Trisha frowned over at the stove top as she carefully pulled the pan away from the fire lit up beneath it and set to make her plate.
Her mother was already at work, and she'd desperately wanted to try out that recipe that she had just an inkling of a taste of that her soulmate tended to favor and have fairly often.
She whimpered at the burnt mess that she made, but grabbed a fork regardless and took a tentative bite and nearly spit it all out.
The teenager crossed her arms with a huff and tried to ignore the sudden taste of mint mouth wash in her mouth, meaning that her soulmate had to get the taste of the burnt meal out of his mouth as soon as possible.
She collapsed in a kitchen chair, already half in a tizzy over why she couldn't just make this one meal right, and already felt the tears slip out of her eyes like smooth glass as she curled over herself and just cried.
Trisha Elric felt like a mess, certainly anyone could make a delicious meal off of taste memory from their soulmate; why couldn't she?
The young woman sighed a while later when she finally moved to get up and paused to worry over whether her soulmate could taste the salt of her tears or not from wherever he was at.
She shook her head to clear the worry away and cleaned up; she could make old family recipes so very easily, had spent years in the kitchen with her mother learning how, and knew that they tasted good, but she had yet to master what could likely be her soulmate's favorite dish.
Trisha knew that eventually she'll figure out what the exact ingredients were and that she'd figure out just how to cook it and how long to cook it for; she wasn't a quitter, had been raised in the country, and raised to be tough.
She smiled a wobbly, teary eyed smile before she carefully managed to clean everything up and dump the remains of her burnt meal; the ingredients obviously weren't right in it either.
Trisha grew relieved to taste the minty taste in her mouth, because it erased the nightmare of her attempted meal's taste.
She blinked when she met the man that was her soulmate; his name was Van, and he was much older than her.
Trisha was at least ten years his junior, and he naturally had grown up in a long since forgotten town and knew how to make that blasted meal; while it wasn't his all time favorite meal, he did like it.
She felt like an idiot as he guided her through cooking it and as she tasted it for the first time; it was definitely Van who was her soulmate, and she was convinced that tasting it in person was much better than afar.
Trisha felt relief pour through her bones as he carefully spent the next three years guiding her through the meal and when she ended up pregnant with their first son, the joy was palpable, and she knew that he'd grow up with that iconic meal as well.