Chapter Twenty-Seven - Alice in the Kitchen

The next day started easily enough. Alice decided to stay awake during the night. Something about her last dream bothered her, and she knew better than to tempt fate unprepared. Besides, Crystal deserved some sleep too. She watched over Crystal's sleep, pushing away any evil influence that might try to warp her dreams and ensuring that she slept well.

In the meantime, Alice explored the cottage.

It had definitely belonged to some sort of businessman, one who had a few interesting hobbies. There was mountain climbing gear and plenty of hunting equipment, though the safes that should have held guns and ammo were emptied out.

Those Stalkers that Koschei mentioned? It would make sense that they'd come and grab a reappearing shotgun or two. Those kinds of things would be useful to any Stalker. Or be easy to resell.

She discovered a small explosive device, little more than an empty glass cup and a grenade with the pin pulled tied to the inside of one of the nearly-closed safes. Opening it made the cup fall.

Her shadows caught it, but she imagined that if the glass broke, the grenade's spoon would be flung off, and then she'd have a bit of a mess on her hands. Devious, and rather disgusting.

She had her shadows eat the explosive then continued to explore. There was some untouched artwork, a few photos and lots of little knick-knacks that someone might leave behind. None of it mattered as much as the contents of the pantry.

She didn't think the food in the refrigerator would be worth investigating, and the smell wasn't worth exploring, so she left that shut and instead poked around in the pantry. There was enough to start on a decent breakfast. She didn't know what to do with what she found.

The truth was that she was maybe not the best cook. It was just never something she'd spent all that much time on. When she became a magical girl, the need to cook for herself dropped precariously, and she never spent too much time looking into learning after that. When they started to be more... international, there were always places to order out from, and some of the other girls were more into it.

Gravity's Heartbeat was an excellent cook. She wasn't fancy, and her food wasn't magical, but it was always... honest and filling and warm.

Silenced Annihilation was pretty good at baking too. Alice remembered teasing her that it was part of her French heritage.

But Alice cooking for herself... that was something else.

She did find a cookbook and flitted through it until she found a recipe for something called buckwheat porridge that wouldn't require anything from the fridge. Some water was required, but the taps worked. It came out yellowish, but she could create a rudimentary filter with her magic if she spent enough time thinking about it.

Getting the water to boil was a little tricky, but she was a deft hand with magic of all sorts, and creating a small flame, while outside the main remit of her domain, was still well within her capabilities. She was pretty decent at enchanting if she said so herself.

So she got water to boil, then just followed the recipe. Koschei awoke first, just as she was finishing up. He slipped into the kitchen and stared for a moment, then he turned on a flashlight and illuminated her.

Ah, yes, she'd been working in total darkness, hadn't she? "Slept well?" she asked.

"Yes," he said. "What are you doing?"

"Cooking," she replied. "It's buckwheat porridge. I found some dried fruit and honey. There's some cinnamon and nutmeg in this too. Honestly, it's starting to smell pretty nice. Couldn't find any nuts though, which is too bad, the recipe calls for them."

"I see," he said. "And you were cooking in the dark? Is that boiling water?"

"Yes," she said.

"This place has no power."

"I noticed," she replied. The ring on the stove was red anyway, not that she cared to explain. "Sit, I think this needs to cool. I'm going to get Crystal. It'd be best if I woke her."

Crystal woke up and chose laziness. Alice poked her a few times, but she didn't want to move, so Alice had no choice but to scoop her off the bed in a princess carry and bring her into the dining room where she was deposited on a stool. If she fell from there it was her own problem.

"You cooked?" Crystal asked.

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"I followed the recipe," Alice said. She was a little proud.

She was a little less proud when she started to eat. Buckwheat porridge was... not a popular meal for a rather good reason. It was rather bland, even with the spices. But it was edible, and the dried fruit helped a lot. "This isn't bad at all!" Crystal said as she scooped another spoonful into her mouth.

Koschei nodded his thanks. He finally turned his light off as the sun rose enough to start illuminating the inside of the house. "We're leaving in five," he said after eating the last of the porridge. He looked at Crystal who was still in a nightgown. "Will you be dressed by then?"

Crystal snorted and snapped her finger. There was a bright flash, the sound of chimes ringing, and she was in her normal costume. "Wait, no, I forgot." Another snap and her costume was modified to be more Stalker-like.

"I... see," Koschei said.

He clearly didn't, and he just as clearly made the conscious choice not to ask. Alice suspected that not asking the wrong questions was something of a survival skill for the man.

They were out of the house ten minutes later, because it still took a minute to gather their things. By then, the sun had turned the sky a bright blue. It wasn't over the horizon just yet, but it was bright enough to see by.

"What's the itinerary for today?" Alice asked.

"We have a choice," Koschei said. "We can cut through the mountains. It's faster. There are many small facilities and towns there. It's also easy to get lost in those woods, and a few factions make their home there. The other option is to follow the road. It's longer and winding. It's also not as safe. But it can be faster."

"I think you just said the opposite of what you... just said," Crystal tried. She had twisted her own sentence into incomprehension again.

Koschei hummed. "The road is longer to walk, and it's not a straight path. But it is a road."

"So less direct, but impossible to get lost on, and it's easier to walk," Alice said.

"Exactly," he replied. "There are more challenges on the road, however. It'll lead into the city faster. The Zone rarely touches the road itself except to give it new twists and turns."

"Let's stick to the road," Alice said.

"How long until we get to that place we're supposed to be going to?" Crystal asked.

"The camp?" Koschei asked. "Tonight."

That wasn't too bad. "The camp's right in the Zone, right?"

"On what some would call the edge," he said. "We're cutting into the Zone then angling out of it to get to the camp. It's close to the Zone, as close as Pripyat is, though to the north-east of the Zone, rather than just east of it."

"Couldn't we have gone around, then?" Crystal asked.

He shook his head. "It's secluded. Mountains and roads that are all gone. There are ways there from the north, but it's from the far north, and those routes are long and dangerous. Old smuggler's paths. They're hit first by the storms too. No shelter. The weather's not good either."

Alice hummed. "Well, let's get going then. Tonight is a long ways off from now."

"Yes," Koschei agreed. He shouldered his rifle, then started down the winding driveway back towards the road.

They made it to the road, then started off in the opposite direction they'd come from the night before. It looked like they'd have an uneventful morning at first, until Alice and Crystal both heard a distant car rumbling on the road ahead of them.

"Car, coming our way," Alice said.

Koschei looked to her, then the road ahead. "Let's move to the side. Hide." He moved off the road himself, running to hide behind some bushes with his rifle out.

They plopped themselves down, and Alice tweaked the shadows so that they grew just a little longer and a little darker. Too dark would actually be more noticeable. People were good at picking out things that didn't quite fit.

A truck came around the road in the distance, and they just watched it roll by. It was a large van once. Now it was covered in steel plates rusted and weather-worn, with a turret emplacement tacked onto the roof and a large cow-catching grill on the front.

"That's some Mad Max stuff right there," Crystal said.

"And it's also not our problem," Alice said.

It was a good reminder that the biggest threat around here wasn't just the Zone, but the people in it.

***