Sophie rinsed her arms and hands off with the cold well water just enough to where she felt like she could go back in the shrine and grab a few more pastries to tide her over until later. She had promised Acacia that she’d try to make the soup, but surely that could wait until the evening.

Instead, she wanted to get some more work done outdoors this afternoon while she had the chance. It would be just her luck that someone else would come to receive a class now that she had registered as the town’s priestess. She felt fairly ashamed at the state of the courtyard, even if it wasn’t exactly her fault that the shrine had been left untended for upwards of eighty years. Besides that, part of her hoped the little wyvern would come back while she was working outside.

Alas, the little guy did not reappear for the rest of the afternoon. Sophie did make some progress on the weeds around the courtyard, however. She used the scythe she had found among the gardening tools to hack around the perimeter, while Elowen spent her time floating in between the courtyard and the shed, occasionally peering at the rows of possibly-not-dead saplings in there.

The scythe wasn’t very efficient, but it did help a bit. During one of Sophie’s many breaks from taming the weeds, she also poked at some of the overgrown plants in the little garden plot behind the shrine, wondering if she should try to clean that up as well. She was afraid to do too much to it for fear that she might pull something important. Perhaps she could have the gardener look at those as well and give her some advice when she finally got a chance to visit the flower shop.

By late afternoon, Sophie was utterly physically exhausted and sincerely regretted only eating pastries all day. She washed up a bit more thoroughly this time as her stomach growled, keeping an eye out for the little wyvern all the while. After a final glance at the dense forest, she gave up on seeing it again today and decided it was finally time for her to attempt Acacia’s soup recipe.

She pulled up a fresh bucket of water and hefted it to the kitchen, pouring some of it into the largest metal pot she could find. If she was going to make soup, she might as well make a lot of it.

Elowen watched with curiosity as Sophie gathered all of the necessary ingredients she remembered Acacia using the day before. Potatoes, onions, and carrots. Some herbs and oil. She didn’t have any cream, but she did have some cheese now, although no cheese grater.

Sophie stared at the ingredients on the counter with no small amount of trepidation. She realized, suddenly, that she had no idea how many of each vegetable to use if she changed the quantity. How big was the pot that Acacia had used? Her own seemed around twice the size, so maybe if she doubled it?

She wished fervently that she had written the steps down. Well, there was no time like that present. In this fantasy land without search engines and recipe blogs, she was going to have to do things the old-fashioned way.

She scurried over to the writing desk and dug through it to find some empty sheets of paper, but stopped short when she realized she had no idea how to use the strange pens.

She held one up to show Elowen. “Do you –” she started, but Elowen blinked at the pen with such a confused look on her face that Sophie dropped the line of questioning immediately. Of course the shrine spirit wouldn’t know how to use a quill.

Sophie turned it over in her hand, frowning at it. She vaguely recalled from watching historical dramas that she might need to dip it in ink, and she even found a promising-looking bottle, closed tightly with a cork stopper, but her stomach growled angrily and she decided to stop there.

Nope. Abort mission. She was not writing the recipe down, after all. She would deal with the whole quill and ink thing another time when she wasn’t so hungry.

Instead, she did her best to follow the steps by memory. It took a lot longer for her to get a fire started and the hearth hot enough, but after some trial and error, she managed to make something that sort of resembled the soup Acacia had made the night before. She even cut off a few chunks of a mild, soft cheese to add at the end, like Acacia had suggested.

Sophie was pretty sure she bungled up a few of the steps, but it wasn’t half bad. At least it was a vast improvement over her very first attempt, and she made enough that it would probably last her a few days in the chill box.

Although she might have to pick up some more pastries and kebabs to fill in the cracks. A shrine priestess could not live on soup alone.

Pastries, maybe. But soup? Nah.

As she was cleaning up after dinner, she spied the little box of cakes on the counter from Acacia’s visit a few days ago. How long would they stay fresh anyway? She didn’t have a frost box to put them in, and she felt bad eating them if Elowen couldn’t join in.

“Why don’t we try burning some of these tonight?” she suggested.

Elowen perked up at the idea. “Really? Are you sure you’ll be alright without Acacia here to help?”

Sophie considered this for a moment. Sure, she wasn’t able to manage on her own that first time, but she had leveled up after that, and she kind of knew what to expect. Even if she didn’t have a fire affinity, she could be careful…

“Sure,” she said finally. “It will be tricky, but I think I can do it.”

She grabbed the box and the fire striker and made her way out to the burnt offering stand, Elowen floating closely behind. She set the cakes to the side and lifted the lid of the metal grill. It was cleaner than it had been previously. Acacia must have done it while Sophie was otherwise indisposed the other day. Sophie’s face warmed as she remembered her previous unfortunate experience with burning an offering for Elowen.

Whoops. She definitely would not be fainting today. Er… Hopefully.

She gathered some sticks – there was no shortage of sticks around the courtyard, even after her attempts to clean the weeds up – and began to light the fire in the grill just as Acacia had shown her before.

This time she would be much more careful with the connection. Especially since she only had Elowen here to help her, and the shrine spirit probably couldn’t do much.

Sophie picked up the box of little cakes again, opening it carefully and glancing down at the five remaining sweets.

“You should try one first,” Elowen suggested. “You didn’t get a chance to try one the other day.”

Sophie glanced up at her. “Are you sure?”

Elowen nodded and waved at the box. “Of course! There are still so many and –”

“Wait a second,” Sophie interrupted. “This isn’t because you think I’m just going to pass out again, is it?”

Elowen laughed and shook her head. “Just try one.”

Sophie eyed Elowen skeptically, but shrugged. “Okay, if you insist.”

She carefully lifted one of the delicate sweets out of the box and took a bite, eyes widening with surprise at the taste. It was light and delicious with a hint of citrus. She could almost imagine that she got it from a fancy cake shop in downtown Seattle. She couldn’t remember the last time she had something like this, and she finished it in a second bite.

Elowen smiled happily at her. “See?”

Sophie nodded and picked another piece of cake out of the box, setting the rest to the side again. “They’re really good,” she conceded. “Here, we’ll do one for you now.”

Sophie began to focus on her mana, under Elowen’s watchful eye. Once she found it, she reached out to the fire with distance channeling. She felt its restless hunger pulling at her as the connection snapped into place.

Perhaps it was slightly easier to resist this time, or maybe just slightly less distracting, because once she made the connection, she was able to set the little piece of cake into the flame and hold on until it burnt completely without the terrible shaky feeling she had the previous time. She dropped the connection as soon as Elowen smiled in that same, pleased expression that let Sophie know that it had worked.

Without the steady draw from the fire, Sophie could feel how low on mana she was getting – although it wasn’t as dramatic as the experience with the shrine stone from the night before.

Elowen clapped happily from beside her. “Oh thank you! It’s just wonderful!”

“Do you want another?” Sophie asked, although she wasn’t actually sure if she could manage a second one.

Elowen shook her head, eyes wide with concern. “I couldn’t possibly… I mean, I don’t think it’s wise if you try it again.”

Sophie agreed to some extent, but she frowned down at the three remaining cakes. She really wanted to try again. It felt so disappointing that she could still only do one cake, even after leveling up. Although she had done a lot of physical work earlier, she hadn’t even used any of her mana today. Unless physical labor also used mana to some extent…

“Let me try eating some of the mana bread again,” she suggested. At the very least, it would be a good experiment.

Elowen frowned, but shrugged. “I suppose,” she said. “If you must…”

Sophie left Elowen in the courtyard as she went back into the shrine, finding the little loaf of mana bread still sitting on the counter, wrapped in paper. She unwrapped it, pleased to see that it was fully defrosted by now. She pulled off a chunk, popping it into her mouth.

Of course, she wanted to save a little for the wyvern to see if she could convince it to stick around, but it’s not like she needed to eat more than a bite of the mana bread. The feeling of mana returning to her washed over her nearly immediately, and she hurried back outside to try again.

She picked up the little box of cakes. There were three left. She doubted she’d be able to do all three, but –

“I want to try two this time,” she decided. She wondered if it would be twice as difficult. It didn’t seem likely, since the fire itself felt like the problem. Burning two cakes would only take about as much time as burning one. “Should I not?”

Elowen looked thoughtful. “I think it might be okay… But you must be careful, Sophie. You obviously don’t have a fire affinity, and working with elements is always dangerous.”

Sophie felt weirdly slighted at Elowen pointing out her lack of affinity to fire. “It’s okay,” she insisted, doubling down on her decision to try two now. “I’ll be careful.”

The logistics of burning two was a bit more complicated, however.

Sophie pulled one little cake out of the box and made the connection with the fire again, just as she had previously. As soon as she felt the pull on her mana begin, she hurriedly placed the first cake into the flames and pulled a second out of the box to place it alongside. Her mana drained much more quickly than it had just moments earlier, when she had only attempted one, though, and she could barely hold the connection. She started feeling shaky, which sent a spike of worry through her. She forced herself to drop the connection.

The two cakes had been mostly consumed by the flames, but a few small, charred, pieces remained on the grate and tumbled into the ashes below. Her stomach sank with disappointment.

Elowen let out a delighted laugh from beside her, suddenly, though, and Sophie glanced over at the spirit, surprised.

“What?” Sophie asked. “I wasn’t able to –”

Elowen waved a hand at her, interrupting her. “It was delightful, Sophie. Simply delightful. Thank you. You should have the last one.”

Sophie’s hands shook slightly on the box of cakes as she glanced down at the last remaining piece. Her face felt hot with a combination of mana drain and embarrassment at not being able to fully complete the task.

“A reward for your efforts.” Elowen insisted. “You simply must have it.”

Sophie nodded, still feeling slightly glum, but she pulled the last cake out of the box and took a bite of it. It was just as sweet and lovely as the other had been, and it lifted her spirits just a bit. Not so much that she thought Hollis had infused it with mana or something, but just enough.

She found it in herself to laugh, and Elowen smiled at her in surprise. It was pretty silly after all. Here Sophie was, burning offerings of cakes in a fantasyland. She had literally been playing with fire only moments before. Sophie didn’t even know what day of the week it was, anymore. Not really at least. But she would have never been doing anything of the sort on any day of the week back in Seattle.

It was… kind of fun. In a strange, fantasyland kind of way.

She shook her head at herself. Besides, even if fire wasn’t her strong suit, there were other things she could do. For one, she could keep training until she could get a better hold on the tricky element. And she could also keep working on improving the shrine.

She put out the fire and decided she could at least clean out the little grill. She would definitely be trying more burnt offerings in the future.

But for tonight… Well, at least they had more books to read.