foreign to that patron. "What do air superiority wizards even do in battle?"

"We fight to keep the skies under control, and we do so riding broomsticks. Be it against flying beasts or other enemies" Janick answers the confused patron.

"Please forgive me for not knowing that aspect of war, I just tend to the fields" the patron explains to her.

"It's clear to me that you have some talent with magic" Nyagullah points out. "Did you ever think of becoming a rental healer?"

"Not really, rental healers are often the scapegoats of their clients when things go wrong. Also, by now you know that alcohol magic is my strongest area as a witch, and alcohol magic is not that great for healing!"

"Rental healers are blamed most often in battle" Nyagullah retorts.

Janick keeps distributing alcoholic beverages to the patrons who ask for it. However, she's puzzled by Nyagullah's comments on why he feels like she should try her hand at the medical profession. Yes, she knew that rental healers were often people who actually had magical talent, at least the legitimate ones, and girls were often pushed into entering the medical profession if they had any magical talent.

And yet, as Nyagullah eats his soup, he can't help but think of past rental healers he met at taverns. As well as other traveling magic-users. There are some truly awful rental healers I am convinced Janick is better than they are. Sometimes, as a bard, you need to take up some additional odd jobs to be able to support yourself, at others, you need to team up with others to get these odd jobs done, he starts thinking before he starts performing.

When Nyagullah starts singing, he starts singing about alcohol magic and how grateful he is for alcohol wizards when thirsty. At the end of the song:

"Your song seems to portray alcohol magic as mostly good. Did you forget about me as an air superiority witch? About how fighting as one requires you to cast spells to hurt, or even kill enemies?" Janick yells at the bard. "Alcohol magic can also cause people to fall asleep, make people move weirdly and all that"

"Of course not! The devil is in the details though" Nyagullah is then reminded of how Janick used alcohol magic in battle. "I guess, you should at least team up with other people to get odd jobs done, maybe even quests!"

"Speaking of which, since you're a witch, did you bewitch the mead?" a traveling merchant asks her, feeling like the mead he drank tonight wasn't like past meads he drank.

"I mean, yes, since the mead served here is made by alcohol magic, why?" Janick asks the other patron of the tavern.

"For some reason, it tastes different from what I usually drink" the mead drinker resumes drinking his magical mead. "For the better"

The main question to me is what, other than perhaps the need to secure a supply of barrels, would prevent me from operating a magical brewery, Janick, triggered by the comments of the mead drinker, wonders whether using alcohol magic to make her own mead for market use would help her get more out of her alcohol magic.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

But since one of the lamps seems to be dimming out, she casts a small alcohol spell on the dimming lamp to refuel it. That seems to go mostly unnoticed by the other tavern's patrons, or the innkeeper even, probably because they are preoccupied with the bard's song.

Yet, with each patron drinking more and more, and ordering more drinks, the tavern seems to be reeking with alcohol, and filled with the sounds of Nyagullah's song and music. Once another song ends:

"It seems like witchcraft is a theme that inspires you tonight" Janick comments on Nyagullah's choice of songs for the night.

"I'll be honest: there are some wizards, and certainly an air superiority wizard or two, who seem to lack finesse" Nyagullah comments on her refueling the lamp with magic, which he only saw briefly.

"I get that some people picture wizards of any kind as being bulls in a pottery workshop about their use of magic, in that some people can set a home on fire with magic, but can't seem to cast a fire spell to light a lamp"

Then she decides to observe the scene about a patron coming to the tavern to inquire about these odd jobs that the bard mentioned earlier in the night. To the extent that she could do so when other patrons had to be served their alcoholic beverages.

There really isn't a whole lot, and they don't pay a whole lot either, I can barely pay for a barrel with that, conjure it full of mead to the brim, then sell the resulting mead, but I guess, it doesn't hurt to ask, Janick thinks about the kinds of odd jobs she can perform by day, before she can ask about what she can perform. So long as I believe these odd jobs are doable with either alcohol or fire magic, I can try my hand.

"Sorry to disturb you, dad, but maybe I could take up some odd job around here during the day" Janick asks the innkeeper, her father, hoping to be afforded the opportunity to supplement her income. "I just want to know what I can do with fire magic, or alcohol magic even, elsewhere around here for a bit of money"

"Fire magic, sure, if you want to repair metal tools with magic, but alcohol magic? I wonder sometimes how you even use alcohol magic as an air superiority witch" Janick's dad questions her about her service as an air superiority witch.

"As for alcohol magic, I just need to use the family cart on market days, but the problem is that I need money to buy some new barrels, use my alcohol magic to fill them and then go to the marketplace to sell the booze"

"Fine, please be advised that not many has even seen an alcohol witch outside of this village" Janick's dad warns her. "But since that's what you want, you can always repair the windmill"

After a good night's sleep, the following morning, Janick sets off for the local windmill, along with Nyagullah, the latter hoping that, by helping with the more delicate parts of fixing the windmill, he could get something in return. Especially with the grain piling up around the windmill.

However, as the pair approaches the windmill, they realize the problem is not a problem of windmill blades since, from the outside, it appears to turn normally. Janick knocks on the windmill's door:

"Who's there?" the miller asks the pair.

"I'm a witch, I can work my magic to fix the windmill" Janick announces at the door. "I need to look at the inner workings first, though"

"I hope you, as a witch, won't curse the mill" the miller sighs, realizing that other help may not come until later.

"Of course not"

At this point, it's either going to be a broken shaft or a broken cog. I want the bard to hold the shaft or cog in place while I cast spells to fix whatever is broken, Janick thinks of how the repairs are going to happen. And the pay for fixing the windmill, too.

As she enters the windmill's inner workings, she starts thinking about how she is going to fix what's broken about the windmill, depending on the problem. If these things are metallic, ok, I can fix it with a well-placed fire spell once the parts are in place.

"Please, can you hold this shaft in place for a few moments? Janick asks Nyagullah and the miller while she comes across a broken shaft driving the grain elevator assembly.

A broken metallic axle. Janick focuses on the broken axle and then casts a small fire spell at that point, with the magical flames being hot enough to fuse the two broken segments back together.

The axle now being fused back together, the grain elevator assembly is now functioning again. And the grain is finally flowing back into the windmill's grindstone. A grateful miller then asks how he could pay them.

"Now that the windmill is repaired, I would like to know how I can pay you two" the miller asks them.

"An empty barrel please..." Janick asks the miller, not realizing that his eyes are rolling.

"Why an empty barrel?" the miller asks, wondering what Janick could use an empty barrel for. "Why not a certain quantity of free flour?"

"If Janick won't have free flour, I will" Nyagullah is then given a sack of flour, which would, hopefully, last him for a bit.

An embarrassed miller then goes around to fetch an empty barrel for Janick to return to the inn with (and also her home, as with the rest of the family). But before she gets home:

"I got hurt from repairing the windmill. Do you have any magic for that?" Nyagullah asks her, believing that Janick either knows life magic (which is often used for healing, and sometimes enhancing the targets' performances) or can use alcohol magic to heal.

"I can't guarantee anything, since healing is not my area of magical specialty, but please stop treating magic as a catch-all solution!" Janick seems a little irked by Nyagullah's attitude towards her magical abilities. "That said, please show me where you got injured"

The two walk some distance away from the mill, and then he shows her where he got injured. It's just a flesh wound, but I didn't use alcohol magic to heal much, so I'm not sure casting a rubbing alcohol spell will actually do more than just disinfect the wounds, Janick, unsure of whether the rubbing alcohol spell will actually do more than just disinfect the wound. Yet, he seems a little too trusting of me as a witch.

"It might sting a little bit where it hurts, but here we go" Janick then starts casting a rubbing alcohol spell on the injury Nyagullah got at the windmill.

"You're a fantastic alcohol witch" Nyagullah marvels at the would slowly closing under the effects of the rubbing alcohol spell. "Thank you for everything"

Now I can say that Janick is a better rental healer than some I met on my travels, or I can even be myself, Nyagullah reflects on Janick's use of the rubbing alcohol spell.

As Nyagullah parts ways and Janick returns to the inn with an empty barrel being rolled from the windmill, she can start thinking of the next market day, where her father and her will go to buy the week's supplies for the inn, now Janick will start selling her own magicked mead.