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Wings of oddest kind
Glow like a gamer’s PC
That little devil
Food. The fuel of the human soul, literally, metaphorically, metaphysically… In every way, shape, and form, food has shaped man’s journey upon this green earth. From our ancestors running after deer, to them learning how to farm, to forming civilizations based on those farms… In short, food is very important for humanity as a whole, a fun fact that you might not have known up until now.
“Ah… Pure bliss.” Licorice, like her mortal ancestors, had gone on a long journey for her food. The head maid had forgotten that she was a human with a need for food, and the way to the kitchen was a long one rife with confusing corridors.
Yet, our heroine had persevered, and made her way to the kitchen at last. “…Now, what the hell do I cook?” Licorice didn’t even know if she knew how to cook. Guess I’ll have to find out what I know. Now, what do we have here…
The kitchen in question was a surprisingly small one considering the massive mansion. Most of the employees were fairy maids who didn’t need food either. The implements here looked like they belonged to a few centuries prior: a wood-burning stove made of steel lined up with various pots of tea, copper pans and pots that were flanked by a stainless-steel pan that looked out of place, and wooden cabinets filled with whatever the head maid had managed to buy.
The thing that caught Licorice’s attention most was an errant box of steel: a modern fridge. She approached towards this familiar box, as if she wanted to shake hands with a fellow being from the Outside World. This must be where the good stuff is, right? Our heroine could hear her stomach rumble at the sight of this majestic box. She gently opened the door…
“Po dyavolite!” The fridge door opened to reveal a fully intact human corpse covered in cubes of ice. Licorice didn’t want to take a closer look, so she closed the fridge door as eagerly as she had opened it.
Well... That’s ruined my appetite. She was clearly lying to herself; her stomach was as rumbly as it was before. Licorice was currently concerned with her own sustenance and a corpse clearly didn’t need her help. Our heroine let bodies stuffed in fridges stay stuffed where they were.
Having failed to acquire any ingredients suitable for humans (of the non-cannibal kind) in the fridge, Licorice headed for the cupboards. There she finally found the quintessential items of Western cuisine: eggs, flour, butter and milk; along with a random assortment of ingredients that were too large in number to count. The cupboards, just like the mansion itself, seemed much bigger in the inside.
With her ingredients found, Licorice took a pan into her hand and stared it down while trying to figure out what to put in it. What can I cook? Uhm… Eggs? Fried eggs? No, that’s too simple…
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Licorice found herself immersed in questions of cuisine. She couldn’t hear anything else amongst the clangs of the pots and cupboards that she was interacting with during her brainstorming.
So immersed in fact, that our heroine didn’t notice that someone had come to visit her. “Hey miss.” Licorice felt something tug the hem of her skirt. Judging from the voice it must have been Remilia.
“Oh, mistress… mistress?” There seemed to be something different about the mistress. Her hair was blond. “Did you dye your hair? And…” Her eyes drifted to the odd “wings” of “Remilia”, which looked like a bunch of Christmas lights lined up on two thick twigs. “…is it Christmas already? I thought that it was still spring.” Her sense of time had been messed up since coming here, especially due to Sakuya’s shenanigans.
“Ufufu. Of course! It is Christmas, my dear…” The mistress faltered while trying to remember her maid’s name. “…Liquor? As they say, ‘New Year, New Me’.” She used her hands to fling her hair around, showing it off to our heroine. “Blond suits me more, no?”
“Of course, of course!” How did she forget my name? Whatever, I’ll just play along with the mistress for now. Licorice (or Liquor) decided that she’d praise the little mistress a bit. “Compared to your old hair, you look much more… alive. And the lights are really… what do you call it… avant-garde!”
“Yes, yes!” The mistress clapped her hands together, looking pleased at the shower of half-baked compliments. “Gold is much better than silver, obviously! That girl would never get that.”
“That girl?” Is she referring to Sakuya? “I think she’s just a bit biased due to the color of her own hair.” Honestly, silver fits the head maid much better than anything else.
“Flandre! Licorice!” The door of the kitchen suddenly opened to reveal… the mistress? “I heard that just now. That’s no way to refer to your big sister!”
“Ah. I’ve been found out- Ce dracu!” The gold mistress’s shoulder met a quick slap coming from the silver mistress.
“And you! You dare turn traitor, saying that blond hair is much better than silver.” Now the downfall came upon Licorice.
Licorice was too befuddled to properly respond to this point. The population of mistresses had suddenly doubled, and she didn’t know how to deal with it. “Mistress, did you go through mitosis? Who’s this other girl?”
Now was the mistress’ turn to be befuddled. “My… My toe sees? My toe doesn’t see anything!” Remilia pulled the other mistress in front of Licorice’s view. The other mistress flailed her around and legs trying to run away, but Remilia’s grip was far stronger. “This brat right here is Flandre. My little sister.”
Flandre blew a raspberry at Remilia. “I’m not little!” She was still trying to escape, but her rude little gesture had made Remilia’s grip stronger in frustration. “There’s only five years between us. Five years doesn’t matter much when compared to the hundreds of years we’ve lived!”
“Aw, a little sister?” Licorice instinctively went to pat Flandre’s head. “What a cute little creature you are- Sikter!” Her hand was met with Flandre violently biting down to drive her off. Our heroine understood the answer and she withdrew her hand as far away as possible.
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“Flandre! That’s quite rude.” She let go of her sister. Flandre slingshot away, only barely managing not to fall to the floor. “You have to politely inform the humans before you draw their blood.” Remilia’s standard of ‘polite’ wasn’t that high considering how she had introduced herself to Licorice.
“That’s for weaklings who are stuck as final bosses.” Flandre puffed her chest. “I’m an extra stage boss. I get to draw blood however and whenever I want!”
“Yes, and you suck at sucking.” Remilia’s palm met her face, and she also rolled her eyes. “You always end up destroying whoever comes here. I’ve had countless meals ruined by you!”
“Hmm… Meals…” Flandre’s hand went to her stomach. She was quite hungry, hence her appearance in the kitchen. “Speaking of which, can I consume Liquor now? Where’s Miss Sakuya?”
“Huh? We’ve always had liquor.” Remilia did agree with Flandre on one point: she was hungry. “I think that Sakuya’s currently busy in the garden. There’s no one else to…” Her eyes shifted toward Licorice. “…prepare food? Licorice!”
Licorice’s mind had drifted away from the bickering sisters. She took a moment to return back once she heard her name. “Yes, mistress?” Our heroine had been thinking about food as well. Her stomach was as empty as it had been at the start of this chapter.
“You shall get the honor of preparing I, Remilia Scarlet, and my sister a meal.” She dragged a stool and sat on it in anticipation. “Do not disappoint us.”
“Yeah! Human cuisine!” Flandre jumped on her sister’s lap since there were no more stools around. She flapped her legs impatiently while waiting for Licorice. Remilia embraced Flandre from behind to make sure that she wouldn’t end up falling, and the big sister groaned while having to bear the full weight of her energetic little sister.
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Crap… Sakuya must be really good at cooking. The appliances in the kitchen suddenly looked much more threatening to Licorice. These girls must have really high standards. She didn’t know if she could even come close to meeting their sky-high expectations. Do I go for something fancy, or something basic?
Then, as if she had received a revelation from God himself, a name popped up in Licorice’s head. Palachinki. Everyone loves palachinki. With this, our heroine got to work. Egg, milk, flour… mixing bowl, a mixer… they don’t have mixers here. A spatula will have to do. “Palachinki, palachinki, tryabva da napravya malko palachinki…” She caught a satisfying tune that coincided with her movements.
“Sorã, what’s she doing?” Flandre leaned toward Remilia to not let Licorice hear her.
“I think she’s casting some sort of esoteric cooking magic.” Remilia didn’t understand one bit of the strange language that our heroine was using. “Magicians always use something powerful like Latin, Hebrew or Classical Chinese.” Of course, she only knew of this from Patchouli, who was adept at various languages (including, but not limited to, Esperanto).
Remilia knew a considerable amount of Latin from her Romanian heritage, and the language that Licorice was speaking sounded nothing like what Meiling spoke. “It must be Hebrew, considering I can’t recognize any of it.” She reached this conclusion through logic that was simply flawless. “Maybe I should ask her to teach me some Hebrew. I’ve heard that those skilled at it can do powerful acts, like splitting a sea apart.”
“Sister, there’s no sea in Gensokyo for you to split apart.” Flandre was the one to point out this obvious problem in Remilia’s plan.
While the Scarlet sisters were busy arguing the benefits of learning Hebrew, Licorice was busy with making palachinki. This was a very simple dish, one that could be made at a quick pace like the current situation demanded. Licorice started with adding and mixing milk and eggs, before pouring flour into the mixing bowl. She didn’t follow any strict measurements, adding milk and flour to either increase or decrease the viscosity of the mixture. Eventually she reached a satisfying viscosity, one where the batter flowed like thin syrup.
Our heroine suddenly realized a crucial misstep. She had forgotten to light the stove.
Licorice searched for knobs to open the gas before she realized that this stove was fueled by wood. Thankfully, there was a familiar combination of flint and steel hanging by the stove. With quick addition of firewood and kindling (a stack of old newspapers) and a spark from the flint the oven was ready to go.
The rest of the process went smoothly with the lighting of the stove, this process consisting of putting batter on the pan, flipping to let the other side cook, and then putting the finished palachinka onto a plate. In under twenty minutes, Licorice had a stack of two dozen palachinki. I must have done this a lot… She added some honey on top for the mistresses, no child would ever object to extra sweetness on their food.
“…and I’m just saying that Hebrew has this real cool alphabet!” The debate about Hebrew was still raging on in the background. Both sisters paused when they saw Licorice approaching them with food.
“Here you go mistress…es.” Licorice looked around the room to see if she had any place to put the plates on. There wasn’t any. The only seating in the room was currently occupied by Remilia (who was currently occupied by Flandre).
“We’ll just eat it here.” Remilia took the plate from Licorice. Normally one would have problems with balancing a plate containing a dozen palachinki stacked on top of each other. Thankfully, being a vampire with amazing strength came with the benefit of being able to easily hold such a plate with one hand.
“Gimme!” Flandre took the plate with less elegance than her sister. She sat the plate on her lap, taking one palachinka to examine it. “…this is just a really thin pancake. I thought you’d make something more exotic. Like fried cicadas.”
“Uhm… I’m pretty sure we didn’t eat fried cicadas wherever I come from.” Licorice didn’t remember ever eating any bugs. Do vampires like to eat bugs?
“Thanks for the food.” Remilia was much more elegant in her ways. She took the first bite. “Mmm…” The mistress nodded in approval. “Quite… decent. You pass.”
“Yes, you pass!” Flandre joined her sister. “I won’t have to destroy you.”
Licorice had learned from experience that she shouldn’t underestimate the children of Gensokyo. Even then, such a big threat coming from such a little girl failed to be intimidating. “Please don’t destroy me.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure she behaves. You will, right?” Remilia threw an intimidating gaze toward Flandre. She didn’t want to lose a reliable source of blood and pancakes.
Flandre gave a bright, somewhat reassuring smile in response. “I won’t! Probably.” She finished the last palachinka. Now she was quite troubled: her hands were covered with honey and grease. “Miss Licorice?” She extended her hands towards the maid as if Flandre didn’t know what to do when her hands were dirty. Remilia did the same as her sister.
Can’t you people clean your own damn hands? Licorice didn’t exactly have a choice, however. She took a kitchen towel, the closest thing she could find that’d help her. “Alright, open them wide…”
“Hey, that tickles-” Flandre was making quite a fuss while Licorice got to work cleaning. Do vampires even… can vampires be ticklish? That was the sort of question that Licorice didn’t think she’d ever ask.
Curiosity got the better of her. Our heroine tickled Flandre’s sides for the sake of science. “Pwhaha-” The little mistress fell on to the floor laughing. Thankfully, for Licorice’s prospects of survival, Flandre didn’t seem mad at all. In fact, she seemed to be having fun.
“Peh. Weakling. You disgrace the vampire race by falling to such an easy a-hahatack?!” Remilia also received her fair share. The mistress seemed to be equally ticklish as her sister, and soon she was rolling on the floor alongside her. “You- You’re a bold human…” Such an act seemed to entertain Remilia as well.
The mistresses soon got up back on their feet. They both seemed sufficiently fed and entertained. “You have done your job well today. Farewell.” Remilia curtsied, flying off to do devil-knows what.
“Bye-bye, Miss Licorice!” Flandre simply waved goodbye, lacking the elegance of Remilia even though she had lived with her for over four centuries. She flew off to trail her big sister.
Licorice turned back to the now empty room. She realized a major problem. There was something else that was currently as empty as the kitchen.
Growl…
Our heroine hadn’t made any food for herself.
Her stomach was still as empty as it had been at the start of this chapter.