Anna’s shouting aside, my time cooking was rather boring. The reading was a new addition to the formula of cooking, but once I got the veggies cut up and cooking, and peeled the tomatoes, I was basically golden, all I had to do was wait for it to cook off most of the juice. There was also some bread warming but they would be fine.

Then after everything was set, and ready to go, I got to reading.

I wanted to get some of the easy questions out of my head and done with, them instead of letting them live in my head rent-free while I tried to figure out something like the next spell Anna would teach me, which seemed harder.

I got a bit lost in the book for a bit, forgetting which page I was on, but when I found where I left off, I got right back into it.

Spells could travel longer distances in the same amount of time. Then he went into colour, which was apparently somewhat subjective, it was what you thought a mana type should look like, but because most people thought specific ways about the topics, they would often be the same, like fire being red, or plants being green. That bridged into how It was customary for mages to wear robes with a corresponding colour, so a fire mage would wear a red robe.

I was starting to wonder where it was going until he dunked on a random mage for being a total weirdo and wearing a bunch of clashing colours, which brought me back into it.

Apparently, he thought it was super cool how some mages in stories from way back when wore a bunch of colors, so he dyed his robe that way, only to find out it was super ugly.

There is nothing worse than a robe that makes your eyes bleed, let me tell you.

Honestly, I thought the worst part of all of it after the fact, was that in the same book he was talking about, it was mages using colored thread to weave a kind of sash. He didn’t even research what colors they used, just the elements, so they were all awful and clashing.

But, I suppose that’s what you get eh? People who don’t read.

Like you, I bet you missed like a quarter of the things I brought up because you skipped over parts of my long, drawn-out description.

I stopped and skipped back, giving things a quick look through and was mildly shocked at some of the things he had just slipped in without me noticing them. But I had gotten the gist, and got on to the meat and potatoes of it after I finished the section.

The elements, classically four, or if you’re reading from old western sources, five. In our interpretation, these are Air, Water, Fire and Earth. Why are they the elements, you might ask? Because the first mage was very, very, uncreative and figured that’s what everything was made from. That tree over there? Earth and Water and Air, obviously.

It was a product of a less sophisticated time.

Anyway, he got it together, but it stuck as a good aid because each, with the exception of fire, are all rather complex if you were to look at their lesser components. There also plentiful enough that many a mage’s first offensive spell is likely one of these. And why not? Nothing beats a good fireball except a bigger, stronger grand fireball?

Speaking of fire.

Fire is often represented as red, though the shade often depends on the individual and is the second fastest of the four elements.

Fire is the redheaded stepchild of the Elements, as it is technically a combination of air and heat. Despite this, its long-standing existence as the most obvious member of this category makes it unlikely someone will remove it from their list of the classical elements.

I would, but I fear greatly the wrath of all my fire loving colleagues, and the longevity of my rare books.

Fire is useful for burning things, and because of this, in combat, it is used for quickly destroying lightly armored foes, like other mages. Fire has a hard time penetrating harder surfaces and carries very little punch behind it with most normal spells.

Fire can be used in a variety of spells beyond simply hurling around fire, such as with Hearth magic, a combination of Fire and Life, to create an overtime area of effect heal, or imbued food with magical properties after being cooked.

Alchemy also utilizes fire in this way to remove impurities, 'burning' them away, and bond mana to a alchemical base, 'melting' them like metal. Magical Craftsmen use fire in forges and can additionally use them to do things like better temper metal as well.

Its usefulness is only tempered, pardon the pun, by its availability, such as with Elementalists, who would have to form fire, which adds a bit of complexity for casting pure fire magic without the spell coming from levelling for many classes.

This complexity, however, is backed by the fact that you can form it almost anywhere, as it's formed from air and heat, and thus, in a pinch, you can use your own body heat to spark a flame if it’s truly necessary.

I put the book down and then stared at the fire in a sudden loss for words.

“I picked up a bunch of other stuff… When I could have picked up fire mana to make food tastier?”

What have I done? If I could go back, would I go back? Get a different class? Probably not… But I still wish I would have known that… Maybe Anna knows some spells for that? Gah, I wish I had that now, I bet the food would be so much better.

I knew, deep, deep down, that I could just pick up a spell or a magical cooking class later… But the knowledge that I could have cooked it already, the knowledge of the possible, made it all the worse. Knowledge was power… Knowledge was… far too great a burden.

I let out a breath and just looked sadly at the sauce. I got some eggs, and cracked them into the tomato sauce, and covered it up with another piece of cookware.

“Man, that sucks… I guess I just get skills that will help me keep stuff dead… And that are fun… And useful in more than one specific use case… I guess I made the right choice, but it still sucks… It sucks so bad that I’m talking to myself.”

I decided to skim water and air and save earth for a proper read because I had [Grave Magic] but almost got sucked up in it in time to miss taking the pan off the fire.

I had gotten enough into them to know that Water was the second slowest and could be used to hit or pierce a target. It was blue and more useful around bodies of water. Used away from water, it was better for agriculture than combat.

Air was apparently often a light, almost white colour and varied the most between the base elements, sometimes light green or sky blue. The air was fast, very fast. There was a note that it was only beaten by mana types like light, which was considered instantaneous. Unlike the other elements, it could only do real damage by piercing lightly armoured foes at long range.

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The two were apparently extremely important for sea mages, on top of air or whatever was being used in processes in alchemy, though it never mentioned what you did with them, which was what had caused me to almost miss the stove.

When I got it off, it was cooked, and it was okay enough that I thought it would be at least a six out of ten, maybe even a seven. I let it cool down so we could eat it and got the table set before heading over to the door intending to call Anna in.

I opened the door, and looked out at the sight. It was getting close to sunset, not there but just getting there. The days were still getting longer, and today it was just beginning to orange, the sun just lower than a hand length above the horizon, the light filtering in through the holes in the leaves. Shadows of birds, most long since, hung around in the tree’s here or there.

Anna was whisper-talking with the foxes, who were quietly yiping or growling to her in what looked like a conversation.

Anna cut herself off the second she saw the foxes' ears swivel and each of them turned to me, all going silent enough to hear a bird ruffling it’s feathers off in a tree, a shadow accompanying the movement out on the lawn.

There was a unanimous and very obvious look of conspiracy between the three of them. I would say four, but the younger of them, not fully grown, not quite a puppy, was happily rolling around, yipping normally on the deck a half dozen feet behind the three, without a care in the world.

I narrowed my eyes in distrust, not at Anna, but at the foxes…

Okay, most of that was at the foxes, who were suddenly giving dopey fox smiles and pretending like they were totally innocent.

I had no idea what Anna could do, but seemingly talking with animals was on the table. The only problem was that foxes were notoriously chaotic little goobers, and if you extended that to the idea that they could talk, it would result in even more chaos.

I was more worried that they were getting ideas in her head, the sliver of distrust in Anna was mostly about her taking the chaos they were giving her to heart.

They had already gotten the idea of me playing with Anna into their head, just what were they doing now?

“You better not be doing something bad,” I told the foxes before making an exception, “except for her… because that’s kind of funny,” I told them, pointing at the young fox whos tongue was lolling out of the side of her mouth while she panted, the perfect picture of animal goofiness and innocence.

I had no idea if they could understand me on a level where what I said made sense to their little fox heads. And I couldn’t understand them either.

“Uh, dinners ready, but it can wait if the foxes are trying to wrap you up in a conspiracy… or trying to get you to raid a hen house with them… It’s ready when you are, basically.” I told Anna.

The two looked towards Anna, their heads cocked to the side in a doggish confused way. The dog fox waved its tail back and forth, while the vixen was less focused on us, and more focused on the circumstances around her, but they both just stared up at Anna, who looked down at them for a second.

She turned to me, “Can it wait a bit… To cool down or whatnot?”

“Sure, the pan is still warm, it’ll keep a little while, should I go back in? Or…”

“I’m just wrapping up a talk with them. I have nothing to hide, though… I bet it will look odd.”

“I saw it a bit earlier, you talk normally, and the animals talk back the way they do. I’m not going to lie, it is a bit funny, but I’m not going to think you’re weird for it,” I told her, checking her cup and finding it empty.

I returned inside briefly to refill her cup with water, then I came back out, and the three were talking, a back-and-forth conversation privy to only Anna. I gave her mug back to her, wandered over to my seat, and sat down with my own mug.

I was going to mostly just let Anna do Anna stuff and watch the light, but I got sidetracked from the evening sky by a little wet nose snuffling at me.

I peered over the side and down into the eyes of the young fox.

She looked up at me, her mouth open, snuffling at my hand.

She had a playful look about her, so I twitched my hand over to give her a scritch.

She let out a surprised short chortle and rounded to grip my finger. I gave her a token resistance, whipping my fingers weakly in her mouth before reaching the rest of my hand around to give her scritches.

She bounced back, letting go of my finger and instead zipping to grip my hand, an act of genius, for surely my hand could no longer move.

I moved my hand around to give her more scritches and cupped my fingers around her head, and she let out a surprise.

Shock and awe. Surprise at my truly crazy ability to move my fingers.

The fox quickly dropped my hand, pulling away from the five wiggly fingers, and came with a different approach.

She kept trying these approaches, sometimes trying to hold my fingers down with her paws, sometimes by letting them distract my fingers with the fuzz of her belly or back while she went for my wrist or arm.

She was quite nippy and didn’t know how to hold back her strength, her teeth leaving little red marks where they pushed down, not strong enough to hurt, but enough to show.

She was holding my fingers down in her belly while she held my hand in her mouth when the vixen yiped and she suddenly stopped, turning to look towards her mother. The perfect look of startled, bewildered, confusion.

I stopped ruffling her belly, but she still held my hand while looking at her mother. Her mouth let go, and she yiped at her mother, who let out a whiney growl of annoyance.

The young fox let go of my hand, and I gave her an ear scritch of farewell before pulling my hand up, and away from her.

The foxes grumbled as they left, and I turned to Anna.

“Are you ready for dinner? Or do you want to watch the sunset?”

Anna was droopier, but she answered, “I am a bit peckish…”

I stood and leaned over towards her before scooping her up in my arms.

She let out a squeak of surprise, but I just hummed to myself and moved her over to the door.

I nudged it open and walked on in, setting Anna down in a chair carefully so as not to let her slight squirming rock her off her chair.

“You didn’t need to carry me in, you dummy. So what’s for dinner?” she asked.

I moved over to the food, hefting it up and over to the table and away from the fire.

They were still warm, though not warm enough to burn the wood of the table. I brought the food over, still in the pan, and moved the bread over to a bowl.

“What all this then? Eggs, tomatoes and bread. Some kind of soup?”

“Kind of. I present, for your perusal, breakfast for dinner. It’s not anything specific, but I remember some stuff like this, so I made it. I think I’m missing something, and I could add extra stuff, but I want to know what you think of it without extra stuff. So what do you think? Are you willing to help me find the right recipe?”

I looked at her as I took my seat next to her, paying close attention to her face and reaction.

Anna was a smart cookie, she liked stuff where she could use her head. I was presenting both a puzzle and dinner wrapped up in one.

Is this going to work? Or is it just going to be a normal dinner?

She looked at it curiously and asked, “How do we eat it? There’s a fork, but that’s it. Do we scoop up most of it with bread?”

“Yep,” I told her, “The eggs are still a bit gooey inside, so you can get them on the bread.”

She nodded and took a bit of bread. I mirrored her, getting my own before dipping it in and scooping up a little. Sause, and chili and veggies and egg scooped, I took a bite of the bread.

I focused on Anna while I took it in.

It was a bit lower than optimal, 5-6/10, instead of solidly higher than average.

“Well, it’s ok,” Anna said, “I can see what you mean by hot. That is quite strange, hmm…”

And then she began to list off a few things, and I took note of them. Sometimes, I would argue back.

I mentally cut one chilli out of the equation, adding onion, adding fresh maize when simmering…

I asked, “do you have any fire magic for cooking,” and Anna shook her head no.

Darn… I wish I had some of that action… Magic food seems so cool.

I suppose it’s a dream for another day.

We started coming up with smaller adjustments. Guessing at how much would be good instead of just whole ingredients.

She pointed out that the bread would be even better if it was toasted. I agreed.

We talked about it throughout the talk, it started getting so long that I went and got a slate, muttering to myself over not taking the spellbook option I had been offered. Remembering everything in the book was a useful ability, even if it was limited somewhat.

We each had our fill, slowly emptying out the pot until the sun had set, the light behind the shuttered windows slowly slipping out of sight.

We started to slow down, and I brought my book over and started reading about earth magic, while Anna got a book from her study; her legs were slow to bring it back and started reading next to me.

I put a pot on, letting a thing of tea start.

It felt like it would be a late night, it had the feel of staying up to read, and I was planning ahead, it would be a fine night to just stay up late reading with Anna.

It was when we were getting to the last little bit, an eighth or so left in the pan, the sun gone and left, when there was a knocking noise.

It wasn’t a normal knock but a little tap, like a pitter-patter. Neither of us recognized it or gave it heed.

The knock became more apparent, though. We looked up from our books, not knowing where it came from. Maybe a mouse? Something under the floorboards maybe?

Then, it came with a vengeance. Like a tiny furious storm of knocks from the door.

And it was accompanied by a shout, a tiny, familiar shout, for all that it was muted by the door.

“Let me in! Oh, by the queen, there are so many of them. Can you hear me? Let me IINNN.”

Her shout was followed by a continuous rattling noise.

Selliban was at the door.