Sara went over the list for the 17th time.

10 carrots. 3 onions, diced with a cup of celery...

She felt ill.

Add in a handful of garlic and ginger…

There were three more pages but Sara’s vision was swimming. It felt like she was taking an exam without studying for it, and that wasn’t something she never ever thought she’d experience.

She tucked the recipe inside her apron and shuffled up to the cutting board.

All the raw ingredients were laid out; carrots in one basket, spices placed neatly in racks nailed to the wall.

She picked out a knife. It felt clunky so she changed to a thinner one, and started cutting. It worked well enough, until halfway through her first carrot the blade bent sideways and snapped.

From within the backpack, she heard Jack taunting her.

“Is this how all the cleverest students in your school cook?”

Sara stuck the knife handle back into the rack and pulled out a fresh one, raising it like she was about to stab someone. “Cooking isn’t in the curriculum. It doesn’t even make sense. How much salt is a pinch? How can you say something like ‘add in half an apple’ when apples don’t even come in the same sizes?”

“You’ve lost me,” Jack admitted. “I hadn’t had a meal in centuries.”

Sara started chopping. The entire kitchen table shook, and the noise eventually attracted the wrong attention. Footsteps came down the stairs, then the door behind Sara opened.

“Why does it sound like you’re butchering an animal?”

Sara spun and hid the knife behind her back. “Mother Cansel. What a pleasant surprise.”

“I hope not,” the woman said as she swished into the room. She was wearing another one of her puffy dresses today, that hovered an inch above the ground and made her look like a hovering specter. She retrieved the broken knife blade from the ground before coming over to peer over Sara’s shoulder.

“Oh dear.”

“I’m sorry,” Sara said. “I just… need more specifics in my instructions.”

“Such as how to not break things?” Chansel said as she plucked out the broken knife handle from the rack, where Sara had stashed it.

“I’ll pay for it,” Sara said in a small voice.

Mother Chansel’s lips quirked. “Of course, with the happy thoughts I pay you with.”

“Um. Right.”

Mother Chansel brushed Sara aside and took over her station. “Some of the girls work elsewhere on their days off,” she said, her hands a blur of movement between food and steel. “You could do that. Something tells me you’re more interested in a different field of work anyway.”

Onions and radishes disappeared before Sara’s eyes. If anybody was a machine between these walls, it was this person. “My best subject was always science,” she said.

“A scholar,” said Chansel. “The alchemists are always short-handed. Why don’t you pay a visit to the castle?” She flipped open a glass jar and took out… a pinch, which she sprinkled into a pot.

“It’s not my day off today,” Sara said.

“Just work the weekends, then.” Chansel waved her away in that dismissive way she treated everyone. But she was smiling, which took the edge off. “Oh, and if you run into Taiga, tell that girl she needs to buy us another box of bandages. Her kids are wildlings.”

Back on the main floor, Sara was immediately swarmed with noise. Children screamed as they chased each other down the hallways, their feet slapping against the floorboards.

She pressed herself against the wall as a scaly-skinned kid rushed past, holding a doll above her head and shrieking with laughter. She was followed by another child, one with feathers sprouting from behind her ears.

Sara still remembered her astonishment when she was first brought to this orphanage a few days ago. She never expected to see so many animal people all in one place. For every human child, there were three who had mutations.

Were they even mutants if they were the predominant race?

Preoccupied with her thoughts, Sara didn’t see the kid coming through the doorway until she walked into him. Moving fast, she grabbed Likar’s arm to steady him.

“Thanks,” he said, his smile turning into a toothy grin when he recognized her.

Sara made sure he was steady before letting him go. “What do you have there?”

Likar held up his new masterpiece. “I made this for you.”

Sara leaned down and studied the picture. It was the same drawing as the one that she had returned to him, except there were more stick figures now, and they were all standing under a triangular roof. Sara picked out Likar and his siblings easily enough, and she knew which was one Taiga and which was the human father figure.

She pointed to one of the two new people. “Is this a vampire?”

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

“She’s Gweyn,” Likar explained. “And this is you.”

Sara frowned at the golden-haired savage. She had trees growing out of her head and her hands were skulls. To say she was unpleasant to look at was an understatement. In fact, she had a pretty nasty case of being-covered-in-blood.

“Wow. I look…”

Likar’s face broke into a grin. “Cool, right? Leona told me this is how you looked when she first saw you arrive.”

Sara clasped her hands on her hips. “How dare you,” she said, faining indignation. “You made me look like a crazy person!” She swooped Likar into her arms and swung him around in a circle. Likar giggled himself into a fit. When Sara put him down again, he pressed the drawing into her hands and rushed off to join the kids down the hall.

Shaking her head at him, Sara folded the drawing and tucked it into her pocket.

“Careful,” Jack’s muffled voice echoed from her back. “One wrong move and you’ll end everyone here.”

Sara ignored him the same way she ignored the churning in her stomach.

Outside in the front yard, she caught Taiga coming through the gate.

“You’re off work early today,” Sara said.

“I’m dropping off some food,” Taiga answered, tapping the back of her shoulder bag. “Where are you going?”

Sara didn’t want to tell the truth, that she’d been kicked out of the kitchen to look for a job so she could pay back the things she broke. “Lunch,” she answered.

“If you don’t mind waiting for me, I can show you a brilliant place to eat near the eastern end,” Taiga said. “You’ll love how they do the wrapped cabbages.”

“Sure," Sara answered. "I have time.”

After the cat girl went in, she waited outside the iron gates and counted down the seconds. She didn’t have a watch or any mechanical way to keep track of time, but from her first day in Arcadia, she’d been running up a tally in her mind of how many sunrises she’d experienced.

Too many, was the number.

Sara wasn’t sure if the life she left behind was even real, or if she’d always lived in Arcadia and was just having illusions of grandeur.

“You’re really waiting for her?” Jack asked.

Sara felt him moving around inside her bag. “Why not? I don’t exactly have an appointment with the alchemists.”

“Brave words for someone tittering on the precipice of chaos.”

Sara heard the sound of the gate opening, followed by laughter as Taiga plucked her kids off her arms and legs.

“Be good you guys,” she called as she waved goodbye.

Sara held open the gate for Taiga. “What do cat girls even eat?” she asked.

“You travelers and your funny questions,” Taiga said, linking their arms together. “I’ll never understand your fascination with us.”

Sara followed Taiga down bustling streets and through a crowded square. This was the first time she got a good look at the city. It was like stepping straight into the painting of an over-imaginative child. Buildings were stacked on top of one another, seemingly held together by nothing else than glass tube walkways. Horses trotted down the pavement, accompanied by two-wheeled contraptions that bellowed steam and squeaked so loud Sara couldn’t hear anything else when they passed.

“Bronzehaven used to lead the realm with innovations,” Taiga explained, mistaking the discomfort on Sara’s face for confusion. “But after the King died and his son Rychard took over, all progress stopped.”

They halted by the sidewalk to let a tram through. It looked high-tech compared to everything else, only there were still horses drawing it so Sara couldn’t tell what the point of it even was.

“Now the Yellow banner is a joke," Taiga continued. "The city feeds on the poor in the outskirts of the land, fattening its founders while their people starve.”

“A familiar story,” Sara said.

Taiga glanced back, her question hovering in the air. Sara chose not to give it a place to land.

They passed a beggar on the side of the road. He had four hairy arms and a beer belly so big it was more of a keg.

“Change for a sad creature?” he asked, holding up two of his four hands. Taiga ignored him.

“You do remind me of someone,” she said, turning down a nearby alleyway.

Sara’s reply was lost in a wave of heat and chatter. She stopped short, her breath catching as the aroma of spice and salt washed over her.

Stretched across the alleyway were rows of eateries and peddlers. It was so familiar to something from Sara’s hometown that for one long second, she thought she found her way back home.

Taiga started walking. Sara followed in silence. All around her, the crackling of oil and steam echoed as chitchat weaved in and out of her ears. She took in the sight of the stalls packed together, their goods displayed for all to see. On one grill was an entire roasted pig stretched out over a rack, while the stall just next to it sold candy shaped like fire-breathing dragons.

They made it a hundred feet or so before Sara spotted a store selling what had to be ramen. She asked, “We eat here?” but had already sat down before she could get an answer.

“Pick what you like,” Taiga told her with a laugh. They were under a tarp that stretched from the shop front, shading them from the sun beaming through the highrises on either side of the alleyway.

There wasn’t a menu but Sara knew exactly what she wanted. “One dish with the noodles,” she said to the waiter, then pointed at a table close by with something that looked excitingly similar to takoyaki on it. “Two of that one. And whatever those people are eating over there, I’d like a piece. Two. No, three.”

Taiga didn’t say anything, just smiled as she watched Sara.

“Sorry,” Sara said once she realized her rudeness. “It’s just this place… wow.”

“It’s called Traveler’s Street,” Taiga replied. “I’m sure you can guess why.”

Sara looked around. “You mean… These people are all travelers like me?”

“Not quite. From what I gathered, the very first travelers in Arcadia settled here, which means the people running this area are their decedents.”

Sara didn’t know what to say. She saw the stalls in a new light, and the magic was gone. These people might not be Jack or her, but they were the offspring of people like them.

She couldn’t deny that everyone looked genuinely at peace serving or selling or busking, but the very fact of their existence meant at some point in the distant past, a whole group of travelers decided it was easier to live in this world than try to escape it.

Sara looked down at the table. It was opaque glass rimmed with black iron, too chic to be in front of a store selling street food. Beneath it, she watched her hands curling into fists.

Would she settle here too? Could she?

Inside his bag, Jack was silent.

“The orphanage is a lifesaver,” Taiga said. “I don’t remember when I last enjoyed company without worrying about every little thing, like where my kids are or what we had to eat.”

Sara said nothing.

“I still do,” Taiga continued. “But it’s not the same. Oh, I never really asked about your situation, did I? Sorry. I just assumed with how well put-together you are, you must’ve lived in Arcadia for a good while.”

“Sure feels like it,” Sara said.

“You don’t look very happy.”

Sara looked up, then sighed. “It’s not your fault. Or this place. In fact, both are great.”

Taiga leaned forward, elbows on the table. “But?”

The waiter arrived with their food. He placed the ramen in front of Sara, the takoyaki in the center of the table, along with a bamboo plate stacked with wings.

“Would that be all?” he asked.

Taiga looked to Sara.

“Yea,” Sara said. “Thanks.” She waited until the waiter had left before picking up a wing. Her hunger had evaporated after talking with Taiga, and now she could only nibble.

Taiga crunched her wing between her molars, and let out a satisfied hum. They ate in relative silence, the only sound being their mutual appreciation of the fast food. Sara finished a wing and picked up a takoyaki ball. It had the same consistency as a real one, and biting into it, she discovered it burned her tongue the same way.

It was exactly as she expected and at the same time feared. It was her first taste of home in a long time.

And it was too much. Sara put the half-eaten ball back onto the plate.

Taiga looked up from her mountain of bones. “Everything alright?”

Sara pinched the bridge of her nose. “You owe Mother Cansel bandages,” she said, and then started to cry.