“Blanche!” Archie ran across the great hall to Blanche, Nori and Oliver trailing behind. “Can I see your pot?”

The nearby students exchanged confused looks. “I don’t know if you can just ask a girl that, Archie,” Cress said.

“What? No, it’s—the soil!”

“Um…” Blanche brushed her brown bangs off her black eyebrows. “It’s in my room…let me…go…grab it, I guess.”

Archie realized how overwhelming his excitement must have been and attempted to pivot into a cooler, relaxed persona. He failed to make the change subtle. “Yeah, sure. Cool. Sounds good. I’ll meet you down at the lounge in a bit.”

Blanche offered an awkward smile and walked away.

Cress offered Archie an overly enthusiastic thumbs-up. “Good save, Arch.”

Archie sighed. Oliver chuckled. Nori did her best not to join him, trying to preserve her newfound peace with Archie.

Archie waited for a while so that he wouldn’t be awkwardly following Blanche, then set out for the lounge with a group of curious students in tow. Blanche waited with her pot, which she held out to Archie. He placed his palm flat on the soil, took a deep breath, and nodded.

“Thanks,” he said, withdrawing his hand. “That’s all.”

“Oh.” Blanche withdrew her pot and looked to the other students for an explanation. “Your welcome?”

“Soooo,” Nori said. “What was that?”

“I’ll tell you tomorrow in class. Or I won’t…if it doesn’t work.”

That night, Archie spent an hour in his room with one hand flat against the soil in his pot as his roommate watched.

“What’re you doing?” Benedict asked.

“Blanche told him some secret or something,” Oliver explained.

Benedict perked up. “Blanche? Told him a secret? Who was it about?”

“It was about dirt,” Oliver said dismissively. “Cool your eggs, Benny.”

“So…what’d she tell you?” Benedict asked Archie.

“It’s not what she told me,” he answered. His roommates leaned forward, waiting for the second part of a statement that never came. Archie just stared down at his pot of soil.

Oliver leaned over to Benedict. “He’s gone crazy.”

The next morning, Archie presented his pot to Quince out in the field. Quince looked at the dirt, then back up at Archie with a smile.

“That’s it right there.”

The students swarmed Archie, pushing Quince aside.

“How’d you do it?” Benedict asked.

“What changed?” Oliver demanded.

Nori pinched the back of Archie’s arm. “What’d you do?”

Archie offered a little triumphant laugh and looked into the clear sky.

When was the last time the sun felt this good?

He looked back at Nori. “It was the noodle.”

Her eyebrows raised, their arches propped up by her confusion.

“The noodle!” he repeated.

“Told you he’s gone crazy,” Oliver muttered to Benedict.

“The. Noodle!”

“Okay, Archie,” Nori said, holding her hands up for him to stop. “Saying ‘the noodle’ over and over isn’t going to help me understand.”

“That night—in the great hall—when we drank the moondrop wine and you pulled me down with the noodle. To do that we had to make it stronger.”

“Yeah…”

“You showed me how to do it!

“What? I didn’t...”

“But you did.” Archie’s words spilled out of him. “Because you did it first. And then when you did it, I felt the change. And then I did it.”

Nori grabbed Archie’s shoulders. “Can you…just, like, take a breath? And then start explaining things in a way that makes sense.”

Archie obliged her. He made an exaggerated show of breathing in, his chest expanding. His words slowed down to a normal pace. His tone, however, retained his excitement.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“It’s like…the Ambrosial essence has its own language. Or it is the language. And when you strengthened that noodle, I felt the essence change. That new way that it was put together…was like a word. And that word was ‘strengthen the noodle.’ So then I just repeated the word.”

“That’s smart, Archie.” Quince, having kept an ear open to the conversation, walked over to the group. “Language,” he nodded thoughtfully. “I’ve never heard it said that way.”

“Yeah. So when I touched Blanche’s pot—since we knew she was successful—I just…listened for a word. And that word was slightly different than the word coming from my soil. So I added the missing part of the word to my soil.”

“There it is,” Quince said with pride. “You’re hearing the essence. The fact you can hear the difference is impressive. Some people…it’s like having an ear for music. You can pick out the right notes just from hearing the song. But hearing the notes and being able to play them is very different.”

“Well, it’s not as good as Blanche’s,” Archie conceded.

Quince laughed. “Blanche’s soil is…well. She’s exceptional. If she were a third-year, I’d still be impressed. But she’s not even a second-week. It’s a touch of genius. A full-fledged symphony is in that there soil. You can pick out the notes, but you won’t be able to play that symphony without practice. But, you have the tune already, and that’s a great start.”

Blanche smiled at her pot like a mother would smile at her baby. “A symphony…” she said to herself.

Oliver stomped straight through the happy moment, crudely sticking a finger into Archie’s soil and then into his own. “I can’t tell the difference,” he said.

“Hey!” Archie complained as he pulled the pot away, shielding it from any other potential violators.

“Most of you won’t be able to just yet,” Quince explained. “But you can learn. We all have different natural affinities. To borrow Archie’s language metaphor, essence sorta takes on a different accent depending on what it occupies. The more you expose yourself to that accent, the better you’ll be able to understand it. That’s where it starts. Understanding. Eventually, you can force the accent yourself. And then you can learn to sound like a natural.

“So Oliver, you can’t understand the soil’s accent. But you’re probably a natural at some other accent. At the ceremony, when we looked for your affinity, we were looking for the things you could naturally understand already.

“You can still learn the soil's accent. And you should. That way when you plant an apple seed, which has a different accent than your soil, you can teach them how to communicate with each other properly.”

Quince started to walk away, muttering to himself, “language, that’s good. I’mma use that.”

Archie relished the spotlight. Everyone came over to touch his soil, to feel for a difference, to ask how he had figured it out. Meanwhile, Blanche—with her far superior soil—wandered off toward the lake, preferring to keep to herself and her pot.

The students touched Archie’s soil, ran back to their own, then eagerly presented their pot to Quince.

“No change. Nope. Nothing.” Of the first ten students, only Nori seemed to have moved in the right direction. “I told y’all,” Quince said, “not everyone has an ear for music. Some of you are going to have to learn your basic chords, first.”

Once the more familiar students had taken turns with Archie’s soil, Julienne approached, Yarrow following closely behind.

“Hi. I don’t think we’ve formally met. I’m Julienne.” The boy stuck out his hand. Archie shook it and took his first good look at Julienne’s face.

Dark, nearly black hair ribboned down in waves across his pale forehead. His cheeks were shallow with prominent cheekbones. His thin nose had a little bulge in the middle to give it shape. He had a sort of half-reptilian, half-fox beauty.

“Hi. I’m Archie.”

“I’m Yarrow,” the boy behind Julienne said. He didn’t offer to shake hands and gave no indication that he had spent an entire day riding with Archie just a week earlier. Archie internalized a shrug and nodded back to Yarrow.

“Would you mind helping me out?” Julienne asked. He avoided eye contact and a slight air of frustration slipped out with his voice. “Head Chef Quince said that I was good but…good’s not good enough.”

Something pained came out at the end, prompting Archie’s pity.

“Sure.” He held his pot out.

The awkwardness of the situation was not lost on Julienne. A nervous chuckle slipped out. He looked around uncomfortably before gently placing a hand on the soil. But then the look of awkwardness faded away, replaced by a look of curiosity.

“I liked what you said about language,” Julienne said. He kept his hand on the soil. Archie smelled his breath. Fruity. A hint of orange. “Even just thinking about it that way—of talking to the soil—it helped. Did your dad teach you that?”

“No. He…My mom taught me how to cook, but that’s it. The uh—the soil around where I come from isn’t very good. We couldn’t really grow much around the restaurant. We got our stuff from other places.”

Julienne nodded. “Sorry. Well, it looks like you’re a natural at this. Maybe one day you can go home and…fix the soil?”

“That’d be nice. Better Chefs have tried. Did your dad teach you any of this?” Archie asked, knowing the answer would certainly be yes. Someone named Julienne from the family that owns Cafe Julienne? That’s not someone that got to play with bugs as a kid.

“No. That was my uncle, Julienne. Uncle Julienne.”

“Is your dad named Julienne, too?”

Julienne laughed and shook his head. He looked down at the pot, his hand still planted on the soil. “No. My family—they only name one person Julienne per generation. It’s their way of choosing who inherits the restaurant.”

“That’s…I mean, not to put any pressure on you, but that’s a lot of…pressure. How do they decide which baby to name Julienne?”

Julienne offered a sad laugh. “Yeah, it is a lot. But they don’t name the baby Julienne.”

“What?”

“Yeah, they name their babies like anyone else…and once per generation, they pick the kid that’s shown the most during the festivals and give them the name.”

“So wait…They changed your name? That’s…crazy. How old were you?”

“Eleven.”

Archie thought about what it would be like to stop being Archie. Would he still feel connected to his childhood memories? Would he feel pressured to live a new life? To change his personality? “What’s your real name?”

“Julienne.” He took a breath and smiled, taking his hand off the soil. “I think I understand a bit better now, thanks.”

Julienne walked away, replaced by Yarrow, who stuck his hand on the soil for a moment and squinted in feigned thought. “Nice to meet you,” he said as he left and returned to Julienne.

Archie watched Julienne for a while before setting back to his own pot. After an hour, Archie heard Quince congratulate Julienne’s progress.

But the sadness of their conversation didn’t leave Archie. Julienne had spurred Archie to think profound, philosophical thoughts about the self and identity—until Nori interrupted him. She ran up to him at the end of the day to compare soil.

“I think I caught up,” she cheered. Archie felt both pots. He hated to admit it, but she had.

“Yeah, almost. It’s close,” he conceded, keeping the full truth of her success to himself.

“What do you mean? They’re identical! Don’t be sour just because—”

“—I’m not—” Archie fired back. But then he thought of the olive branch and took a deep breath. “Sorry. Good job.”

“Thank you. I know it can be hard to witness such skill.” Nori tilted her face up to Archie’s, her dark brown eyes staring into his blue ones, her little mischievous smile goading him to start a fight.

Archie shook his head and laughed. He wouldn’t play her game. He knew he’d lose.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go eat to celebrate your resounding success.”