Sign: Snake
Buffs: Serpent’s Kiss (Romance twice as easy)
Debuffs: Curse of the Unspecified (Start the game with no gender, no name, and no other identifying feature)
EXP: 1,255
Alchemy
Coagula (LVL 1, 34 SKP)
Solvé (LVL 0, 39 SKP) Ready to level up!
Theoria (LVL 1, 33 SKP) Ready to level up!
Botany
Sowing (LVL 0, 5 SKP)
Tending (LVL 0, 65 SKP) Ready to level up!
?
Cooking
Fire (LVL 1, 28 SKP)
Water (LVL 0, 34 SKP) Ready to level up!
?
Homesteading
Fire Tending (LVL 0, 7 SKP)
Tidying (LVL 1, 106 SKP) Ready to level up!
Mending (LVL 0, 15 SKP)
Speech
Logic (LVL 1, 23 SKP)
Linguistics (LVL 0, 41 SKP) Ready to level up!
Cajoling (LVL 0, 10 SKP)
Total SKP: 441
Inventory:
Auros: 2.65
Cards of Destiny: 5 of ?? Discovered
Names: 4
Evengeline, The Pure Snow (Holly)
Vitas, The Wind Thief (Sparrow)
Gillygad, The Stitched-Up Wonder (Pitchfork)
Zinia, The Serpent’s Caress (Snake)
Passive Skills:
(Theoria LVL 1) Pure Substances: Some metals are especially luminous. Some hands are more precise than others. These hands shall become sharpened scalpels, made of the most luminous Silver. Higher maximum Quality points are possible for all potions.
(Coagula LVL 1) Coalescing Membranes: The membranes of the parts which make up the whole shall be in accordance. Ingredients combine more smoothly, producing higher quality potions.
(Fire LVL 1) Ignited: The Elemental branch of magic lends this Sorcerer the ability to cook faster using fire. Prepare fried or baked meals twice as quickly. Get burnt less.
(Tidying LVL 1) Dirt Buster: The magical branch of Purification lends this Sorcerer the ability to ‘Bust Dirt.’ Dust and grime accumulate at an infinitesimally slow rate on objects you have cleaned.
(Logic LVL 1) Rhetoric: The magical branch of Entreatment lends this Sorcerer the ability of heightened ‘Rhetoric.’ The structure of your arguments is smooth, regular, and orthogonal. Spirits and people are more likely to agree with you.
Spells:
Wild and Overwhelming Growth (LVL 1) Accelerate the growth of plants and fungi. Enchanted plants grow ten times faster (Overwhelming Influence), BUT enchanted plants sometimes disregard their original form.
Mated With A Strong Bond, Lesser Baptism (LVL 1) Skill actions performed by the enchanted object grant the Sorcerer one-fifth of their SKP and EXP (Strong Influence) but the objects must be enchanted in identical pairs.
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I seldom dreamt in the house on Austere Way, but when I did, the dreams crystallized in my head with perfect detail.
I was in a meadow with someone, and the stars bore down from the dark skies. One star, directly above us, was the size of a plate thrown into the air and frozen amid the inky black of night. It hung lazily above us, lighting our picnic blanket with an otherworldly bluish light.
“Where is this?” I asked.
The person across from me had beautiful, soft brown curls, and twinkling eyes, and said:
“You know where this is.”
“The Daffies?” I asked, thinking of the language of birds.
The person across from me smiled and nodded.
“I was packing up, thinking it wouldn’t be long now till I had to run away, but…” The person said.
“But, what?” I asked.
“But I think I will have to wait for you a little longer. You’re not ready to leave yet, are you?” The person asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.” I answered.
“Just remember, no matter what happens, you have to come back to this world. You have to come find me here, in the Daffies.” The person said, very seriously. “It’s very important.”
I nodded, understanding with dream logic that it was the most important thing in the universe that one day I would end up sitting here on the gingham blanket, under a pulsing giant star, with this person who had a smile soft as the nighttime breeze.
“Don’t forget,” the person said and handed me a blue, five-petaled flower.
I took the flower and looked at the tiny yellow-dot center.
“Forget-me-nots.” I identified the flower, and the dream changed.
I wasn’t in the meadow anymore. I was in a shack. There was smoke. It was dark, but orange light was pouring in through the unglassed window.
Tess! She was standing right in front of me, but she wasn’t looking at me. Solomon was clutching her arms, his hands making dimples in the flesh.
They whispered to each other and I could taste their fear in the smoky air of the tiny shack.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Flames licked through the window, and they clutched each other tighter. I heard shouting outside.
I looked out the hole in the shack which was the window and saw through the smoke a congregation of people wearing immaculate white robes. They stood in a loose circle around the shack, and all around the wooden walls, flames rose higher and higher.
We’re going to burn alive in here! I thought, but I had no mouth to shout.
Solomon and Tess clutched each other, and Tess hid her face in the man’s chest.
Maybe Solomon or Tess said it, or maybe it was a thought in my head, that sounded loud as a cry: This is the end.
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As I woke up, I noticed there was a comforting, and warm weight on my chest. In the haze of sleep, I thought it might be Aleister.
I went to gently shift it off my chest, so I could start getting up, but when my hands touched the mass, I didn’t feel the expected fur.
Right, Aleister wasn’t here. So what was on my chest? Just then, I felt something poke my cheek, rather sharply.
“Ouch!”
My eyes sprang open. There were two dark berries, set into a doughy face, right in front of my nose. The berries blinked!
I let out a yelp of surprise, and the little thing sitting on my chest jumped, and scattered off the bed.
I bolted upright.
In the corner of the room were my two dough poppets, clutching each other, and looking at me with their identical eyes. They seemed frightened.
“Oh, erm, good morning,” I said, a total loss of what to do, “I wasn’t sure if you were getting up last night, so I went to bed…”
The poppets didn’t answer but kept looking at me with their pupil-less eyes.
“It looks like you found your clothes, that’s good!” I said, noting that the poppets were dressed in my roughly sewn clothes. The sizing was about right, I noted.
I shakily got out of bed, keeping my eyes on the identical poppets. They looked down at their clothes and kept clutching each other. I thought I saw one of the poppets stroke the other’s back, reassuringly.
“So, I think, if I remember right…” I said, trying to recall what I had read in Ma Chère, “after you wake up I have to dress you. Check that off, I guess. Then, I have to name you.”
I came closer to the poppets. They hugged each other tighter, and one of them was shaking.
“Oh, no, why are you scared?” I didn’t want to frighten my dough poppets. Surely, I, their creator, didn’t mean them any harm. Why didn’t they know that?
“Um, okay, let’s name you,” I began, keeping a distance from the poppets because I didn’t want them to be scared, “I’ll name you…”
My mind was completely blank. A white page, a clear sky, an empty table… Try as I might, nothing was coming into my head. It was like I had forgotten all the names.
“Little boy! Little girl! Woke up! Little boy and girl, woke up to play!” Cheerful flapped in, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Hi! Good morning!” I told the bird.
“Good morning! Good morning! Little bread girl! Little bread boy! Woke up in the Sorceress’s house! Woke up in Mistress’s house!” He croaked, and I suddenly had an idea.
A little girl and a little boy that found themselves in a witch’s house…
“Oh, I have some names for you!” I said, looking down at the poppets. “How about Hansel,” I pointed to the poppet that dressed itself in a shirt and pants, “and Gretel!” I pointed to the poppet in the tiny dress.
“Do you like those?” I asked the poppets, unsure of myself.
A moment of total silence followed. The poppets looked at each other, blinking their black, beady eyes. I strained my eyes and ears, trying to decipher the poppets’ reaction to their new names. There was a very quiet chitter, almost like the chirp of a grasshopper.
Were my poppets talking to each other?
The chirping stopped, and poppets looked at me with identical berry eyes. They nodded!
“Good! That’s great. So um, what do we do next?”
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“I thought that enchanted objects powered down while their Enchanter slept.” I whispered to Cheerful, as I watched my poppets hefting dirt out of their baptismal bathtub. “Did you notice them getting up?”
“Little boy, little girl woke up with the sun! They rose with the first morning light! Little boy, little girl weren’t tired anymore!” Cheerful answered.
We had all come downstairs, and I had instructed the poppets to empty the bathtub full of dirt where they had slept. I was helping the effort of lugging all the dirt back into the solarium, where I had collected it from numerous empty clay pots. I took care of the larger pots, and my poppets focused on the smaller ones, closer to their size.
Between me and the dolls, we finished the job quickly.
It was kind of funny watching them work.
They had to heft the clay pots together, and while they carried them, they chittered at each other in that same insect-like way, arguing or giving directions.
I guessed, based on what Cheerful said, that enchanted objects powered down while the sun was down, not while I slept, as I had originally thought. That explained why they didn’t wake up in the middle of the night when I had cast Lesser Baptism.
It was a bit of a surprise to have the poppets wake me up this morning, instead of the other way around. But, I reasoned, as long as I rose with the dawn, every morning, the poppets wouldn’t catch me unawares.
When we walked into the solarium, hefting the clay pots full of dirt, my jaw dropped.
My enchanted plants had been growing. Fast.
The shady corner of the solarium where I had left the Amara and Belladonna now resembled a woodland thicket, and the table that held the rest of my herbs was completely invisible beneath the enchanted plants.
I had my work cut out for me!
Rather, I realized, looking down on the poppets, that I had some work for my new helpers! I thought it was rather good timing. I would have spent all day trimming and pruning back the enchanted plants.
After we were done clearing the bathtub, I got 1 EXP to Tidying. That meant if I had done the work myself I would have gotten 5 EXP. But, by myself, it would have been a much slower process, with many more trips from the bathroom to the solarium.
“Ahem,” I looked down at the dolls, “I have more for you to do,” I stated. The dolls looked up at me, blinking their unnaturally flat eyes in my direction. I noticed one of the doll’s chests was heaving up and down, like it was tired, out of breath.
It was then that I started to worry. Exactly how lifelike were my creations? If they were tired, did they need to rest? Did they need to eat? What would I even feed them?
All questions I should have known the answer to, beforehand.
I decided to play it safe.
“Before we do anymore, let's take a break. Will you come with me to the kitchen?” The dolls chittered quietly as they trailed me and Cheerful.
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I put out tea and some toast. I had considered letting the dolls handle the preparation of the tea, but decided against it. I didn’t know how careful they would be with the fire. And, I certainly didn’t want the dough poppets to catch fire.
Cheerful pecked at the toast, and the dolls, who had used a chair to hop onto the table, were sitting on the surface and looking dubiously at the food and drink.
I gauged the dolls’ tiny faces, and found the smallest saucer in the Sorceress’s kitchen, then poured a little tea in there.
I showed them how to lift it with both hands, and gently sip at the corner. Then set it in front of them.
The doll wearing the dress, Gretel, shakily picked up the saucer and brought it to her tiny clay mouth. She sipped some and put it down.
More chittering ensued, and then it was the other doll’s, Hansel’s, turn.
He had some tea, too, but didn’t want to relinquish the saucer when he was done. Maybe he liked it?
I watched the dolls in astonishment and amusement. They chittered, with louder and more aggrieved tones, and then they were both grabbing for the saucer, the tea spilling over the edges. Before I could intervene, the saucer flew out of their small hands and landed on the floor with a crash.
Two sets of berry eyes turned to me at once, and the kitchen was suddenly filled with ear-piercing wails.
“Oh, no! That's alright! We have more saucers, please don’t cry!” I tried to yell over the shrieks, but the dolls barely noticed me. Tiny rivulets of water (tears?) leaked out of their berry eyes.
Cheerful was hopping up and down and croaking something, but I could barely hear him over the noise.
Thinking quickly, I fetched another saucer, then one more, and filling both with tea, set it out in front of the anguished poppets.
It felt like an eternity, but the wailing eventually subsided, as the dolls noticed I had set out more saucers.
They each gingerly took one and began sipping their tea, chattering with each other again between drinks.
So, the dolls liked tea. That was good to know. And, they had emotions. Very loud, high-pitched emotions. They could get jealous of one another, and they could get upset.
As I watched the dolls enjoying black tea with sugar, I had an overwhelming feeling that I had gotten into something way over my head. I did not think, did not imagine, that dolls would be, truly, like tiny humans. I had brought them, rather recklessly, into the world to test out a spell. And now, here they were, one blowing bubbles into his tea, and the other, rhythmically chittering, in a way that almost sounded like a giggle. A little boy and a little girl, indeed.
I couldn’t blame Gigert Giger, Ma Chère’s author, for this surprise.
How many times did Gigert write that a taste of true creation awaited me in the pages?
Perhaps I could find some advice or more answers on the pages of Ma Chère?
“Little boy! Little girl! Woke up! Little girl and little boy, woke up and got loud! Got so loud!” Cheerful croaked nervously, hopping up and down.
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