Mina wasted no time getting started on some potions with her newfound surplus of ingredients. She had all her potion stuff from last time out: the enchanted heat rock, all the vials and bottles, and a few stirring rods. I had moved to her desk to observe, but frankly I didn’t find it too interesting to watch water boil. The magic of watching someone make mystical and powerful mixtures had worn off when I realized it was just weird cooking, so I didn’t pay much attention beyond using Insight on the end products.

First to be taken off the heat rock was an ominously crackling white potion. It was giving off a bit of mist, which in turn produced a small amount of ice on the inside of the bottle. It shined like the sun on a field of fresh snow, which might sound nice but in reality meant it was way too bright to comfortably look at. Maybe I should invest in cat sunglasses.

A dubious icy strength potion.

Oh great, more dubiousness. Mina seemed to be experimenting with new, untested recipes, so I suppose some weird effects and poor quality ones were bound to happen. Next up was a bubbling blue potion, like cobalt colored seltzer.

A well-crafted potion of mana replenishment.

Ah, she was trying to use these to get mana. At least this one wasn’t dubious? Looked nice and blue, didn’t have a vaguely threatening aura, good job Mina. A few minutes later, the last potion was finished. It was a pale green and light blue mixture, the two colors shifting around like a lava lamp.

An unstable potion of mint flavoring.

What? Did it just taste like mint? That was hardly a potion, that was just a regular drink. Wait, how did they have mint here? I hadn’t seen any other plants that had been on Earth, everything was either slightly different or completely new. Odd.

Mina wrote in her notebook for a while, muttering snippets of her thought process to herself as her pencil flew across the page. “...Should be a very strong heat resistance potion…” She did not, in fact, have a heat resistance potion. “...Mana gain potion, attempt 39…” Close enough, replenishment was kinda the same thing. “...Completely unknown recipe with a bunch of mint…” Why the hell was there mint here.

Placing down her pencil, Mina surveyed her three bottles, as if wondering which one to drink. She reached out and grabbed the mana potion, chugging it without hesitation before grimacing. “Ugh, no points for flavor.” She remarked before closing her eyes, her freckled face squeezed in a look of immense concentration. Was this it? Was she going to finally have mana and open the status menu?

No, of course not. She just slumped down in dejection instead and noted the failure in her book. Why would attempt 39 be the one to do it?

Well, still two more potions to have ‘fun’ with. Hesitantly, she reached for the bottle of icy strength. The dubious one. Didn’t seem like the best idea to me, but then again I knew absolutely nothing about potions. She did seem a bit more cautious this time, holding it in her hand for a moment and squinting as she looked into the bottle. The liquid was still shining brilliantly through the icy glass, like a frosted diamond. Honestly if it was just a bit less bright it could be a lovely decoration, or maybe a fancy lamp.

Mina took a tentative sip of the icy strength, ruining my interior decorating dreams. She coughed a bit as soon as she swallowed, her breath a visible white mist. “That’s c-cold.” She stammered, her teeth clattering a bit. Wow, the pure white potion with frost on the glass was cold. What a shock.

I would have continued to be snarky, but her fingers were turning a reddish, bluish purple. All purple was reddish and bluish but whatever, her fingers definitely weren’t supposed to look like that. Mina was looking around the room and rubbing her hands together. She stood up and ran over to her bed, grabbing a blanket before fumbling to open her closet door. Her eyes scanned through the interior for a moment before she grabbed a potion of reddish orange liquid. She rushed back to the desk, her movements janky and sluggish.

A well-crafted potion of cold resistance.

Placing the bottle down, she began to try to open it, one hand squeezing the glass to hold it still and the other struggling for purchase on the cork. Her forearms were looking a bit blue as well by now, but hopefully this potion should fix that once she drank it. Good on her for solving this problem, because I sure as fuck didn’t know how to. Mina finally managed to get a grip on the cork, gripping the bottle tighter as she prepared to pop it open.

The bottle protested against the firm grip on it, shattering into a few large glass chunks and spilling the liquid across the counter and floor. That was probably the strength part of the icy strength potion, at least that worked as intended.

Unfortunately, this absolutely was not the time for silver linings, given that Mina’s was just sitting there, stunned. Shaking her head, she looked back down at her hands, which had certainly had better days. She wrapped her blanket around herself, attempting to breathe hot breaths on her freezing digits. If anything it just seemed to make things worse, I could feel how cold the air was from across the desk. A thin layer of frost had appeared where her breath had hit her hands.

“F-fuck,” she stuttered, looking at her freezing fingers with wide eyes, “sh-should I call Mom?” She wondered aloud, her words slurring together. For what it’s worth, yeah, that would probably be the smart thing to do. And she wasn’t doing it. “No. I got th-this.” She absolutely did not, I’d go get her parents myself if I had to.

Hmmm, the door was closed, and I had no thumbs. That complicated things. There was only one other thing I could think of doing to help, and I was almost certain I’d regret it. Standing up from my loafing position on the desk, which I was quite content in, I walked myself over to Mina, activated Soothing Purr, and sat down on top of her hands.

Oh FUCK that was cold, this was a terrible idea. Could have just let her fingers freeze off or something, but nooooo, I had to try to help.

By fulfilling the required criteria, you have unlocked a new skill: Warm and Cozy

Excuse me? I was not warm or cozy. I certainly was BEFORE, but now I was lying on the coldest hands in existence and I had no doubts that my misery would congeal into a potion ingredient at this temperature. What’d the stupid skill do anyway?

Warm and Cozy

Level - 1 of 5

Effects - Your body will now bring increased comfort and pleasant warmth to those in contact with it. Skill gained due to sharing your abundance of warmth and coziness with an individual.

Bullshit. What use is a skill called Warm and Cozy if it doesn’t make ME either of those things? Mina’s hands felt like two percent less frigid now that I had the skill, what a tremendous help it was. Okay maybe a bit more than two percent, she did actually seem to be getting better now that I was on her. But at what cost? How much had been sacrificed?

Mina didn’t seem to properly appreciate my attempt to warm her, as she lifted me with one hand, placing me off to the side on one of the less crowded sections of the desk. Rude and ungrateful, but I wasn’t going to complain about not being slowly turned into a popsicle.

Effortlessly sliding the enchanted heat rock over, she held her hands directly above it, slowly curling and uncurling her fingers as they heated up. Yeah that was definitely a better solution. Would have been nice if she did that before I subjected myself to temperature torture, but it was fine. I didn’t care anyway. Wasn’t even that cold, honestly.

After a few minutes of toasting her hands like marshmallows, Mina pulled away from the heat rock with a sigh of relief. Sufficiently recovered and fully defrosted, she gave me a quick ear scritch and began to write in her notebook.

Actual Result:

Effects seemed centered on hands and arms

Extreme drop in temperature, dangerously cold

Increase in strength, went back to normal as I warmed up

Has potential, may experiment more with the recipe at a later date. Current iteration unsafe.

After quickly pouring the potion into the window pipe leading down to the grate in the alley, Mina returned to her desk, looked at the final potion and counted on her no longer blue fingers. “Two awakenings this morning, useless mana potion, whatever that cold one was… Dang, that’s four. Guess I gotta stop for now.” Ah, right. Too many potions and she dies terribly. Fun.

She stirred the bottle of mint flavoring. The pastel greens and blues floated around it, never once mixing together. “Oh, c'mon, really? Gonna go bad pretty soon, can’t wait until tomorrow to test. Shame to waste it, but mint is hardly rare.” She said with a shrug, pouring it down the window pipe. With a sigh, she looked over the top of the desk. Shards of glass, spilt potion, a whole bunch of tools and materials, and a pitifully cold cat (me) covered the surface; It had certainly seen better days. Closing her notebook, Mina began to clean up, humming happily despite every potion being a complete failure and her recent experience with hypothermia.

With all the excitement over, I decided to not get in the way as she tidied up. Gingerly climbing down from the counter, I noted that my paw seemed to be mostly healed and walked over to her bed. After kneading it a few times for quality assurance, I curled up and slowly fell asleep on the center of the cozy covers as warmth returned to me.

Mina’s Notes - Mint

There are no records of mint existing more than a century ago, but today it’s one of the most common plants in the country. Grows and spreads incredibly fast, often taking over entire areas. Many important alchemical species have been driven to endangerment due to mint, and great efforts have been taken to curb its spread because it’s the worst and everyone hates it. Good for flavoring, some niche use in assorted cold and clean potions. Mostly just flavoring though. Rumors say some hero from another world got brought here a while back with a single pack of mint seeds, and those few seeds were enough to bring in the worst invasive species ever. Thanks for ruining the ecosystem, ‘hero’.