The End of Winter Preparations
I wanted to finish all of the stinky work in one go, before the blue priests returned. Lutz said that he would make the hide glue and candles today, along with some cheese on the side.
At my place we only ever made cottage cheese by adding vinegar to milk we bought from someone who raised cows, but Lutz’s family got lots of milk through trading eggs and thus made fermented natural cheese.
“That’s what the orphanage is gonna want, right? It lasts longer,” said Lutz.
“...I dunno what that cheese stuff is,” replied Gil, “but the more food the better.”
I watched Lutz and Gil chat as they worked. It had taken me a while to get to the workshops since I had harspiel practice until third bell, but it seemed that work had been going fine without me. The workshop was filled with some priests and apprentices doing work at Fran’s instruction. As I rarely got the chance to see the workshop when it was operational due to normally helping the High Priest with paperwork around now, it was fun for me to look around.
“Lutz, Gil, how’s it coming along?”
“Pretty good for now. The pig hides are over here, the candles are getting made over there. We’re in the middle of cleaning off the meat scraps from the filtered wax. We haven’t done that, uh, salt thing yet.”
The pot beside Lutz and Gil already had the peeled inner layers of the hides in the lime water. They must have just put them there recently, as they were far from swollen. There were three gray priests filtering melted cow fat in the direction where Lutz pointed.
“The hides will need to be here for a bit longer. (Salting out) the wax is kind of tedious, but it’s better than having stinky candles and the oil’s better, so I hope you keep up with it.”
Apparently, Lutz’s family didn’t know about salting out either. My family started doing it since it actually did make the candles smell less bad, but it wasn’t really a thing around here. It was probably due to the fact that I lived in the poor part of the city, and although salt was cheaper than spices, it still wasn’t cheap itself.
“If you chop up smimosa and demple herbs into really small bits and mix them with the melted wax, it’ll get rid of most of the smell. But don’t use gierecht or redrum herbs, no matter what. That’ll just make them more stinky. Be careful.”
After I explained how to make the candles smell less like wild animals, Lutz blinked in surprise, then cackled with his shoulders shaking. “Yeah, I remembered when you messed those candles up.”
“Ngh... Failure is the mother of invention, okay? Success is born from the midst of countless failures!”
“Huh, that makes sense. You’re pretty smart, Sister Myne!” Gil nodded over and over at my platitudes, his eyes shining with sincere admiration. My attendants sure are cuties. I hope he’ll always be this sweet.
“By the way, Sister Myne. What’s that salt stuff about, anyway? Is it hard?”
“It’s annoying to do since it makes things take longer, but it’s not hard. You add it to salt water and boil it over low heat for a bit, repeatedly removing the scum that arises. When it cools down, you will be left with the hardened oil on top and the salt water on bottom. Once it’s completely white and solid, you drain the water beneath it and use the pure oil that remains.”
I explained the process as briefly as I could, getting fervent nods in reply. Lutz was also nodding while listening, but then he blinked after having a sudden realization. “Hey, Myne. Don’t we need to use some of this fat for soap?”
“We get that from divine gifts, so we’ll be fine using all of this for candles.” At our homes we left out a share of the oil to make soap in the spring, but in the temple we were given soap as divine gifts. It was important for gray priests to keep their clothes and bodies clean, so we were actually given quite a lot of it. Those in the orphanage would much prefer food to soap, but blue priests had different priorities.
“Oh, and Gil. I imagine that the cloth they’re using to filter that fat will have plenty of tiny meat chunks stuck to it. Please tell the gray priests that tonight’s soup will taste a lot better if they put those into it.”
Gil nodded hard and ran over to the filtering priests. They opened up the cloth and peered inside, leading to a cry of excitement loud enough for me to hear.
“Yeah, meat’s pretty good,” said Lutz with a laugh.
I smiled at him, then turned to look around the workshop. Hide glue and candles weren’t the only things being made. There were gray priests and apprentices getting oil from fruit using the pressure tools meant for squeezing water out of fresh paper on the draining bed. We naturally wanted a lot of oil since it could be used for both lamps and cooking. The orphanage usually only made soup for food, though, so none of the oil would actually be used in the kitchen.
Paper, the usual focus of the workshop, was shoved into the corner. I could see paper in the process of having its water drained, plus white and black bark left out to dry. My eyes fell on the stacks of completed paper.
“Hey, Lutz. How much paper has the workshop finished right now?”
Lutz followed where I was looking and narrowed his eyes. “Since we just printed all those picture books, I’m guessing three hundred pages at best. Probably less. Not sure exactly how many since there’s still a lot of them drying. What, you need some?”
“Mhm. I wanted to print a second wave of the children’s bibles, but I need to make them all at once since the templates go bad. I want to make as many as possible in one go. So... how much paper could you make if you started now?” We needed a lot of paper and ink to make sure the templates weren’t wasted. I could order linseed oil from Benno to make more ink, and we still had plenty of soot lying around. The problem was paper.
“Volrin wood’s not too good for firewood, and it’s about time for the bark to start hardening up, so there should be a good amount at the lumber yard. I’ll go check later. We should be able to make seven hundred and fifty sheets if we use all the white and black bark we have here.”
“Okay. Try and make as much as you can, okay?”
“Leave it to me.” Lutz was willing to make the paper, and that was fine with me. “Myne, want to go check out the cheese while the hides are swelling up?” asked Lutz. I nodded, and we moved to the girls’ building while Fran continued to handle things at the workshop.
“You’re making cheese in the girls’ building?”
“Yeah, with their pots. You don’t want us mixing the pots for making paper with the pots for making cheese, right?”
Personally, I didn’t want the pots we boiled ashes and bark in to be used for preparing food, but there were a surprisingly large number of people around here who didn’t feel the same way as long as the pots were washed. Most were fine with a little bit of ash getting potentially mixed into their food. I could stomach that, but I would rather not. Plus, the orphanage kids were used to eating food left over by nobles, so if we had enough pots to keep things separate we might as well.
“It’s finished!”
“Begin drying these, then.”
When we arrived at the girls’ building, the children were drying the fruit and the mushrooms they had gotten in the forest while shrine maidens and apprentice shrine maidens made cheese and soup, plus jam by boiling some of the aforementioned fruits with honey. The sweet scent in the air was entirely unlike the beastly animal scent in the boys’ building.
“It’s funny to think that even though we’re making this much soup, it’ll all be gone by lunch.”
“I wish the Harvest Festival would be over already. Making soup over and over all day is such a pain.”
The chefs were extra busy since we were getting fewer divine gifts from the blue priests now, a situation which demanded almost twice as much soup as normal. I couldn’t help but smile as I saw the girls chopping vegetables with pursed lips and stirring pots with exaggerated frowns.
“S-Sister Myne!” Upon noticing me, the kids hurriedly stopped working to cross their arms in front of their chests and kneel. I told them to continue on like normal, and they all resumed work looking much more tense than before.
...Aaaah! They’re super scared of me.
The priests in the workshop were mostly used to my presence given that I often popped in to discuss things with Lutz or watch over their work. But I basically never came to see the soup being made, so it was clear that everyone was tense and shaky.
“I came to see how the cheese-making is coming along, at the advice of Lutz. How is it going?”
“The milk has only just gotten warm.” A girl smiled awkwardly while gently stirring a pot with a large wooden spatula. Lutz peered into the pot and gave a nod.
“Going slow with the warming’s exactly what we want. Call me once little bubbles start popping up.” Lutz must have been able to calculate how much time was left based on the pot and the fire, as he murmured “This should be alright” before heading over to the kids drying fruit.
“Hey, shorties. We’ve gotta go get some stuff from the store. Finish up here and come to the workshop when you’re ready. There’s a lot of stuff being delivered there, so we gotta start getting it now before it all piles up.”
The children gave hearty replies and stopped drying the fruit to clean up their baskets instead.
“You should go back to your room, Myne. Everyone’ll just be nervous with you around.”
“Of course. Thanks for doing all this.” I returned to my chambers, pleased at how well everything was going. At this rate we would easily finish before the blue priests returned. And once the smelly work was done, we were free to take our time.
Work was going on in the kitchen of my chambers as well. Alongside my normal meals, the chefs were extremely busy salting the slices of pork that were too thin to be smoked and cooking them confit style to preserve them.
I climbed the stairs while watching the busy kitchen out of the corner of my eye, and once in my room I saw Delia reading a children’s bible to practice her letters while Rosina faced the work left to her by Fran.
“Shall we continue making the template?” I thought about starting my own work, but Fran held out a wooden board with a smile.
“Perhaps later, Sister Myne. I believe it would be best to study your prayers, so that you will be ready whenever the Knight’s Order might call for aid.”
Naturally, the Knight’s Order was composed of nobles. No failure, however minor, would be permitted if they called upon the temple for aid. It was easy to see why Fran would be more worried about being summoned by the Knight’s Order than preparing the orphanage for winter.
“...When will they be summoning us?”
“There is no set date, but every year they request aid once or twice before winter begins, so the summons should be arriving soon.”
“I see...”
Under normal circumstances, an apprentice would never participate in a ritual. They were too important to be carried out by inexperienced apprentices, which was why I hadn’t participated in any baptism ceremonies, adulthood ceremonies, or the Starbind Ceremony. Furthermore, the Knight’s Order was mostly male and tended not to enlist the help of blue shrine maidens for fear of illicit rumors.
A summons from the Order was meant to enlist blue priests for a ritual. And yet, since there weren’t any blue priests in the temple to perform the ritual, I had to step up to the task despite normally being the last person who would be picked for the job.
“But Fran, I don’t get it. Doesn’t the High Priest have a lot of mana?” I wasn’t the only one with a lot of mana. As far as I knew, the High Priest had more mana than the rest of the blue priests combined, and then some.
“There are times and situations where he will need to prioritize his duty as a noble over his temple duties.”
It seemed that the Knight’s Order was experiencing a noble shortage just like the temple. And just like the temple, many of the talented knights had been summoned to the Sovereignty, resulting in a situation where nobles with mana far below par were being allowed to join the Order. In the midst of all that, the High Priest was an excellent noble that had graduated from the Royal Academy, and thus it was possible that he would be so busy supporting the Order that I would need to do my job as shrine maiden. All of this information came from Fran, who conveyed it all furtively.
...Wait, my first real job as a shrine maiden is going to be a joint mission with a platoon of knights? Isn’t it a bit too much to ask? I chanted the prayers with a cold sweat running down my back, until Fran suddenly realized something and looked up.
“...Sister Myne, how are your ceremonial robes coming along?”
“They’ve finished the temporary stitching and begun the primary stitching, so it shouldn’t be too long.” I had been told that it would take four days if Corinna remained in good health, and ten at the absolute worst. I passed that on to Fran, who sighed in relief.
“In that case, please bring them to the temple as soon as possible, so that you may leave the moment the summons arrives.”
I returned to practicing my prayers with Fran, and eventually Gil came over carrying a box. It was apparently a delivery from the Gilberta Company.
“Could I get some help, Fran?” called out Gil from the first floor. “There’s some big boxes over there.”
“Certainly. I will be there at once. Delia, Rosina, please begin opening the boxes. Sister Myne, please stay where you are and continue practicing.” Fran stood up to answer Gil’s call and went downstairs with Rosina and Delia. The two girls opened the boxes placed in the hall while Gil and Fran went to get the rest from the workshop.
“Yes! The rugs are finally here!” I could hear Delia’s happy cry echo up the stairs, reminding me once again how much she liked decorating and redecorating my room. “Now we can prepare the chambers for winter. If you’ll excuse me, I need to start redecorating...”
“Delia, it is almost time to eat. Let us wait to redecorate until after we’ve eaten.” Rosina stopped Delia’s rampage before it could begin by postponing the redecoration until after lunch.
“Now then, Sister Myne, please go with Gil to the workshop or someplace else.” After lunch, Delia drove me out of my room with a smile.
Since the High Priest was absent, I couldn’t enter the book room even with Fran. That left the workshop as the only place I could go. And since Delia said that she needed Fran’s help, Gil was the one accompanying me there.
“Lutz asked me before lunch to go check on the hides and see if they’re swollen yet. Let’s go check’m out, Sister Myne.”
The orphanage was still in the middle of eating, judging by how the workshop was completely empty. There was nobody to stop me, so I just went ahead and peered into the pots.
“Looks like they’re good now. Once we wash them to get the lime off, start the boiling.”
“...Huh? Myne, what’re you doing here?” Lutz, having finished lunch at Benno’s (and thereby having finished giving Benno his report), blinked in surprise after seeing me in the workshop. It was rare for me to visit the workshop multiple times in one day, since I wasn’t allowed to participate in the work myself.
“The Gilberta Company sent over rugs today, remember? Delia’s head over heels excited to redecorate, so... she kinda kicked me out.”
“Huh. Well, that’s convenient. Master Benno told me to tell you that your robes are done and to visit Corinna when you can. Why not go now, if you can’t be in your room? I’ll drop by to get you on my way home,” suggested Lutz, and I nodded. It would be dangerous for me to just stand around outside on a cold autumn day. Benno’s store would be a safe refuge for me.
“I like that idea. I’ll take Rosina with me to Corinna’s, so could you bring Fran with you when you come get me? I won’t make Rosina go back on her own.”
“Alright.”
“Lutz, you go wash the hides,” added Gil. “I’ll take Sister Myne to her chambers.”
I returned to my chambers with Gil, only for Delia to yell a hearty “Geez!” at me since they had already started moving furniture. It seemed that messy chambers were a disgrace, and for that reason masters must not return until the redecorating is finished.
“I just heard they finished my ceremonial robes. I’ll be going to the Gilberta Company now, and then I will go straight home. You’ll at least have to let me get changed first. Also, Rosina, could you accompany me to Corinna’s?”
“Of course, Sister Myne.” Rosina left to get changed into her outside clothes, and Delia changed me while excitedly informing me that the redecorating would be finished by tomorrow.
“Sorry, Fran, but Lutz will be dropping by later to take you to the store. I just couldn’t bear to send Rosina back alone so late in the day.”
“Understood. Until tomorrow, Sister Myne. I humbly await your return.”
After Fran saw us off, I walked down the chilly city streets with Rosina, who was wearing her freshly purchased rouge outfit. Fran often walked me home or to the Gilberta Company, and Gil often went to the forest, but Rosina rarely had the opportunity to walk outside. The way she was peering around curiously despite having to scrunch up her nose at the smell was very cute.
“You know,” I began, “I think Wilma’s art would improve if she walked outside like this.”
“She might develop the courage to do just that sooner or later. It wasn’t too long ago that she trembled in fear from afar whenever a gray priest drew water for our soup, and now she is giving them instructions.”
It seemed that Wilma was conquering her fears bit by bit now that she had been entrusted with the orphanage and its children. I was glad to hear reports of Wilma’s growth through Rosina.
“Hi, Mark. I’m here because Benno called for me.”
“The master is presently in a business meeting. If you would wait here for a moment, I will go contact Corinna directly.”
I sat in the chair offered to me by Mark, and Rosina slid into position behind me. An apprentice brought me tea at Mark’s instruction. I drank it and took a deep breath.
“Lady Myne, please follow me.” Mark addressed me as “Lady Myne” since I had Rosina with me and I was visiting Corinna as a customer. We left the store and climbed the outside stairs to the third floor.
“Corinna, Lady Myne has arrived.”
“Hello there, sweetie.” Corinna greeted me with a dreamy smile after Mark opened the door for her. Her eyes then widened in surprise after falling on Rosina. “Oh, you’ve brought an attendant with you? Should I call you Lady Myne, then?”
“It doesn’t matter to me, but it does to Rosina, so maybe you should.”
“Aha. In that case, Lady Myne, please follow me.” She guided me to the usual parlor, and there I found my ceremonial robes hung on a clothing rack, spread out wide in front of me.
“Wow!” She had positioned the rack such that light streaming from the window hit the robes, which brought out the seasonal flowers and the wavy embroidery, which had been sewn with the same color thread as the cloth. The light actually made the embroidery with its little sparkles of white thread look like water, so much so that I found myself at a loss for words.
“...It’s splendid.” Rosina’s breathless praise brought me back to my senses.
“Corinna, this really is beautiful. I thank you ever so much.”
“Why, I must thank you myself.” Corinna held down her slowly growing belly with one hand while gently removing the robes from the rack.
“Please, try them on. Forgive me, miss, but could you please help? It is a bit hard for me to move with a belly this large.”
“But of course.” Rosina took the blue robes from Corinna and put them on me. She was fast and efficient, which made sense given that she served another blue shrine maiden before me.
The robes had been dyed completely blue, with embroidery of the same color. The sleeves and hem were lined with silver, and there was fancy gold embroidery beneath the neck. On top of that, the crest of the Myne Workshop was embroidered with gold in the center of the outfit when viewed from the front.
I stood in place, frozen by anxiety. I felt like a bride wearing her wedding dress or something. I had to act graceful and elegant. I couldn’t let them get dirty at all. It felt like the clothes were wearing me, and demanding that I live to suit them.
“Here is the sash.” It seemed that sashes for ceremonial clothes differed based on age; apprentices had white sashes with silver embroidery, while adults had white sashes with gold embroidery. Corinna explained that the embroidery contained words of prayer from the bible.
“Excuse me, but this cloth seems to be exceptionally heavy...?” Rosina looked up at Corinna as she wrapped the sash around me, and Corinna gave an explanation with her bright smile not faltering for an instant.
“If you sew multiple layers of cloth into the robes ahead of time, they can grow along with Lady Myne. I fashioned them in this way after learning the techniques she described to me. It was a risk, but surely one that will be beneficial for ceremonial robes that she will rarely use.”
“...You surprise me as always, Sister Myne.” Rosina let out an awed murmur after Corinna explained that she had made the robes at my instructions, rather than devising them on her own.
Rosina then stood up, having finished dressing me, and gave a firm nod after looking me over from every angle. “This robe truly is splendid. Every time you move, it reveals more of the flowers and water, and they will surely draw the attention of all those around you.”
Rosina had served Sister Christine and still gave these robes her utmost approval. Corinna, having been tense about using a new technique on such important robes, visibly relaxed.
I had my ceremonial robes and my chambers were being redecorated for winter. We had preserved our food, made candles, and stored them both in cellars with firewood.
The hide glue was placed in an area where cool wind blew, and the workshop was hard at work making paper and ink for our second round of printing.
And finally, we knew what tools we needed for winter handiwork and they were all being bought.
The orphanage’s winter preparations were more or less complete.
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