With our business for the day complete, I find a new issue. One that I rarely had to deal with in the age of the internet. Boredom. Cinder practices her knife throwing skills, doing different moves and positions, but after a couple hours it ceases to entertain.

Thalassa seems to have spent much of his free time doing art, given how many gorgeous drawings lay in boxes in the storage closet. so I decide to try my hand at It with some of his supplies. I did well in art class in school but I never pursued It after that, so I try to start simple by doing a drawing of the room, moving my piece of compressed charcoal over the page, creating a rough outline of the few features that the small apartment has to offer.

Despite my years of non practice, I manage to create a fairly adequate sketch with realistic geometry. Moving on to something more difficult, I make a circle, boxing out the shape of my face, ears and horns. Followed by the rough shape of my body, to create a base to work off of. I spend the next few hours refining the self portrait, adding more and more detail. As I work on getting the spots on my face and neck just right, I notice that Cinder has stopped her knife throwing, watching me draw with curiosity and a hint of sadness. She watches on in silence until it gets dark. Very happy with my work, I pin it to the wall above my cot by sticking a small wooden splinter through the top, into a thin crack in the smooth white surface.

Cinder begins changing into her sleep clothes, and I follow suit, changing into the loosely weaved night shirt which she gave me. Despite the lower quality of the materials, it's still quite comfortable as I lay on my cot wrapping myself in the warmth of my blanket against the cool air.

My dream that night is more vivid than others; Myself, as I am, laying waste to groups of armed warriors, sending them flying with concussive blasts and massive balls of fire. Running toward some unseen goal. I awaken the next morning with vigor, and no memory of the dream.

I hop out of bed as soon as I awaken, rather than my usual game of always sleeping just five more minutes until it's past noon. Cinder is still asleep when I wake, so I take the opportunity to change my clothes, clean my face, and comb my hair. Feeling refreshed and energized, I decide to cook up a small breakfast.

I'm no chef but I can make a mean pancake, and luckily I find everything I need in the pantry, well almost everything. There's flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, even some eggs and dried berries. The one thing we don't have is milk, which makes sense as we don't have a fridge. I'm about to just use some water and deal with them being less flavorful when I remember what my plans for the day entail. If I’m going to be doing the work I plan to do, it might be a good idea to actually know what I'm working with. Making sure that Cinder is still asleep, I take a cup from the pantry, look down, and prepare myself mentally.

…

Cinder starts to stir as she takes in the lovely aroma of freshly baked sweet bread. Sitting up, she sees me struggling to keep the woodburning stove at a consistent temperature. a plate with a stack of pancakes rests on the table, only the first couple at the bottom are burned, with the rest a perfect golden brown, two glasses of milk sit on either side of the plate.

“good morning! Whats all this?” the woman asks, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and getting up to grab her clothes.

“I woke up early so I wanted to surprise you! You’ve done a lot for me, and I wanted to pay you back some.” I say, leaving out that I was beginning to tire of eating the same few things for every meal.

“Well it looks amazing, what is it?” she asks, pulling off her night gown and getting dressed properly.

“pancakes, you don't have anything like these in your world?”

“we have flatbread sure but this smells more like a pastry.” she says, sitting down at the table and giving the stack of cakes a smell.

I drop the last pancake onto the stack before closing the stove door to smother the flames and joining her at the table, giving the glasses of milk a touch and using my freezing touch spell to cool them to below room temperature.

“they’re like a sweet airy flatbread. They go best with maple syrup but this is all I could find.” I say, setting down a small jar of preserves which I retrieved from the pantry.

“I’ll need to have a taste.” she says, picking up a cake with her hands, spreading on some of the sweet preserves with a knife, and taking a bite. I can see a glimmer in her eye, and she quickly finishes it, downing two more while I eat one. After the third cake, she grabs her glass and has a sip before speaking.

“you need to make these literally every day. I need these to start every day.” she says, taking another sip before pausing and taking a look at the glass. “wait, where-” she begins before looking up at me, then down to my chest, then back to the glass.

“Oh, I’ve never, uh.” she stammers. “th-thank you.” she finishes her sentence flustered, looking away from me and finishing her glass. My own face is likely just as red as she normally is, though I ignore it and finish my meal, the creamy milk perfect for washing down the sweet cakes.

After we finish eating, Cinder even downing the burned cakes, we prepare to leave for work, myself wearing the overall dress that cinder picked out for me. We head out, the man usually at the food counter not yet working, we aren’t greeted as we leave.

Cinder leads me to a more busy section of street, with a few taverns, eateries, and most importantly for today, a bakery. The sweet smell of pastries and bread is inviting as we step through the open doorway. A few women work inside the building. No walls separate the kitchen from the counter and guest area where several people sit at round tables, eating sweet rolls and slices of cake, sipping from steaming mugs, coffee and tea by the smell.

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“This is a different bakery than Thal usually worked at, so they shouldn't assume you know what to do. They also don't offer any other services that uh, you won't have to worry about them.” she explains, once again avoiding a subject, though this time I can extrapolate what she means.

The young woman behind the register, who is also a holstaur, greets us as we approach. “Good morning! How can I help you?” she asks. Her face is a light brown, as opposed to my white with black spots, her horns are slightly longer than mine, and she wears a gray apron over a white dress.

Cinder replies on my behalf. “We wanted to know if you have any need for my friend here.” she says, gesturing to me.

“Well we've got plenty of hands in the kitchen, but we can always use more Holstaurs in the back, if you'd be interested.” the woman says.

“Yes, that's perfect.” Cinder says, and I nod in agreement.

“Perfect, have you ever done this before?” the woman asks me.

“I haven't.”

“Alright, in that case follow me.” she says, calling over another girl to take her place.

Cinder wishes me luck as I follow the woman through a door at the rear of the kitchen. The room is much smaller than the kitchen, with only one other person already there. She’s also a holstaur, with my type of coloration, though she looks around ten years older than myself. She’s leaning forward on a metal bar just below shoulder height, which runs parallel with the left wall about halfway to the other side, a thin curtain hangs on it, seemingly for privacy as the woman's visible upper body is naked.

A few milk tanks rest in front of the bar, each with a clear hose running to a black box with a rune similar to the one I saw at the bath. The hose then splits into two and ends behind the curtain. The rune on the box in front of the woman glows while the rest do not, and milk can be seen flowing through the hose.

“It’s very simple” the woman who led me here says, walking up to the space next to the other woman. “You start by writing your name here.” She points out a black square on the milk tank, taking a small piece of chalk tied to the tank and writing ‘Tory whitemiller’.

“Then you turn on the pump.” She taps the rune on the black box.

“And lastly, you step back here, and attach the cups.'' She goes behind the curtain, pulling the top of her apron off and the shoulders of her dress down. She leans onto the bar, picks up the hose which ends in two cups, and sticks them to herself, the suction keeping them in place.

Having been following along as she went, I attach my own. The feeling is odd, though not painful or unpleasant. It's different from when I did it by hand at home. That sensation was still weird, just a different kind.

“Once the tank is full, it’ll go in the ice room over there.” The woman says, pointing at a door across the room with a sign reading ‘keep closed’.

Her explanation done for the time being, there is a brief pause in which I feel incredibly awkward. The woman who was already here speaks up, breaking the uneasy silence.

“Hey new girl, I’m Noelle.” She greets happily.

“Lilly, nice to meet you.”

The next couple hours go by smoothly. Talking with the other girls, I almost forget what we’re doing. Noelle comes here almost every day and makes enough to live comfortably with her two children. She also lives in the apartment building next to Cinder and I’s. Tory is actually the owner of the bakery, which comes as a big surprise to me considering how polite, casual, and young she is. Her mother gave her the bakery after she retired a year ago. She also supplies milk to a couple of nearby coffee shops.

Tory remarks how quickly my tank fills, considering that it reached the top at the same time as Noelles and hers was half full when we got here. They take off the pumps and I follow suit. Tory takes out a coin purse similar to Cinder’s and hands the other woman a single gold coin. She bids us farewell, and walks through the door. Tory then takes the woman's tank into the ice room, and I carry mine in with her. Picking it up, I find it hard to believe that this much liquid could have possibly come from me. I conclude that magic must be responsible and leave it at that.

“Think you have another tank in you?” Tory asks happily.

“I’m not sure, we could see though.” I reply

“Alrighty.” She says, retrieving a couple empty tanks and hooking them up to the empty pumps, also replacing the hosing that Noelle had used, throwing them into a tub of water near the door. I write my name on the new tank and we both hook back up. Another two hours of pleasant conversation interrupted only by one of the bakers coming in to ask Tory a question about a delivery.

My tank is filled a couple minutes before Tory’s, this time leaving me fairly exhausted. The hosing and tanks we both used are replaced with clean and empty ones, and the tanks placed in the ice room.

“Give me one moment to assess the quality and I’ll get you your payment.” Tory says, having me wait at a table in the bakery for a few minutes, having been given a cup of tea by one of the girls working there who didn’t ask for any payment. Tory comes out with a big smile on her face and, grabbing her own cup of tea, sits across from me.

“you’ve greatly exceeded expectations! with the amount you made, I didn't expect such high quality, but this may as well be cream. Would you be interested in coming back tomorrow?” She asks, extending a hand with three gold coins. Taking the money, with my own smile I agree. She makes sure I leave with a bag full of fresh rolls and buns. Waving her goodbye and exiting the doors, I find Cinder already waiting outside.

“Hey, how was work?” she asks.

“Good! I made a few friends, plus this.” I say, holding up the gold.

“You made that much?!” she exclaims “Usually you would have to do a lot more to make three gold!”

“Tory said the milk was really high quality, and I made a lot, so I got extra pay. How was work for you, were you waiting out here long?” I ask

Cinder looks away for a moment before replying. “Actually, I couldn't find anything that I'm qualified for. With this much money though, We won't need to work at all for a while.”

“I already agreed to come back tomorrow, was there something you wanted to do?”

“Yeah, but we can actually do it now. There's a bookstore in the nicer side of town that I've been told has some rare magical books. The only issue is that you have to buy them if you want to read anything and they can get expensive. It’ll be worth it though, if we can find some more info on what brought you here.”

“Well we can definitely afford it now! Let's do it.”