The dishwater was roiling, but not outright boiling- Heat was simply thrashing her hands along the dishes, a heat haze coming off of her. A wooden spoon bounced off of the back of her head, and she had to take a moment to calm down before picking it up and putting it into the to-clean pile.
“I get that it works, but do you really have to hit me every time I start up again?” asked Heat, the haze starting to form around her head. The wooden spoon fell out of the dish pile, smacking against Heat’s leg before it hit the floor. “Damnit!”
“You’ve been skimping out on shifts thanks to your issues, having to heal up from the invasion, and training with your lady friends. I figure if I can keep you on-task for at least an hour or so today, it’s worth it,” said the head chef, an older woman named Bethany. She had been running the Paladins’ kitchens for thirty years now, and for all that Heat didn’t appreciate her ability to levitate small objects (specifically, levitating them to smack her), she could respect the old biddy for keeping dozens of workers in line to feed hundreds of people daily. This wasn’t the only public-serving kitchen in the city, not by far, but it was the oldest.
Heat’s thoughts, of course, went back to the other day, and how she had screwed up the sparring match with Sally. She and Cold should have gone easier on her, should have focused on helping Sally instead of training themselves… they should have been nicer, shouldn’t have provoked her.
The wooden spoon smacked her in the small of her back this time, and she grabbed it and whirled around with a glare. It jumped out of her hand and whacked her on the nose, and she couldn’t help but groan and massage her face as she realized the dishwater was starting to boil again.
“And Cold can’t do this why?” Heat groaned.
“Because she’ll just freeze the dishes instead!” cried Bethany, two fingers held aloft and twirled to make the wooden spoon smack into Heat’s shoulder. Heat got back to work, focusing on keeping the water just hot enough to wash without boiling it away. The more she focused, the more she managed it- until an errant thought brought up the memory of that sparring match, and how Sally had avoided her for the past three days. The two hadn’t been super close before, Heat was fully aware that she and Cold had been too preoccupied with their own psyche to pay attention to the people around them until recently, but the larger woman outright moved to avoid her when she saw her in the street or at the sparring ring.
Another smack, this time to the cheek, and the heat haze dissipated again.
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Heat paced around in the mind palace, wringing her hands and stewing in her own frustration after having finished their portion of the dishwashing for today. Her fire powers helped speed it up, and now she didn’t even have the distraction of being thwacked repeatedly to keep her from obsessing over how she’d hurt Sally.
Cold mentally whacked her upside the head with a smirk as she returned to reading over a recipe book containing every recipe they’d ever learned to cook. It wasn’t completely visual yet, presenting as a mixture of half-remembered images and the feelings they evoked, but the organization was the point, not making it literal.
The two had started looking more human and distinct in their shared mindspace, looking for all the world like sisters- Heat had wild fiery red curls and ringlets sticking out in every direction, her phoenix wings tucked around her like a shawl over a simple shirt and jeans; Cold meanwhile had her pale blue-white hair in a tight semi-spiraling ponytail, and she wore her draconic scales like a dress.
“This isn’t like you,” said Cold, shutting her book and putting it away. “You’re usually so direct, but here you are unable to confront the person you have a crush on because you’re afraid you hurt them. She’s probably thinking the same thing.”
“Well why don’t you talk to her then? You like her too!” Heat shot back with a glare, her legs tense and her fists balled at her sides.
“Because I’m not the one pacing around; I’m perfectly fine with giving her more time, let her process it all before she comes to us. What we did was perfectly rational, and she’s no idiot. You’re the one making a fuss about it, so you can go talk to her,” grumbled Cold, one hand on her hip and the other pressing against her forehead.
“You- you’re- you’re afraid!” yelled Heat. Cold shoved Heat out of the library, barring the door so she couldn’t get back in. Heat banged on the door a little, but eventually gave up and took over their shared body again.
She left their physical room after about fifteen minutes of pacing and muttering. That had given her time to plan, and to curse out Cold, but mostly to plan. She had to confront Sally and apologize, if nothing else, because they were on the same salvage team. Unfortunately, Sally’s job tended to take her all over town, since there was always manual labor that needed doing, which meant it would probably take a while to find her.
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As Heat was leaving the barracks, she nearly bumped into a ladder standing in the doorway. As she looked up to see what was going on, she noticed the door hinge was dangerously crooked, and the heavy oaken door could potentially fall off.
“Oh good, can you help me? I need someone to keep the door steady while I fix the hinge!” the worker standing atop the ladder said. Heat nodded her head and grabbed the door, holding it steady as the worker used a combination of hammers and tongs to hammer the hinge into position and securely nail it down.
“Whoo, good, thanks for helping with that. We might need to replace that part of the doorframe depending on the damage, but at least for now it should be safe to use,” the worker said, wiping his brow. “The name’s Graham, nice to meet ya. I’ve seen you around town before, right? I swear I heard some rumor about you having some… soul thing?”
“Yeah, I have a split soul, two souls to one body. I’m Heat, and the other one is Cold. It’s nice to meet you, Graham; have you seen my teammate Sally? She’s the big woman with dark hair, tends to speak flat? I need to talk to her about something,” Heat replied, shuffling around a little in place.
“Oh yeah, her! Sure, I’ve seen her- she was looking mighty bothered about something, hopefully you can help with that. I saw her about an hour ago over near the farms, hopefully you can help her with whatever her problem is!” said Graham as he packed away his tools and collapsed the ladder, picking it up under one arm. “Good luck!”
Heat nodded her thanks and left towards the farms, weaving her way through the crowded streets. As she came to the farms, she noticed with a start that some of the farmers were looking exhausted and cold. Heat walked up to them and said hello, and asked if they needed a campfire; they were quite happy to accept, and helped Heat gather some spare firewood that she lit for them, the farmers warming their hands by the fire in the autumn chill. One of them pulled out a few strips of dried fruit and passed them around; Heat accepted one and absently chewed on it. It wasn’t very sweet, but it was tasty enough. When asked, the farmers mentioned that Sally had helped them with some of the harvesting and should be near the grain silo, delivering grain.
Soon, Heat gave her goodbyes to the farmers and continued on towards the grain silo. There she did not find Sally, but instead she found a girl of maybe fourteen, thin with messy dark hair, who was holding a wicker basket and gently watching as a series of beetles and grubs walked into it. Heat stared, a little fascinated and a little grossed out.
As the girl stood up straight, her basket full of insects, she looked at Heat and said, “If you’re going to judge me, can you get it over with?”
Heat blushed at having stared and waved her hands around, saying, “No, no, I’m not judging you! It was just a little interesting to watch. How did you get them into the basket, some kind of bait?”
The girl shook her head. “No, I… my soul magic is bugs. I can control them, make them want to do something; these grain weevils will be killed if I don’t put them somewhere else, and I don’t want them to die, or our food to go bad.”
“Well, that’s pretty impressive!” said Heat, her hands in her pockets. “I bet not many people have that kind of soul magic, and you can do all sorts of neat stuff with it!”
The girl began to smile brightly at that, showing Heat the weevils again, and how they would stack on top of each other and do tricks for her. It was actually pretty good, and Heat was glad she could encourage the girl. And then a thought occurred to her.
“Hey, do you have control over spiders?” she asked with a head tilt.
The girl nodded, asking “Why?”
“Because, at least back home, spider silk is as strong as steel, people just can’t harvest it properly because, well, they’re spiders. If you could use your powers to feed spiders bugs so that they make as much silk as possible, you could pump out a lot of silk, and the seamstresses could make armor for the Paladins.”
The girl gasped excitedly and dashed off, accidentally leaving the bucket of weevils behind. As she dashed back to grab the bucket, Heat called out, “What’s your name?”
“Madeline!” the girl cried as she hugged the bucket to her chest, dashing off towards, presumably, a group of spiders she had squirreled away.
A great crash echoed from nearby, and Heat dashed towards it to see if anyone needed help. Upon arrival, she noticed that a millstone from one of the windmills had been thrown upon the ground so that a craftsmen could work on the mill’s internals. And standing over it, dusting herself off, was Sally. Heat decided not to approach her just yet, to give Sally time to finish her work, but Cold grabbed hold of the body for just long enough to jerk it forwards, sending Heat stumbling into view. Sally looked a little stunned, and Heat was just glad she wasn’t running away.
“Sally, wait, I- I just wanted to apologize for the other day. I went over the line, I shouldn’t have started that ritual without your consent, even when you were having an episode!” Heat shouted, her hand held in front of her, begging Sally to stay and listen.
Sally’s expression changed from afraid to confused, but her voice was as steady as ever. “I appreciate the apology, but you stepped away without doing anything once you realized I wasn’t dangerous; I’m the one who should be apologizing to you for losing control like that, even just a little. You were trying to help me and I got too mad to appreciate that.”
Heat felt laughter bubble up from her chest, and she knew it wasn’t hers. She suppressed it with a cough and sent the mental equivalent of a smack to the head to Cold for interrupting.
“I… no, it’s fine. I was focusing just as much if not more on learning myself, and you lost control at that. I shouldn’t prioritize myself when I’m trying to teach someone else!” Heat cried.
“You are not a master, you are simply trying to help; it only makes sense that you’d switch to learning once we swapped our weapon style,” Sally countered, her voice as implacable as ever, but her hands rubbing against each other in front of her showing how nervous she was. “Perhaps… we have both apologized, and you are not mad at me. Could we start spending time together again? I have missed our talks.”
Heat nodded with a smile, taking the larger woman’s hand in her own. Sally began to chat about her perspective on the ethics of animal farming, and Heat couldn’t help but smile.