(no subject)
Who: Idike (heather_fields) and Lui (prettier_naked).
What: Long belated gift exchange.
When: Backdated to Valentine's Day.
Where: Path of Paradisa kitchens to the hidden heather fields.
Rating: G to PGish depending on how Lui behaves himself.
She could make salves that numbed poisons in a matter of minutes and extracts that calmed a chronic cough of years in a matter of days. Her knowledge of herbs and ingredients was enough to match and combine any amount of symptoms, or invoke and inspire various effects. Since her best teachers had left her with only the tools of the basics, she had taken them and built her own library and resources of potions making. But in spite of all the things that she could make and create, she had never actually dabbled in the art of chocolate.
Cocoa beans could calm headaches and enhance swallowing thick syrups. But combining them with so much sugar to press into shapes like stars and hearts had driven her away from the tendency that she should be conservative with the said ingredients. If she didn't follow it exactly, she would have come out with another batch of bitter sweets, dry and appalling enough to make anyone cry. In the end, no matter how she measured and remeasured, she had gone through five failed creations in the cookbook of chocolate ideas she had snatched from the library. Melted chocolate seemed to be particularly fussy with the temperature of heat and impossible to sculpt. She settled on making the most uncreative and common recipe of them all in the end. She had five 'hearts' and five 'stars' pressed from a sheet of baked chocolate, the other half having burnt. What she did salvage was crumbling, and so she welded the breaking pieces with a bit of flame and corn syrup.
Hopefully, the colorful tissue paper, gathered at the top to the likeness of a chrysanthemum, would make up for the strange confections. Red and orange wrapped the stars for Wilhelm, and blue and pink around the hearts for Lui. They still tasted dry, a bit burnt around the edges, but at least they had come out the sweetest. She blamed whatever there was to complain about on the occasion itself. Saint Valentine's. If there were never a more embarrassing sort of holiday. But at least it was something to do. Some excuse to agree to meet Lui outside of the castle, without the more common use of the journals.
One of the gifts she handed off to a servant spirit to deliver to Wilhelm before she could take it back. The other she shoved deep into the pockets of her apron while she hurried out with powdered sugar in her hair and a bit of chocolate sauce on her cheek. She would have kept him waiting for a while longer to try the batch one more time if she had not already been late.
What: Long belated gift exchange.
When: Backdated to Valentine's Day.
Where: Path of Paradisa kitchens to the hidden heather fields.
Rating: G to PGish depending on how Lui behaves himself.
She could make salves that numbed poisons in a matter of minutes and extracts that calmed a chronic cough of years in a matter of days. Her knowledge of herbs and ingredients was enough to match and combine any amount of symptoms, or invoke and inspire various effects. Since her best teachers had left her with only the tools of the basics, she had taken them and built her own library and resources of potions making. But in spite of all the things that she could make and create, she had never actually dabbled in the art of chocolate.
Cocoa beans could calm headaches and enhance swallowing thick syrups. But combining them with so much sugar to press into shapes like stars and hearts had driven her away from the tendency that she should be conservative with the said ingredients. If she didn't follow it exactly, she would have come out with another batch of bitter sweets, dry and appalling enough to make anyone cry. In the end, no matter how she measured and remeasured, she had gone through five failed creations in the cookbook of chocolate ideas she had snatched from the library. Melted chocolate seemed to be particularly fussy with the temperature of heat and impossible to sculpt. She settled on making the most uncreative and common recipe of them all in the end. She had five 'hearts' and five 'stars' pressed from a sheet of baked chocolate, the other half having burnt. What she did salvage was crumbling, and so she welded the breaking pieces with a bit of flame and corn syrup.
Hopefully, the colorful tissue paper, gathered at the top to the likeness of a chrysanthemum, would make up for the strange confections. Red and orange wrapped the stars for Wilhelm, and blue and pink around the hearts for Lui. They still tasted dry, a bit burnt around the edges, but at least they had come out the sweetest. She blamed whatever there was to complain about on the occasion itself. Saint Valentine's. If there were never a more embarrassing sort of holiday. But at least it was something to do. Some excuse to agree to meet Lui outside of the castle, without the more common use of the journals.
One of the gifts she handed off to a servant spirit to deliver to Wilhelm before she could take it back. The other she shoved deep into the pockets of her apron while she hurried out with powdered sugar in her hair and a bit of chocolate sauce on her cheek. She would have kept him waiting for a while longer to try the batch one more time if she had not already been late.