Sophie was about halfway to the market when she realized she simply had no idea what she would even buy when she got there. She never had her cooking lesson with Acacia, so it wasn’t like buying more ingredients would get her very far. She could theoretically just buy a bunch of market stall takeout and stuff it in the chill box to subsist on for a few more days, but that sounded oddly unappealing all of a sudden.

That sort of thing made sense on her first few trips to the market, but now, with her new shrine priestess gear on, walking through the streets of Caulis, she was starting to think more about her future here. She had… responsibilities now. She had people who were counting on her in ways she never really had before. She also had people, like Calli, who she didn’t know very well at all, but who seemed actively interested in getting to know her better and working with her in the future.

Maybe she should actually figure out her food situation beyond living on pastries and takeout. She frowned, thinking about the predicament. She did have someone who seemed actively interested in helping her. Perhaps if she stopped by the bakery, Acacia would at least have some suggestions to tide her over until their cooking lesson.

That settled it. At the very least, surely Acacia would give Sophie an idea of what kinds of ingredients she could buy to prepare for said cooking lesson.

After a bit more walking, she eventually found herself standing at the bakery door, but when she opened it, she was surprised to find that only Hollis and an unfamiliar young man were working at the counter together. No Acacia in sight.

“Sophie!” Hollis grinned, welcoming her in. “Back for more croissants?”

Sophie laughed as she approached the counter. “Did you make those? I heard from Acacia that you're the one who makes the sweets.”

Hollis’s face colored slightly, but he nodded. “Yep, I am. I’ve got a bit of a sweet tooth, I suppose.”

“Me, too,” Sophie agreed. “And those little cakes you made for Elowen were lovely. I do want some more croissants if you have any today, but first I was hoping to talk with Acacia. Is she not in?”

“Oh, she is,” Hollis replied. “She's upstairs actually.”

“Upstairs?”

Hollis nodded. “Yeah, I'm sure she won't mind if you head on up.” He pointed down the hallway leading to the kitchen. “Right across from the kitchen, there’s a staircase. Just knock on the door at the top.”

“Okay…” Sophie replied, not sure what she was getting herself into this time. “Are you sure she's not busy?”

Hollis shrugged. “Honestly, I doubt it.”

“Okay,” Sophie agreed, and she cautiously made her way down the hallway and up the wooden stairs.

At the top of the stairs, there was a little platform – almost like a hallway and a simple wooden door. She knocked on the door.

“It's open!” Acacia called from inside. “Do you need my help down there?”

Sophie pushed open the door, surprised to find herself walking into the living room of an apartment. A surprisingly spacious and well-furnished apartment, at that. There was a large sofa and matching chair in front of a fireplace, and the walls were filled with what almost looked to be abstract artwork. The living area opened up into a large kitchen with a dining table pushed up against one wall, almost like an afterthought.

After a moment of disorientation, Sophie finally realized that Acacia was laying on said sofa, holding a heavy looking book above her head with suspicious ease, flipping through the pages.

“Um,” Sophie said carefully. “Acacia?”

Acacia glanced over, obviously startled. “Oh!” she said. “It’s you, Sophie!”

She sat up quickly, closing the book and setting it on a side table with a thud.

“Hollis sent me up here,” Sophie apologized.

“No, no, it's okay,” Acacia insisted. “It's just my day off. I mean, I guess I don't really take days off. It's more like Hollis forces me to stop working sometimes when he and Sam are both in the shop, and then I sit up here bored… I suppose you don't really need three people running a bakery as small as ours, though.”

“You live up here?” Sophie asked, glancing around curiously.

“Yep.” Acacia grinned. “The whole floor is mine. Well, the whole building is actually but technically it belongs to my family.”

“Ah…” Sophie replied.

“So what's up?” Acacia asked.

“Oh! Right. Well, I got my chill box today,” Sophie explained. “And I was hoping to buy some stuff to put in it. But I honestly had no idea what to get. And so since I was in the area, I thought I'd stop by and ask for your help.”

“I'd love to!” Acacia hopped off of the couch. “I need to get groceries as well, actually.”

“Oh –” Sophie said, as Acacia made her way over to the connected kitchen. Sophie could see her grabbing some cloth bags out of a drawer. “Oh, I just meant, like, advice or something. You don’t have to come with me!”

“No!” Acacia insisted. “I'd love to. It’ll be fun!”

Sophie wandered over to where Acacia was now opening a huge wooden cabinet door filled with food. Acacia’s cabinets even had lighting in them somehow. Mana lights?

“Wow,” Sophie breathed. “Are you sure you need groceries?”

Acacia laughed. “Okay, maybe I have a lot of food. But I still need some produce. I like to experiment with cooking. I primarily do baked goods, of course. I’m no Chef, but I enjoy it all the same.”

Acacia made her way over to another set of cabinets. “I even have a frost box,” she said proudly, opening the door of one of the cabinets to show Sophie the contents. “Although I usually just end up putting bread or cake in there.”

Sophie laughed, imagining that she would probably end up doing the same if she worked in and lived above a bakery.

Acacia closed the cabinet door. “Let’s go!” she said and led Sophie down the stairs, back into the bakery.

“We’re going shopping!” she shouted to Hollis on the way out.

“Good luck,” he called out in return, laughing.

Sophie waved goodbye helplessly as Acacia practically dragged her out the door.

***

Going to the market with Acacia was way more fun than going to the market by herself, Sophie decided fairly quickly. Acacia seemed to know absolutely everyone, and she even seemed to know all of the names of all of the mysterious herbs and spices at the stand that Sophie avoided mostly out of fear.

But of course Acacia would come here often – it wasn’t that far from where she lived, and she actually liked cooking. Acacia pointed out some vegetables that were easy to work with – surprisingly they were mostly the root vegetables Sophie had tried on her own before – as well as some spices that would go with them.

“You know, I have been asking around about coffee for you, but no one I’ve talked to has even heard of it.” Acacia mentioned as they made their way to yet another spice stall. Sophie wondered how many of them a market this size could really have. Acacia began poking at a bag of dried leaves, but glanced up at Sophie after a moment. “Where did you say you had it before?”

“Well…” Sophie hedged, her stomach churning at the question.

It probably wasn't the best idea to tell the other woman the truth about Sophie’s origins in the middle of the busy market, right?

Acacia picked up the bag of leaves she had been poking at. “Do you recall? It might help me find it for you,” she explained.

Sophie shook her head, already feeling guilty. “Ah, no – not really. It was at a restaurant in another city,” she lied.

The lie bothered her more than it probably should have. Maybe coffee didn’t even exist in this world, and she was sending Acacia on a foolhardy errand. If Sophie wasn’t going to tell the other woman the truth, yet, it would be better if Acacia gave up on the quest.

“Well, I'll keep looking for you, anyway,” Acacia added decisively. “I'm curious to try it. It sounded like you enjoyed it quite a bit.”

Sophie made a noncommittal noise, her face heating with embarrassment at the hole she had dug herself into. Great. Now, if she insisted Acacia stopped looking for it, it would be even weirder, right?

She was starting to think maybe she should just tell Acacia the truth, but as the other woman paid for her spices and she followed her to another stall in the market, Sophie wondered when she would have a good chance to bring it up.

And how would Acacia react to the news?

After several more market purchases, they finally headed back to the bakery. Sophie still planned on buying some pastries, so she went inside with Acacia, but quickly found herself being dragged back up the stairs to Acacia’s apartment on the second floor.

“You just have to stay!” Acacia insisted. “We could get started on the cooking lesson that I promised you. At least let me show you how to make a proper soup. It's really not that hard.”

“Are you sure?” Sophie asked, still feeling guilty about taking up so much of Acacia’s time, but Acacia pulled some of Sophie’s bags out of her hand, pointedly setting them on the floor.

“Yep,” Acacia said. “Your cooking lessons officially start today!”

“Okay, okay,” Sophie agreed, laughing. She really did need to learn how to feed herself after all, and Acacia had made her purchase several strange spices at the market that she wasn’t sure what she was going to do with otherwise.

Acacia started pulling out a bunch of cooking tools – two cutting boards, a large pot, two knives. “First, we need to get the vegetables ready. Are you familiar with how to do that?”

Sophie shook her head. “Only vaguely. We need to peel them and stuff, right?”

Acacia laughed. “Yep,” she confirmed. She pulled some root vegetables out of one of the bags from the market and set them on the counter. Onions, potatoes, carrots – all the basics that Sophie had tried to use to make her own soup. “You can start by pulling the skin off of these onions,” Acacia instructed. “I’m going to put some of this stuff away, and then I’ll get this pot ready with some oil that we’ll cook them in.”

Sophie got to work, peeling off the thin, brown papery outside layer, while Acacia busied herself putting away other things from her market bags. “I saw your sister at the Adventurer’s Guild earlier today,” Sophie mentioned.

“Oh! Right – you said you were working on a lead over there? About the shrine’s mana?” Acacia set some spices down next to the cutting board and pulled out a glass container full of some sort of oil similar to the one she had told Sophie to buy at the market.

The pot from earlier went on a freestanding metal appliance in the back of the room that Sophie could only imagine to be some sort of mana-powered stove/oven combination. It even had an exhaust hood like some of the fancier ones Sophie had seen on television, but didn’t appear to use wood or fire. Acacia poured some of the oil into the pot and turned back to Sophie, obviously curious.

“Yep,” Sophie nodded as she swept all of the onion papers into a little pile. “The mage who came to register me as the town’s priestess mentioned an earth mage might be able to help.”

Acacia’s head snapped up at the mention of an earth mage. “Linden?”

“How’d you guess?” Sophie teased. “Although, I suppose he is the only earth mage in Caulis if I recall correctly.”

Acacia’s face took on an interesting shade of red. “That he is,” she half-spluttered.

Sophie couldn’t help but grin. It seemed like she stumbled on some sort of town romance drama. “Anyway, your sister said –”

“Don’t go listening to Calli! Linden is just a friend! It’s not like –” Acacia immediately clamped her mouth shut, perhaps realizing she had spoken a bit too much on the topic already.

Sophie laughed. “Your sister said,” she repeated. “That Linden is away on a quest. She took a note for him but sent me over to look at the archives instead. Although I didn’t get anywhere with those, either. I had found some old letters with dates on them back at the shrine, but apparently it was before some sort of war? And the library doesn’t have records before then.”

“The war? You mean the Mage Wars? Of course they wouldn’t have records. Everything was destroyed.” Acacia glanced over at Sophie in disbelief. “You act as if you’ve never heard of them.”

“I – um…” Sophie hesitated. Great, she had made another mistake. It was so hard to talk about anything and find out any useful answers without making it obvious that she really had no idea about this world and its history.

The oil in the pot on the stove started smoking suddenly, and Acacia yelped, running back to pull it off the heat. “Oh, crap. I forgot I’m supposed to be giving you a cooking lesson, not gossiping. Here – let me show you how to do the other vegetables, and then I’ll show you how to make the soup base.”

Sophie never felt so relieved to be clueless about cooking. “That sounds good,” she said, glad to be off the topic of the letters.

Acacia instructed her on how to chop the vegetables and showed her how to cook the onions and carrots in the heated oil, before adding spices. Then they filled the pot with water and had little to do but wait for it to boil until they could add the potatoes.

“It’s a simple recipe, but that’s what you wanted, right?” Acacia asked as she showed Sophie how to occasionally stir the contents of the pot. “I can show you how to do variations on it. And this is the sort of thing that you can keep in the chill box for a few days if you really do hate cooking.”

Sophie nodded, pleased at the idea. Soup wasn’t so complicated after all. She felt oddly excited to try it. “That would be wonderful,” she said, and she set the wooden spoon down on a little holder on the counter.

“So where are you from, anyway?” Acacia asked. “You mentioned the Mage Wars earlier. It’s impossible to think anyone grew up without hearing about them.”

Sophie froze. And here it was. The question that she had no good answer to. Even after seeing the map at the Crafter’s Guild, she had a very limited understanding of this world’s geography. It wasn’t like she could make something up and have it be convincing. And Elowen wasn’t exactly much help with crafting a backstory. They hadn’t talked about it at all, in fact, other than that first day when Elowen told her that Sophie should just tell the truth.

Should she really?

Acacia picked up the wooden spoon again, absently stirring the soup. “I know we only just met recently, but it feels like you know so much about me, and I hardly know anything about you. How did you end up in Caulis? How did you find our little shrine?” She glanced up at Sophie again and grinned. “Curious minds need to know.”

Sophie’s stomach dropped even further. Of course people had questions about where she came from. She was the new shrine priestess after all… She knew in a sort of offhand way that she’d have to face this eventually, but she had been putting off worrying about it with everything else going on.

But now, with Acacia blinking at her with rapt interest, Sophie felt like she couldn’t just lie. Not on this scale. Even the small lie about coffee earlier was still bothering her.

“Ah, well… I came through the portal, actually,” she admitted.

“The portal?” Acacia frowned. “The town portal? But it hasn’t been active in ages. Not since I’ve been alive, at least.”

Sophie shook her head. “No, the one at the shrine.”

Acacia pointed her spoon at Sophie. “Now that’s even weirder. That shouldn’t be connected to anything but the town.”

“That’s what Elowen said, too.” Sophie sighed. “And that portal isn’t even active, either. Elowen said it hasn’t been for who knows how long. She doesn’t exactly have a good sense of time.”

“Well, leaving that aside, what portal did you walk into? And where were you expecting to end up?”

Sophie glanced away, her stomach tying itself into a knot. “That’s the thing…” she said. “I don’t exactly remember. I –”

Should she say it? Should she really tell Acacia? And if so, how much?

Acacia blinked at her expectantly as Sophie waged her internal debate. If she told Acacia, she could at least get some answers and stop stumbling around in the darkness. She didn’t even need to tell Acacia the whole, unbelievable story. Just enough.

“I don’t actually remember walking into a portal,” she began. “I’m from… somewhere different. We don’t have classes or mana or any of that stuff. At least not that I know of. And we definitely don’t have portals. But I guess I drank a bit too much, and when I woke up…” She shrugged as Acacia stared at her, eyes wide.

“When you woke up…?” Acacia prompted.

“Well, when I woke up, I was on the floor in the middle of the shrine. I found out that I had promised Elowen I’d be her shrine priestess and help restore the shrine. I definitely don’t remember any of that.”

Acacia continued to stare at Sophie as the soup started bubbling in the pot. She was quiet for a long moment before she snapped out of it, glancing back at the pot in surprise. “Oh! We need to add the potatoes. Here –”

Sophie numbly handed over the thick cutting board where the potatoes were ready to go into the pot. Her hands were shaking slightly. Acacia used her spoon to slide all of the potatoes into the waiting soup pot and then handed back the cutting board.

“You’re from… somewhere else?” Acacia asked after they had finished. “Somewhere where there’s no mana or classes?” She shook her head, setting her spoon down again. “But that’s impossible. There isn’t such a place… I mean, I guess there could be. But not in the known world there isn’t.”

Sophie nodded, understanding completely. She felt the same way when she found out that there was such a thing as mana and classes here. “I’ve been so lost,” she admitted. “With being a shrine priestess. With figuring out how to use mana. With cooking. Just – honestly, with everything.”

Acacia laughed, but it was more of a startled sound than anything. “Especially with cooking, it seems,” she teased. “I’ve seen you use mana. It seems like you’re starting to get the hang of that. Well, maybe not the fainting bit, but –”

She cut off her words and looked at Sophie for a long time again, shaking her head again, but this time she had a small, exasperated smile on her face. “So is that why I can’t find this coffee you were asking about?”

“Um, probably?” Sophie admitted, ducking her head. “I do feel bad about that. But I still can’t believe it doesn’t exist here!”

“It’s that good?” Acacia asked, obviously skeptical.

Sophie nodded adamantly. “It really is! So much better than tea!”

Acacia laughed. “Well, I’ll still keep an eye out for it then. Partly out of professional curiosity. But in the meantime, if you need any help or have any questions about other stuff, I’m your girl.”

Sophie grinned. “Okay,” she agreed. “In that case, I have a million things I want to ask you.”

Acacia laughed. “Well, go ahead then,” she said. “We’re waiting on the soup anyway.”