"Baking Apple Pies"

Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology

Descender: Shiala

Guild Members: Tear, Raine, Yung, Richard

~o~

Flour covers the table and hangs in the air... a remnant of Richard dumping the bag under the guise of 'helping'. He'd found himself kicked out of the kitchen soon afterwards, with Raine and Yung scolding him about wasting ingredients. The creepy mage had taken his scolding and left, a fact that bothered no one present.

That hood was just too creepy.

With that hurdle out of the way, things had progressed quite smoothly; Raine cut the apples (and pouted because she wasn't allowed to do anything else), Yung heated the oven and helped fetch ingredients, and Tear rolled out the pie dough.

Shiala mixed together butter and sugar, carefully stirring the sticky concoction in a saucepan. She hummed while she worked, matching the swirling of the wooden spoon to the tempo of the music. It was a time for relaxation, away from the life or death rush that characterized most of her daily excursions into the dwindling landmass of Teresia.

Her current quest?

~Bake apple pies for each of the Ad Libitum guild chapters.~

Compared to crushing hordes of monsters or gathering and refining rare ores, this was a piece of cake. Except that it was pie and had to be rolled out and filled.

Hence the handful of helpers that filled the kitchen. Shiala had befriended each of them during her time traveling back and forth between the cities; Raine had started her off with simple recipes that had eased the burden of journey in the beginning (not to mention the introduction to each of Aililly's members), while Yung had been an on-again, off-again companion on her travels. Tear hadn't joined Ad Libitum until after she and Luke had reached Gavada, but Shiala had gotten to know the older girl fairly well during the times that they'd been trapped in the same cities. Usually that had lasted until whatever node of the Devourer was phased out of existence, at which point Luke and Tear would depart from their current lodgings to explore more of the world.

Shiala usually managed to catch up to them within a day or so. It had been amusing the first time, and still brought a smile to her face when she pondered it now. Absently, she hummed louder and caught someone's attention.

"I didn't know that you knew the hymns." Tear said quietly from her place at the table as she continued to roll out the pie crusts.

Shiala faltered in her rhythm and the wooden spoon in her hand started to make jerky motions as she stopped humming abruptly. Her face turned crimson - she could feel her ears burning - and she focused on the bubbling liquid inside of the saucepan. Her voice was a little strangled when she finally found enough of it to actually give an answer.

"I don't... I just heard you sing them once and thought they sounded pretty."

Coughing lightly, Shiala tried to ignore the creeping heat that refused to leave her face at Tear's next comment. "You have a lovely voice, you should try to sing them sometime."

Yung looked up from placing her pie crust into the proper pan and giggled. "Sing! Sing!"

I can't sing them...

Shiala shook her head quickly, removing the pan from the heat and setting it aside for the moment. "I can't."

At Tear's questioning look, Teresia's Descender finally admitted the reason. "I can't because I don't know the words."

"A lack that can easily be remedied." Raine stated firmly from her corner of the table. "I'm sure that Tear would not object to teaching you the lyrics."

Tear nodded as everyone turned their attention to her, the hint of a smile gracing her lips. Deftly she finished rolling out the last crust and set the rolling pin aside. "It would be nice to have someone else to sing them with."

"Ah...should we do that after we finish here?" Shiala asked, hoping to put off the inevitable. With Raine speaking about learning, there would be no way for her to put it off indefinitely - not that she objected to learning, per se - but perhaps she could learn without so many onlookers?

It was a hope destined to die a cruel death.

"Nonsense!" Raine was adamantly against delay. "In a few minutes the pies will be in the oven and we won't have anything else to do but sit here and wait for them to bake. There is no reason for you to put off learning something as simple as a song."

"But we could use that time to talk about what's happened since we last got together!"

One last feeble attempt to break out of the inevitable doom. Raine deflected it handily. "That can wait until later - unless you have something of interest to report." Shiala shook her head slowly, suddenly regretting that she hadn't found any new ruins to help her case. Nodding sagely, Raine took her time in placing strips of dough cross-wise over the filled pie in front of her. "Then stop trying to get out of this. It will be good for you."

"Fine." Shiala sighed and capitulated with less grace than she might have shown. "I'll learn."

With surprising speed, the pies vanished from the table and into the gaping maw of the oven. Raine beamed as she shut the door and stood in front of the oven, her arms crossed imperiously across her chest. "Good! Class starts now."

Hanging her head, Shiala gave a long-suffering sigh. "Just make sure you don't let them burn, please."

"Don't worry, I'll keep an eye on them for you!" Yung chirped gaily from beside Raine.

Tear wiped the remaining flour from the table with a gentle hand. "All right, let's get started."

Seated at the table, Shiala listened closely as Tear began to sing...

~o~

AN: Check your generic characters, people. They're guild members too! Anyway, hope you enjoy this little adventure into the realm of Radiant Mythology. Read and review people. ^^