Early next morning on Lutz's day off, Myne sat ready at the table with a bowl of porridge on her left, Benno-san's accounting on her right, and a slate in the center. The math wasn't hard, only occasionally requiring more than her early primary education...which left the rest of her mind free to mull over other monetary prospects.

Making fancier soaps and candles would be the simplest project. Mom and Tuuli already knew how to craft them from scratch. She could ask Lutz or her sister to collect some flowers and attractive herbs the next time they went foraging in the forests. They could even carve a wooden mold to form the soap into pretty shapes. Her mom back when she was Urano loved making soap into flowers, bee combs, birds, and all sorts of things. (Myne's favorite mold was one in the shape of a book, of course. She treasured it so much she never...actually…used it… Whoops. Too late for that...).

But as Benno-san had repeatedly pounded into her head, those goods were only for the nobility. Folk like her mom and dad wouldn't spend their few and hard-earned coins on luxuries like that.

But...everyone wanted something to do in the winter. For people like her family, handicrafts were the main activity to keep boredom away when you were snowed in. The only games available were the ones that sprouted from your own imagination. So something else to occupy one's time could be quite profitable, even for those who weren't nobility.

She'd considered some "mom art," like tole painting and beads. But she hadn't seen paint used by nearly anyone in her neighborhood. Some vendors might decorate their stalls with it, but that was all. Probably because in these times, paint was primarily made of solid minerals, dug straight from the earth and molded into sticks, such as the ones Michaelangelo and Da Vinci had created their masterpieces with. Getting the materials was too time-consuming and costly for people like her family's. Blue alone was considered one of the rarest colors, since its primary source was lapis lazuli, only found in Afghanistan.

All that to say...NOBILITY ONLY.

She was getting sick of that…

But… she could make the more common colors. The clay in the forest could yield reds, yellows, and browns. She wouldn't have nearly the variety of colors she was used to, but she'd seen some beautiful monochromatic artwork, too. And if she could find some way to thicken—and preserve—dyes, she could get a broader palette if she used flowers and fruits to create pigments. She'd have to talk with Benno-san to see how plausible it'll be, but if nothing else, it was the start of an idea.

Beads might be easier. She could make beads from the clay in the forest, and heat it using her mom's st— oh . ...She still had to figure out that itty bitty explosion problem that had ruined her clay tablets. Not only that, but making beads in a large enough quantity to sell might be challenging, and time spent on one project was time not invested in another. But it could be an option. She could sell beads in sets or individually (the latter would be best if they were more intricate). Plain beads were a bit...well, plain, but she could pre-paint them or sell paint for customers to decorate the beads themselves.

What else…?

Cards! She'd spent countless hours during power outages playing cards with her mom during her time as Urano—and during that one and only camping trip they went on. (Word for the wise: don't read a book at a river's edge…). Families here would likely enjoy them, too. And soldiers! She'd heard of soldiers who would spend hours savoring the simple enjoyment of a game of cards during an otherwise taxing campaign.

The paper she'd made was too thin to use as playing cards—or at least ones that would last more than a few games. What if she thickened her paper to make cardstock? Cardstock was thicker than regular printer paper but thinner than cardboard. And it would be simple to make, too. She only needed to adjust how much paper-base to use in the tray and move the tray around more to even the paper out. Most profit for least amount of work! If she told Benno-san that idea, he'd probably jump on it.

She'd still need to make the paint to color the cards...but then again, who said that diamonds had to be black and hearts red? The symbols could be monochromatic. But that's getting ahead of herself. Making the cards was the first step. But what about board games, like shogi, that needed pieces with more substance than just paper?

Wood could do the job, and Lutz could probably carve the small tiles himself. Better yet, she wouldn't need paint for shogi—just ink! If she could get a woodblock for each piece, she'd only need one set to decorate the shogi tiles with the necessary characters. While Lutz could do the wood cutting, she wasn't sure he could do the fine work of carving characters on them. (How big would the tile even need to be to spell gyokushō in Ehrenfest?) She didn't even know if her dad could do that—not only would the woodcarving need to be very fine, but he still didn't know how to spell more than his name. They'd need a specialist woodworker. But Myne was going to need one anyways for her woodblock printing, so this wasn't the hardest obstacle.

"How'd you learn to do that?"

Myne jumped at the sound of Tuuli's voice, breaking her from her thoughts. Her sister stood beside her, peering at the slate filled with calculations.

"Oh. Um, Otto-san taught me," she said, hoping her voice didn't catch. Speaking of… She glanced up. "Dad, when can I visit Otto-san at the gate again?"

"Why do you want to see him?" he said gruffly, standing up with his emptied bowl of porridge. He brought it to the countertop before moving to the entryway, where his sword sheath rested.

"Nothing too important. I wanted to see if he had any accounting for me to do."

Dad frowned, strapping his sword to his belt. "You won't see him at the gate. He's working for his brother-in-law now that his wife is pregnant."

"Oh, Corinna-sama is pregnant?" squealed Tuuli, eyes wide with excitement.

But Myne wasn't listening. BENNO-SAAAAAAAN! Oooooh, she could just picture that arrogant smirk of his. He'd tricked her again! She huffed out a breath, pressing her chalk into the slate hard enough that it screeched. Two small copper coins, indeed!

Her father kissed her mom, then his daughters on their foreheads, before leaving out the door. Effa cleaned up their breakfast dishes, and she and Tuuli got to work on their sewing.

Not one to stay angry for long, Myne fumed for only a few moments more, before comforting herself with the thought that she'd get even with all her new ideas. She finished her accounting just in time for lunch. After taking a break to eat and play with Tuuli, she helped clean around the house, before taking a nap to recover her energy.

She woke up to the sound of Tuuli and her mom murmuring quietly to each other as they worked. It was a comforting sound, and she stayed in bed just a moment longer to savor the picture of them sewing side by side by the window's light. Myne had done a full day's work, and while her body still felt tired despite having just woken up, she felt...content. If she ever needed assurance that she'd made the right decision to stay at home, it was today. Getting to keep her loved ones company as they did their work and being able to chip away at hers on her own pace...few were as lucky, even during her life as Urano. On second thought… especially during her life as Urano.

But that contentment dimmed just a little when a plate full of kafkas was set in front of her. She loved kafkas, don't misunderstand, but having them in every roast, stew, and side did get a bit tiresome after a time. What she wouldn't do for some—

…Oh.

"Mom?" she asked after dinner. She had tried to help with dishes...but had felt dizzy as soon as she'd stood up, and Tuuli had quickly taken over for her. "Do you have a spare jar I could use? Made of….stoneware?" It wouldn't be see-through, but it would still work.

"I think I might have one around here," Mom murmured. "Why?"

"I have an idea for a recipe."

Dad, back from his day at work, instantly perked up. "A new one?"

"Yep! But...it'll take some time to make. The preparation needs a few days."

Tuuli pouted, and Myne wondered if she stuck out her lower lip that much when she did it. "Days?"

"It'll be worth it. Trust…" She was going to say "me," but then a thought occurred to her. With a befuddled Tuuli looking on, Myne motioned for her mom, and when she leaned down, she whispered something in her ear. If what she had in mind worked, it'd cost about a cup of flour every day, but they'd get a great return on it, too. Her mom nodded her permission, and Myne smiled. "Yeah, trust me, Tuuli!" She moved to get out of her seat, but then her legs felt weak again, and her mom quickly caught her around the waist, pulling her back.

"Rest yourself," Mom said. "You can give her the instructions if your sister's willing."

"I don't mind," chirped Tuuli. "So long as I get to eat it once it's ready. What do I need to do?"

"Grab two of the oldest potatoes we have, and put them in some water to boil," Myne instructed. She gave the directions and Tuuli dutifully followed. This wasn't their first time "cooking" together; now that Tuuli was used to Myne's sometimes unusual instructions, such as adding only a "pinch" of salt or a "cup" of flour, they worked together smoothly as a team. The only interruption was Dad scooping one or both of them up in his excitement of how cute his "little cooks" were, but Mom put a stop to that by sitting next to him and subtly putting an arm on his shoulder whenever he was about to leap up.

About an hour later, and a heated argument of whether they really had to discard most of what they'd just made, Tuuli held up a jar filled with white, foamy goop in a stoneware jar, the opening covered with a thin towel. "Are you sure we can eat this?" Tuuli said with a look of disdain.

"Not directly, but we can eat the bread it'll make," Myne said. "It's…" She was about to say "sourdough starter," but that might give away too much. "After a few days of feeding it, it'll be ready to make bread." And all the other stuff that could come with it—like pizza! Or biscuits! Yummmm… ..

" Feed it?" Tuuli looked even more dubious at the goop, holding the jar at a distance.

"The, the—" she stumbled, searching for another word besides "culture," "the thing that makes it bubbly and rise—is actually a living thing, and needs a cup of flour and half a cup of water every day to keep growing," she explained. "Put it by the window where it can get some sunlight. It needs to sit and warm up for a day."

As Tuuli did as she asked, she smiled at the memory of the last time she did this with her mom, when she was Urano. They'd run out of milk that day, and her mom was too lazy to pick up more (and she, too buried in a book), but not lazy enough to make a sourdough starter. It was an old-fashioned recipe from the Gold Rush, her mom had explained, that people used to make starters when they didn't have milk at their campsites. Using water instead of milk, the potatoes enriched the water so it'd be just right for yeast.

Myne had noticed early on that her family never baked their own bread, only buying it on rare occasions from the town's baker. But it wasn't until she'd gotten tired of kafkas where she had put two and two together. Although, now that she thought of it, she wouldn't have been able to make a sourdough starter until now, anyways. She'd only just gotten the necessary sugar from Freida. (She had to hide the bag away from her mom, saying it was for her inventions. ...Which wasn't necessarily wrong.). While sugar wasn't strictly necessary to make bread, it did add a nice taste!

Her family winded down for the night, each passing the hour before bed with a small craft by candlelight. Myne pulled out the sheets of paper she'd kept from the first stack she'd sold to Benno-san. Using a jar of ink she'd bought earlier from the merchant, she smiled, listening to her mom sing a soft melody across from her at the table, as she began to transcribe her first story.