About two days after making the sourdough starter, it had begun to release its pleasant, pungent aroma. Well, at least Myne thought it was pleasant…

"Are you sure we can eat this?" Tuuli asked, wrinkling her nose.

"We're making sour dough bread," Myne pointed out. "The sour is in its name for a reason."

"If I get sick, I'm never trying your weird food again."

"I'll remember that the next time I make sweets."

But Tuuli let her sister talk her through the rest of the process. They had started right after breakfast, knowing it would take all day to make. First, Tuuli stirred in the liquid that had risen to the top of the starter, mixing it back into the dough. Then she scooped up about two cups of the starter (making a face the entire time), and combined it in a large bowl with one cup of warm water, two cups of flour, a pinch of salt, and one precious tablespoon of sugar. Usually they would've needed to add yeast, but the potatoes they used would make the starter a breeding ground for yeast to grow naturally.

Tuuli mixed the dough by hand, every so often holding it up for Myne to check its consistency. "When do we know it's done?" she asked, her hands covered in clumps of dough.

"Once it doesn't stick to the bowl. It'll look a little...ropy."

"Ropy?"

"Yes."

Tuuli gave her a look, but continued to mix in silence. Eventually, the dough took on a...shaggy consistency. Kind of like one of those small, white-haired dogs whose messy coat made it look more like a knotty carpet than a dog. Yep, she'd call that 'ropy'!

"Okay, I think that's good," she said eventually.

Tuuli nodded, then frowned when she tried to scrape the dough off her fingers. It clung to her like little globs of glue. "How do you get this stuff off?"

"Oh, sorry... I probably should've told you to wet your hands first."

" Myne! " Tuuli pouted, and flicked some dough globs at her.

But Myne was much too busy scattering some flour onto the table to notice. Flour-scattering was a very important job, you know. At her sister's instruction, Tuuli dropped the shaggy dough ball on the table.

"Now you knead it," Myne said.

"What do you mean, 'knead'?"

"Oh. It's….eh, watch me for a second." Myne dipped her hands into a small bowl of water, then reached under the dough and scooped it towards her, letting the dough's own weight smooth itself out before falling with a satisfying smack back into her hands. Her hands were so small, she needed to use both to do the job.

"Try that," she said once she'd gotten tired. In other words, about a minute.

Tuuli took over, lifting the dough up until it slapped back down into her hands. As she worked, Myne occasionally dusted the dough with flour, until it had absorbed all it could and had gotten a smooth, almost sheen to it.

Tuuli hadn't even broken a sweat.

"You're so strong!" Myne gasped, amazed. Even in a proper body, her arms would've been screaming from the muscle exertion. Her sister must've been secretly ripped.

"You always say that," Tuuli said, sounding unimpressed. She poked at the dough, then watched in fascination as it sprang back at her touch like a firm cushion.

"That's because it's always true."

"If you say so, Myne. So what do we do now?"

"Now we wait."

"For how long?"

"However long it takes to double in size."

Myne draped a cloth over the dough. Then, taking a quick glance around the house, she found a clean bucket about twice the size of the bread. "Once it reaches about the top of this bucket, we'll know it's ready."

"If you say so."

Not ones to waste any time, Tuuli returned to her sewing beside Mom, while Myne did some accounting work. The math was simple enough, and she allowed her mind to wander to the story she'd told Lutz the other day. She shouldn't have been surprised, but it was still a little insulting when he'd been so skeptical about the idea of girls fighting. She'd called him out on it, but Lutz only looked at her as if she'd grown two heads. "It's not like you could beat me up," he'd said matter-of-factly.

"I'm not an ideal, okay?!"

Lutz had simply shrugged.

That cued a heated lecture about fierce and capable female-warriors spanning the entire age of history. To his credit, Lutz hadn't seemed put-off. If anything, he was fascinated that there'd been so many warriors at all, and from so many cultures. That started a whole other conversation about the different cultures of her world, and specifically about her own. She explained certain customs, like how to hold chopsticks, slurp noodles (Lutz got a kick out of that), and other forms of Japanese etiquette. Lutz had listened raptly, and Myne felt mollified.

...Until he said, "So that's why you're so weird."

Myne had threatened to stop telling him the story after that (even though they'd already gotten into more than one lengthy tangent). But he'd quickly shut up, and Myne continued the tale.

At least the boy didn't have unforgivable taste. He liked Mushu, the talking dragon. Of course, Myne hadn't known how to say the word "dragon" in Ehrenfest, but when she described it to him, his eyes lit up in recognition. "Oh, I've heard of those. Fey's mom tells stories about dragons," he said, using the Ehrenfest term.

The fact this world had their own versions of dragons hadn't surprised her. While most fantasy creatures, like sphinxes and unicorns, were restricted to one culture's mythology, dragons were almost a near-universal phenomenon, appearing from their supposed origins in the Middle East where they were wingless, gigantic snakes to the modern world's fire-breathing, four legged treasure hoarders (turned princess-snatcher on the side). Apparently, Ehrenfest's dragons (at least in the stories Fey's mother told) had manes like lions and frequently dined on the bones of naughty children.

Gee, wonder what the moral of those stories were about. She was grateful her mom didn't tell many cautionary tales.

Maybe she'd tell Tuuli about Mushu and the female-warrior. ...Although, now that she thought about it, she wasn't sure if telling her sister about warrior-women would be a good thing, when the ideal woman in this world was a picture of domestic skills. Myne was already introducing enough societal controversies as it was...

...Maybe she'd tell her about Cinderella, instead. Old-fashioned she may be, but the princess still had an impressive amount of emotional strength that Tuuli could appreciate.

Myne's musings were broken when the next bell rang. The dough had puffed up to the height of the bucket. Tuuli was impressed, her eyes shining as she took in its size. "See?" Myne couldn't help but brag. "Throwing some away the first day doesn't seem so bad now, does it?"

"I guess." Tuuli hid her excitement, shaping her lips into a frown as she poked the dough dubiously. "But I'm still not sure it'll taste good."

"Oh, ye of little faith."

Myne showed her how to knead the dough a different way, picking it up from the middle of its sides and throwing it down over itself. "It's really sticky!" Tuuli said, giggling.

"Yeah, bread-making isn't the cleanest hobby," Myne admitted.

Tuuli kept kneading for a while—a lot longer than Myne could've—but eventually she slowed. She didn't say anything, but Myne heard her grunt a little from the effort.

"I can ask Mom to help," she offered.

"Maybe…" Tuuli muttered glumly.

"Mom!" Myne called. "Can you help us, please?"

Their mother stood up from the loom, brushing off her skirt, "I suppose I can take a short break. What do you need?"

Between her and Tuuli, they kneaded the bread until it was smooth and didn't break when they stretched it. "Now we cover it again, and let it rise," Myne declared.

By the time Myne had finished five pages of accounting, the bread had doubled in size once more. The girls shaped the dough into two long loaves and dusted them in flour. They didn't have any pans to put them in, but if they came out a little less than rectangular, that was fine, too. They waited for the bread to rise a final time.

During that time, Tuuli finished her work, and had coerced Myne into playing with dolls. Myne hadn't played with dolls in years...she'd been old-fashioned, and liked those paper dolls whose outfits you could pop out of books. But if she was going to play, she might as well make it more interesting. She let Tuuli do the typical child's script of "Oh, hi, how are you?" "I'm good, thank you! How are you?" for about...five minutes. Then she turned the idle make-pretend into an intricate plot. Her main character, whom she named Umi (Tuuli had furrowed her brow at the strange-sounding name), was working hard to get ahead in the male-dominated field of blacksmithing. Tuuli protested at the implausibility of that plotline, but acquiesced after Umi taught her sister, Tulip, who was (surprise surprise!) a tailor, how to dress to impress at the store she worked at.

Myne had just finalized Umi's adoption of an orphan girl named Yuri when Dad returned from work.

He instantly sniffed the air. The loaves had already doubled in size a third time, and were now baking in the oven.

"What's cooking?" he asked, his eyes bright and his face breaking into a smile.

"Your daughters decided to bake us homemade bread," Mom said, coming to his side to wrap an arm around his waist.

He grinned, planting a big kiss on his wife's cheek before swooping up his daughters into the air. "Effa, have you ever seen two more talented girls? They bake, they clean, they sew! Myne's even a business woman!"

"And I'm an apprentice!" Tuuli chirped.

"The most talented one I ever saw!"

That evening, they finally ate bread instead of kafka. Tuuli took back all the bad things she'd said about the "stinky" starter after her first bite, and her dad had stuffed slice after slice into his mouth, spewing out crumbs every few moments when he'd gush about how his daughters were the best bakers in town. The meal only improved when Myne showed them how to spread fresh, spring-time meryl onto their slices.

"Don't be a pig," Mom chided her husband, gently patting his stomach after his fifth slice of bread with smooshed meryl on top. "A guardsman shouldn't get out of shape."

"Then I'll just work harder!" he insisted. "I'm not letting a single slice go to waste!"

That went on a while—until he got a stomach ache. But Myne smiled, soaking in the moment. Her family was fed, laughing, and together. She wouldn't have traded this time with them for anything. Not even books.

…Probably.

Myne's Current Account:

10 small copper coins, or 1 medium copper coin, for her accounting work.

(S) Copper Coin: 23

(M) Copper Coin: 6

(L) Copper Coin: 0

(S) Silver Coin: 4

(L) Silver Coin: 1

(S) Gold Coin: 20

(L) Gold Coin: 4

Total: 60,140,830 Lyons