Nina was a girl with decent arsenal of talents. Sure, she wasn't the greatest at singing or dancing, but she easily made up for that with a prowess for agility and scribbling interesting notes or stories in her secret journal. Yes, Nina was the aspiring little writer, staying up in her tent jamming a piece of charcoal on her paper until the candle ran out of wax. The only thing was, Nina was a hidden artist of sorts; only when she was dead, she swore, would people read her stories.
Of course, since Nina was modest the majority of the time, she would never go off and tell someone of her abilities without a conversation demanding of it beforehand. So, many went unaware, writing her off as that weird girl that hung out around the corners of buildings like a creep... Which she also kind of was...
That wasn't the point.
While Nina did have gifts in some places, by no means did that make her void of terrible weaknesses. Nope, Nina was just like everybody else, having a demon to wrestle with time and time again.
One of those demons was cooking.
Nina, not even to save her life, could not cook. Her caretaker from the Deeprealms wouldn't dare let her operate a stove; it wasn't because her caretaker wanted to make things easier on her by cooking all her meals for her, no, it was mainly because her caretaker knew that good things never came out of Nina in the kitchen.
And Nina, like an idiot, was too embarrassed to admit this indelible flaw in her; instead, she went around telling people, like her dad and Corrin, that she shouldn't have kitchen duty too often because she was a lousy cook. This wasn't entirely a lie, seeing that the majority of her meals were black shriveled-up pieces of garbage, but that was just the least of her worries.
Instead, her worries were at the on the fact that she had terrible luck in that confounded kitchen. Kitchens had stoves. Stoves used fire. Fire burns things down. The kitchen, so she's learned, was a bad place to have ill luck. Bad luck in the living room may have been better, as would the dining room... But the kitchen? No, anything but the kitchen. The kitchen had way too many dangerous things in it.
And guess where Nina ended up?
In the kitchen.
She stood in the midst of it, being a stranger, as she watched Corrin give her the grand tour. It wasn't quite as grand as some would believe it to be, seeing that it did not consist of anything more than an oven, stove, sink and pantry. It may as well have been a torture chamber, for her face was drained of any color.
"...And finally, over here we have the pantry. Watch out over here; when we started to have rodent problems, we had to figure out a way to control it. Jakob tried to get Beruka to kill them off, but she wasn't interested. So, we had no choice but to lay out some snap-traps. If you're not careful, those things can break a finger in half." Corrin opened a door, revealing a closet stocked with raw material. There was a modest amount in there, every sort she could imagine; lots of people would kill just to have a little bit.
"Um... Corrin...?"
"That should have about covered it. You're free to come to me if you have any questions about the equipment, but just know that I'm not going to do your job for you."
"Corrin."
He stopped to look at her, his lips sealing into a neutral frown. Nina was a pale mess, frozen in her stance; if he wasn't mistaken, he'd say she had just seen some sort of phantom.
"Yes Nina?"
"I-I need to tell you something..."
"What?"
She looked away, furrowing her brows as her hands wrestled with one another behind the shield of her back. Quickly, she took a heave through her nostrils.
"I said I shouldn't have kitchen duty because I'm a bad cook..." she looked at him suddenly. "Which I am, don't get the wrong idea..."
He raised a brow.
"So you are a bad cook."
"Yes, but that's not the real reason why I said I shouldn't be here." boy did she not want to say this. "You see... I'm not cut out for this place because... I'm really lousy in the kitchen."
She noticed how his expression sunk.
"Why?"
"Because."
"Because why?"
She huffed.
"Come on, you know me; I can't do a single thing without my mind wandering places and staying there for too long! If I use the stove to cook something, the food inside is better off going to the dogs. Even worse, this whole building may go up in flames! I remember when I cooked something for the first time in the Deeprealms; I was standing over a rack of cookies in the oven when this... This..." her face reddened. "This whole gang of studs passed by my window!"
Corrin shrugged.
"Why didn't you ignore them?"
"How could I? They were all over each other, laughing it up like they were friends since birth...!" she gasped. "And if I remember correctly, I think one pair said their families were sharing a house; how could they not be best friends?"
"Nina." she looked up at him, roused from her ramblings. "I never would have thought this of you, but are you a liar as well?"
She gasped.
"A liar? Never! Why would you think I'd lie to you unless it was to protect someone?"
"Because I think you're lying to me right now. If you really have problems while cooking, I don't understand why you couldn't have told me before instead of just saying you make bad food."
She remained still, her flush thickening.
"W-Well... This is bad timing... Isn't it..."
"Quit trying to get out of your work." he turned around, walking out the door. "Supper's in three hours, and everyone's going to be expecting at least one serving!"
Desperate, she rushed after him.
"H-Hang on a second! I at least get a helper, don't I?"
No. Nina did not get a helper. Instead, she was left in the kitchen. Alone. Trembling. A whole army was going to be in the mess hall in three hours, all expecting a meal from little ol' her! She didn't even know what to cook...
That's how she wound up digging around cabinets until she finally found something that would prove useful to her: an old cookbook that belonged to Peri. Most of the things inside seemed rather delicious, a few dishes she even recognized from previous meals; it would be easiest if she chose something she was familiar with and followed its instructions. What could go wrong?
Apparently everything could go wrong, and one of those things was called not having the ingredients most of the recipes called for. She was becoming desperate before long, flipping to pages with meals she'd never heard of written inside. All of them drove her to a deeper state of nervousness.
"Let's see... Cabbage salad? I hate cabbage, but at least it's something I know we have in here..." when she stuck her head in the pantry, though, she would find only a single head of cabbage. The sight made her frown. "Okay. Fine." she flipped to the next page. "Peach Cobbler. I think that's a dessert, but I wouldn't bet on anyone really caring at this point." no peaches either.
It was only a matter of minutes later, she was yelling at the top of her lungs. A pair chatting at one of the tables outside the kitchen, Elise and Effie, would halt their conversation to hear...
"Fish! Does it look like I have any fish in this pantry? Of course I don't!"
...Before shrugging and acting as though they heard nothing.
Soon, the book would find itself hurled onto the counter with a huffing Nina hunched over in the midst of the room; with her shoulders stiff, she buried her face in her palms.
"Just calm down, Nina..." she murmured to herself. "So what if that book doesn't offer a lick of help? Just come up with a recipe of your own."
And that was exactly what she did.
Nina spent a few minutes with her head cooped up in the pantry, studying what materials were available to her. There was quite a bit to her fortune, but it was stuff she didn't know what to do with; some of it she didn't even recognize if it was food. After a while, she began digging, searching for something she may have missed. There were a few things more that would prove useful, such as a few slabs of cured meat wrapped in paper. The other thing she found greeted her with a snap. She yelped before yanking her hand back; it wasn't injured, thank goodness, but she was too afraid to test her luck and go back in.
With everything she was familiar with spread out in front of her, Nina stood, running a thumb over her chin, scrunching her nose.
"Hmm. Something that would fill everyone up... Enough not to ask for seconds..."
Then it came to her: starch. Everybody loved starch, didn't they? It could make all sorts of great stuff like... Well, she couldn't think of anything in particular at the moment, but she was sure starch would do the trick. After all, it wasn't her fault if someone threw a fit because they didn't like starch; they could just starve.
With that said and done, Nina lugged bag after bag of wheat onto the counter, and when she was done with that, she moved on to rice. She stared at her piece of work with her hands on her hips, the gears in her head cranking and turning.
Now that she acquired the starch, what was she to do with it? She wasn't entirely sure, but she knew of a fool-proof plan for emergencies, and a fool-proof plan it was. All she had to do was go scavenger for a pan, pour it all in, then mix it.
And that was exactly what she did.
After doing so, she stared at the meal with prejudice; sure white powder with some rice scattered around looked superbly appetizing, but something was missing... That's right. It was the milk. So, without a word, she zoomed down to the cellar, where she returned with a few buckets in tow. They were carelessly dumped into the pans, giving just a slight splash.
Their final destination would be what she feared the most; the oven. She approached the oven cautiously, almost as though she could have sworn it was some sort of wild beast. After dumping her masterpiece inside, she threw the hatch to the furnace open, observing the inside. The pile of ashes made her face become grim; if she screwed this up, that pile may get a heck a lot bigger.
After gathering a guessed amount of burning wood from the corner, she began sliding logs inside, piling one after the other until she had a nice pyramid. An additional stick of a fire-starter gave the mound a title barely worthy of fire. At last, she brought the match; after striking it, she tossed it in with a terrified squeak before slamming the hatch shut and rushing for shelter. A few minutes into her cover, she noticed that nothing had changed. So, with a face of curiosity, she crawled back over to the oven, peering into the furnace cautiously; the sight made her snarl.
The darn thing didn't even catch fire.
