Daily Winter Life
I was finally permitted to walk through the temple as I wished, now that I had Damuel as a bodyguard. It was a bit rough on him since he had to travel here from the Noble’s Quarter every day, but he used the flying horse he made from his feystone, so unlike Lutz and Tuuli the snow posed no issue to him.
Wow, magic sure is convenient.
Thanks to Damuel, I could go to the orphanage and book room again, which provided ample distraction. My family couldn’t visit me as much as they could before due to all the thick snow, but I could forget how much I missed them by absorbing myself in books. Only when reading could I forget my loneliness.
The problem was that the library was incredibly cold. I couldn’t stay for long no matter how much I bundled up, and neither Damuel nor Fran liked going there.
“Apprentice,” said Damuel, “could you ask Lord Ferdinand if you could bring books back to your chambers, so we don’t have to stay in the book room?”
“I agree with Sir Damuel’s wisdom,” said Fran. “You will end up sick if you go there too often.”
Damuel and Fran got along surprisingly well. They often seemed to agree on things, but maybe Fran was just used to dealing with nobles. Either way, they were on good terms.
“...High Priest. For the stated reasons, may I bring books from the book room to my chambers?”
“You may borrow the books I brought myself. I would not want for you to get sick right before the Dedication Ritual, after all... Hah. I win.”
The High Priest let slip a slight grin after beating me in reversi. As I expected, his level of skill was way past my own now that he understood the game. What kind of an adult was he, going all out on a little girl? Sure, I just looked like a little girl, but still.
“I think it’s cruel that you would go all out on a child, High Priest.”
“That is laughable coming from you, who went all out on a beginner. I see that you’re a sore loser, hm?”
The High Priest was a little immature sometimes, but he was a good person. He lent me his books, and when the loneliness got to be too much for me to bear, he would let me barge into his room and trade organizing paperwork or doing a lot of math for some precious hug time in the hidden room. He usually grimaced hard when I asked, but I was too caught up in my own problems to worry about his. Our arrangement was fine by me.
“Morning, Myne. How’ve you been?” asked Tuuli.
“You’re not sleeping all day, are you?” questioned Lutz.
Tuuli and Lutz came to visit me on a day that was less snowy than usual.
Tuuli was in the middle of working hard to learn her letters. She brought her children’s bible, as these were being used as textbooks in the temple school, as well as her stone slate and pen so that she could study with the other kids in the orphanage.
Lutz was literate and knew math, so he checked up on the winter handiwork, taught the kids along with the gray priests, and instructed Gil on how to write reports on the workshop’s production.
“Who’re those two, apprentice?”
“Sir Damuel, that’s my older sister Tuuli and my friend Lutz. They come here a lot when it’s not winter, so make sure you remember them.”
I introduced Damuel to Tuuli and Lutz. They looked up at him, mouths agape.
“Tuuli. Lutz. This is Sir Damuel. He’s serving as my bodyguard for now. I called him ‘sir’ because he’s from the Knight’s Order.”
“...The Knight’s Order?! Woah, that’s awesome!”
“A noble is guarding you, Myne?!”
They both looked at Damuel, sparkling with excitement and envy, which threw him off a little.
“Apprentice, what should I do at times like this?”
“Just smile, I think.”
Damuel forced a stiff smile onto his face, dealing with Tuuli and Lutz as best he could.
I later heard that Damuel, having rarely left the Noble’s Quarter in which he was raised, had barely interacted with commoners before. And while he had an older brother, he had no younger siblings and so wasn’t sure how to deal with little kids. On top of all that, his family was so low in status within noble society that nobody had ever looked at him with envy before.
“Okay, Myne. I have to go to the orphanage with Lutz,” said Tuuli, patting my arms which were wrapped around her.
I just shook my head, squeezing harder.
“I’ll go with you today. The High Priest said I can walk around the temple now that Sir Damuel’s with me, and I’ve been wondering how the temple school is holding up.”
I had been stuck in my chambers even when Lutz and Tuuli came to see me, but now I could go to the orphanage with them. And so I did, heading to the orphanage dining hall with Rosina and Damuel in tow.
“An apprentice shrine maiden is serving as the director of the orphanage? There really is a shortage in manpower here...”
“Yes, there simply aren’t enough blue priests. The High Priest has enough on his hands, and I took on this role in hopes of helping him. Though I’m really just the director in name only.”
There was no need for me to explain that I had stuck my nose into temple affairs uninvited and ended up in the role after getting in way over my head. What mattered was that when something important happened in the orphanage, it was the High Priest who signed off on it. At best, I was just a bureaucratic middlewoman who managed the orphanage’s daily affairs.
“You must be pretty talented if you’re helping Lord Ferdinand with his work,” sighed Damuel. He told me that when the High Priest had been in the Knight’s Order, he was hard on those who lacked talent, giving extra work to those lagging behind the others and ultimately cutting off anyone who couldn’t keep up. Some people even came to think of him as a monster.
Considering how those in the temple assigned to be his attendants either became first class at their jobs or were let go, it seemed his intense method of training was still going on today.
“But I’ve heard from Fran that the High Priest only sets work that he thinks the person would be capable of, albeit with a little perseverance.”
“Being able to keep up with that work is proof you’ve got talent. He’s never even given me work to do before. I don’t think he even knew I existed, since I was just some laynoble apprentice back in the day.”
Damuel murmured about how he wished the High Priest would give him work as well, so I decided to ask the High Priest to do so the next time I saw him. I was sure he would delight in giving someone work to do.
“Welcome, Lutz, Tuuli. Oh, and Rosina. I see Sister Myne is with you.” Wilma greeted us with a smile, but then froze in place the second she saw Damuel. She looked at me with tearful eyes, trembling a little. “Sister Myne, who might this finely dressed gentleman be?”
“He’s the knight serving as my bodyguard. He’s very kind and serious about his work, and won’t mistreat the women or kids here. Right, Sir Damuel?”
“Of course. I swear as a knight that I mean no harm or ill will to anyone here.”
Wilma only had experience with cruel blue priests and disgusting nobles who came to the orphanage seeking flowers, so she remained on guard against Damuel while inviting us inside.
“It’s pretty warm here,” remarked Damuel, his eyes widened in surprise.
Thanks to our efforts during the winter preparations, the furnace in the dining hall was burning brightly, warming the whole room. And everyone in the orphanage was spending their days in the dining hall, with the boys’ building staying empty to save as much firewood as possible. That meant more people in one place, which naturally heated up the room even further.
“We thoroughly prepared the orphanage for winter,” I explained. “This is the best place for all of them to be.”
A session of the temple school was being held off in one corner, while the apprentices who had already learned their letters were working hard at winter handiwork in another corner.
“Oh, they’ve already started. Bye, Myne! I need to get going!” exclaimed Tuuli.
“Same here,” Lutz said with a nod.
Tuuli headed toward the temple school session while Lutz went over to the handiwork corner.
I myself headed for a seat where I could see the classroom (read: table) from a far enough distance that I wouldn’t be in their way.
“Apprentice, what are they doing?” Damuel pointed to the corner holding the classroom with a curious look on his face.
“That’s where we’re teaching the kids to read and write.”
“...You’re teaching orphans to read and write? But why?”
In this world, only people of relatively high status and those who worked with them learned to read and write. From their perspective, it didn’t make sense to teach these skills to orphans.
However, considering that the orphans had a high chance of becoming attendants to blue priests, they were more likely to need to know how to read and write than most lower city craftsmen. And in terms of raising the literacy rate, it would be more efficient to start by teaching people who would benefit the most from reading and writing before moving on to the sons of craftsmen and so on.
“Temple orphans will one day be attendants here or otherwise servants in the Noble’s Quarter, so the sooner they learn to read and do math the better. It’ll help them do their job one day.”
“Makes sense. That means they won’t have to be trained as much when the time comes.”
As I watched the gray priests working as teachers help the kids read the children’s bibles, illustrating each letter on their stone slate as they appeared, I discussed the next picture book with Wilma. I showed her a script I had written by poring over the thick bible and extracting the information I needed about the subordinate gods and organizing them into separate books for each season. She fixed up the text here and there, adding some poetic descriptions where they fit.
“Apprentice, what’s this?”
“A copy of the children’s bible I made to help the orphans learn to read. They also help them memorize the names of the gods and divine instruments.”
“Oh?”
Damuel flipped through the children’s bible, looking interested.
“It covers the King and Queen of the gods, plus the Eternal Five, and now I’m planning to make ones that cover the subordinate gods. Their names are important for blessings.”
“These sure are convenient. I had a rough time memorizing the names myself.”
Damuel sighed about how many names one needed to know to properly use magic. If he had that much trouble, then it was a safe bet that a simple picture dictionary of the gods would go over well with nobles. I smiled to myself, mentally calculating the profit waiting for me now that I had a noble’s endorsement.
“Want to play karuta with us, Wilma?” asked an orphan.
“Certainly. Sister Myne, would you like to join?”
It seemed that it was standard procedure to play karuta after studying their textbooks, as the karuta cards were already laid out on the floor. Tuuli was staring at some of them with her face scrunched up.
“Tuuli, might something be bothering you, by chance?”
While outside of my chambers, I maintained my rich-girl manner of speaking even when talking to Lutz and Tuuli. I had been instructed to do so by Fran and Rosina, so despite how unnatural it felt, I forced myself to be extremely formal with Tuuli.
She frowned a bit, then whispered in a quiet, embarrassed voice. “...The thing is, I’m the worst at karuta. Out of everyone.”
The kids in the orphanage had been playing karuta together ever since I gave a set to Gil, so even if they didn’t know the letters, they had the art memorized.
Tuuli, on the other hand, didn’t know her letters very well yet, and it was hard for her to get used to all the religious symbolism. She was on an entirely different playing field from the orphanage kids—they played every day, whereas she could only come and play when the snow wasn’t so bad.
“Practice is important, and all you can do is try until you master it. Might I suggest focusing on just the gods within the textbook?”
Wilma had drawn the art for both the karuta and the textbook, and both were focused on the exact same subjects. If she couldn’t win at karuta until she had memorized them all, she might as well start by focusing on the ones she had mostly memorized already to give her a head start.
“I’ll do my best.”
I tried my hand at karuta too, but the kids were as good as you’d expect; it was hardly even a competition. Also, some of the apprentices were close to coming of age, and if you asked me, it wasn’t fair that their arms were so much longer than mine.
Noon passed, and it was time for Tuuli’s sewing class. It consisted mainly of girls, and she taught them how to make simple repairs.
She had taught the class enough times that she had already learned how to be a good teacher. The orphans could repair their frayed sleeves, and although they were still wearing second-hand clothing, it all looked a lot better than it did before.
“Oh, Gil. Where are you off to in such thick clothes?”
I could see a crowd of boys centered around Gil, all of them wearing thick clothing. There may not have been a blizzard outside, but it was still snowing a little.
“Lutz told us to get the workshop ready for parue gathering.”
It was customary to go parue gathering on clear winter days. Preparing to leave so early in the morning was a challenge, so it seemed they were being proactive and getting things ready ahead of time.
“In that case, prepare well so that you may gather many parues.”
“Yeah!”
Naturally, it was the first time any of the children were going parue gathering. That said, with so many kids on the loose that they were sure to get a lot of them. I was looking forward to seeing just how many they would get.
After I watched the boys run off to the workshop to prepare, I heard Tuuli let out a big sigh. “We won’t get many parues this year, since Mom can’t go.”
I was out of the equation, as always; Mom was too pregnant to climb any trees; and Dad worked enough days of the week that there was no guarantee he’d be available. Tuuli was all on her own, and she had a feeling there wouldn’t be any sweets waiting for her this winter.
“Tuuli, were you not going to accompany the orphanage children? I had anticipated giving you our family’s share of parues as thanks.”
It would be a bit much to expect Lutz to lead all the kids by himself. My plan was for Tuuli to help, with her payment being our family’s share of parues.
“That sounds great!” Tuuli exclaimed, her eyes glistening. “Whew. I was sure I’d have to last the whole winter without any parue cakes.”
It had become tradition in our home to get juice from parues, remove the oil, and bake parue cakes from the leftovers. I intended to do the same in the orphanage this year, which was why I had bought large metal pans.
“What are parues, apprentice?” Damuel looked curious, having no idea what we were talking about. It seemed that nobles didn’t go parue hunting.
The thought of a noble trying to climb a tree made me smile. Their droopy sleeves would totally get in the way.
“They are fruit that can only be picked from trees in the morning of clear winter days. Their sweetness is renowned in the lower city.”
“Sister Myne, are parues really that sweet?”
The kids who had been surrounding Wilma heard the magic word “sweet” and gathered around me, eyes shining with anticipation. There were so many mouths to feed in the orphanage that they rarely got to eat anything sweet, so the thought of sweet parues was practically making them drool.
“Oh yes, they are quite sweet indeed. I am ever so fond of them.”
“Wow, I can’t wait!”
“Take us too, Tuuli!”
The kids pressed forward, wanting to go with Lutz and Tuuli.
She smiled at all of them. “Uh huh, we can all go together. But we have to go to the forest super early, so you’ll need to wake up really early too! Can you do that?”
“We can do it!”
And so, after several days of heated anticipation, the weather finally cleared up. Dazzling sunlight rained down from the start of morning, reflecting off the snow and filling the world with a gleaming brightness that I could see even through the curtains of my bed.
I jumped out of bed before Delia could come get me, ran to the staircase and leaned over the railing to shout down to the first floor.
“Gil! Gil! It’s parue-gathering day! Go tell the kids in the orphanage! Hurry! Get ready!”
Gil, who had already woken up and gotten dressed, shouted back “Got it!” and dashed out of his room. Delia dashed out of her room too, grabbing my arm with a furious look on her face.
“Sister Myne! Please stay in bed until I come wake you up! And you shouldn’t lean over the railing in your bed clothes like that! Geez! How many times do I have to tell you all this?!”
“Delia, today is parue-gathering day. Lutz and Tuuli will be here really soon. I have to go get changed right away.”
People in the lower city would be rushing to get ready before the gates opened at second bell; Lutz and Tuuli would be here soon, no doubt about it. But telling Delia that just made her eyes narrow and her voice sharpen.
“That is not part of your schedule!”
“Clear days in the blizzard are dependent on the whims of Ewigeliebe the God of Life. Nobody can schedule for them.”
I hurriedly had Delia change my clothes so I could wait for Tuuli and Lutz. Breakfast could wait until I had seen them off. Fran, seeing how jittery I was, started preparing for visitors.
My prediction was right on the money, and Tuuli came running over when I would normally be eating breakfast. I could see Dad behind her.
“Morning, Myne! Dad’s coming with us, he has today off.”
“Dad, it’s so good to see you!”
The moment I saw Dad walk into the hall, I ran over and jumped into his arms. He caught me and lifted me up until we were face to face. I rubbed his beard with my hands.
“Looks like you’re doing good, Myne. Caught any fevers lately?”
“None at all. Fran takes me to bed right away when I start feeling sick, and whenever I actually do get stuck in bed, they make me drink a super gross potion. I don’t even have the time to get fevers.”
“That’s what I like to hear.”
Dad grinned at me, and while I told him how things had been lately, Tuuli took out a jar from her pocket.
“Myne, you mentioned that you ran out of this, right?”
Dad set me down so I could look at the jar. It was the one I had put natural yeast inside. Tuuli had looked after it while I was away from home.
I hugged the slightly warm jar close to me. “Thanks, Tuuli.”
“We just dropped by to give you that and say hi before going parue gathering. Lutz is already at the orphanage!”
“Okay. Be sure to find lots of them! I’ll be waiting with lots of fluffy bread at lunch.”
I saw the two of them off, then put a hand on my smiling cheek. Even just a little bit of time with my family warmed my heart. And now it was time to prepare for juicing parues and making parue cakes.
“Fran, could you deliver this to Ella? And inform her that I will be eating lunch with Tuuli, Lutz, and Dad. I want her to make fluffy bread for me.”
“Understood.”
Once Fran had the yeast, I turned to Rosina.
“Rosina, once we’ve finished harspiel practice, go to Wilma’s and tell her to start preparing for the parue cakes.”
“As you wish.”
I practiced harspiel until third bell, then went to help the High Priest. He told me I looked unnaturally happy to the point of being off-putting, and I responded by saying that indeed I was, before getting to work. Just thinking about spending lunch with Tuuli, Lutz, and Dad once they got back was enough to make me radiate joy.
Fourth bell rang in no time, signifying noon. Damuel saw me to my chambers, then went right back to the High Priest’s room.
“I’ll be eating lunch now. Be sure not to leave your room while I’m gone.”
“Understood, Sir Damuel.”
Damuel ate lunch in the High Priest’s room, since my chambers’ kitchen didn’t have enough food to cater for the grown man who had been so suddenly thrown into the mix.
Ella sent word that lunch was ready, and I waited for everyone while wiggling excitedly in my seat.
“We’re back, Myne! And we got lots of them!”
“Yes!”
The three of them came back with big, satisfied grins. Human wave tactics were as effective for gathering parues as I had expected, and they really had found a ton of them. We chewed on the fluffy bread made from the yeast Tuuli had brought me while talking about what our afternoon plans were.
“Myne, we’ll be juicing them later, but where should we do that? The workshop? Or the dining hall?” Lutz asked.
“We can juice them in the dining hall just fine, but I think it’d be faster to get the oil out using the presses in the workshop?”
The workshop had presses meant for getting water out of paper, and with Dad and the gray priests helping, we wouldn’t need to squash the parues with hammers before getting the oil out. But my suggestion made Lutz hesitate.
“Parues are pretty hard when they’re cold, so I get the feeling just using hammers in the warm dining hall will work out better.”
“Yeah, with that many people we might as well do it all in the dining hall, if we’ve got the hammers for it.”
At Lutz and Dad’s suggestion, we decided to do it all in the dining hall. Tuuli, more concerned about what came after juicing the parues, looked at me eagerly.
“Where are we going to bake the parue cakes? In the basement of the girls’ building? Or the workshop?”
“I was planning on using the basement. If Ella learned about them and spread the recipe through the city, everyone feeding their animals with parue leftovers would be in trouble, right?”
“Yeah, definitely.” Lutz scrunched up his face, thinking of his chickens.
Parue leftovers were perfect for feeding animals over the winter. If people started cooking with them instead of giving them away basically for free, everyone raising animals would be in big trouble. It’d be better if we just enjoyed the parue cakes by ourselves; the secret should be safe if we made them in the orphanage basement.
“Let’s divide up our shares of the parues and get them all ready in the dining hall, then.”
“Okay!” exclaimed Tuuli. “I’ll teach all the girls how to make parue cakes.”
Once we finished lunch, the three of them hurried to the orphanage to begin their work. I had to wait for Damuel to get back before I could go with them.
As usual, Delia was the only one who stayed behind in my chambers, since she didn’t want to go to the orphanage.
“Apprentice, what in the world is going on here?”
Damuel stiffened after looking around the orphanage. In one corner there were kids poking holes into fruit and pouring the white juice inside into cups, while in another several gray priests were violently crushing the juiced fruits with hammers. To someone not familiar with parues, it certainly was a bizarre sight.
“We’re getting the fruit juice out of parues, and hammering the juiced fruit over there to get the oil out. The leftovers at the end make delightful sweets and I’m sure the girls are hard at work cooking them in the basement.”
Tuuli’s lesson must have been going well, judging by the sweet, fluffy scent wafting up from the basement. They should be making buttered parue cakes, mixing the goat milk and eggs I had asked Wilma to get that morning with parue juice. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, filling my nose with a sweet scent.
Not long after I asked Rosina and Fran to prepare plates, Tuuli came walking up the stairs with a parue cake-stacked plate.
“Oh, you’re already here? Perfect. We’re already cooking lots of them.”
Behind Tuuli was another apprentice, carrying a plate likewise stacked with parue cakes. They both set their plates in front of me.
“You keep watch, Myne. Make sure nobody grabs any before they’re all done,” said Tuuli, and I nodded with a smile.
There was nobody in the orphanage who would risk taking food from an apprentice blue shrine maiden without permission. At the very least, they knew they wouldn’t get to eat any more after the first one.
“Wow, it smells so nice!”
“I wanna have one!”
A few of the kids who had been juicing the parues rushed over after smelling the parue cakes.
“No eating until all the work is done. Remember: Those who don’t work, don’t eat.”
My reminder sent the kids hurrying back to their workplaces, and amid their footsteps I heard a hard swallow come from behind me. I turned around on instinct and saw Damuel staring at the parue cakes.
“What are those, apprentice...?”
It was written on his face that he wanted to eat one. I would have thought that, as a noble, he had sugar and could eat sweets with some regularity, so I could only guess that he was just interested in trying something new.
“Parue cakes, made from parues. This must be your first time seeing them if you haven’t had parues before. Would you like to eat them with us?”
“Ahem! Well. I am a little interested in what people eat here, given that I’ll be coming here fairly often from now on.”
Once all the parues were finished, the girls and children brought the juice, oil, and leftovers to the basement while the boys took the tools they had used back to the boys’ building. Fran and Rosina split up the parue cakes and began distributing them to the kids, who were lined up with plates in hand. I asked Gil to give a parue cake to Delia, and set aside plates for the kids who had been helping Ella in my chambers’ kitchen.
Everyone was sitting in the dining hall with plates in front of them; Fran had set plates and silverware taken from my chambers in front of me and Damuel.
“Now, let us pray.”
At my words, the children all crossed their arms in front of their chests and began their pre-meal prayer.
“O mighty King and Queen of the endless skies who doth grace us with thousands upon thousands of lives to consume, O mighty Eternal Five who rule the mortal realm, I offer thanks and prayers to thee, and do partake in the meal so graciously provided.”
Dad and Tuuli listened to the smoothly said prayer with dazed looks on their faces. It was the same prayer I had memorized myself. I glanced at Damuel and saw that he too was stating the prayer without any hesitation. It seemed that nobles had to say the same prayers.
After finishing the prayer, the kids began shoving the parue cakes into their mouths like it was a race. I took a bite myself while watching on.
“Wow! So good!”
“So sweet!”
The children let out cries of joy as they tucked into the delicious treat, but Damuel instead froze beside me. He swallowed, his eyes wide open.
“Apprentice, does everyone in the lower city eat these?”
“They do not. This is a special treat, just for us. Do you like it?” I asked.
Damuel let out a slow sigh. “It’s way too good. Is it just me, or are the kids here living like nobles? They’re eating sweets like these and learning to read and write...”
“This is an orphanage; I imagine they live nothing like nobles. They gathered these parues themselves from a snowy forest early in the morning. They can only be gathered on the morning of sunny winter days, and they aren’t sold anywhere.”
Damuel continued eating his parue cake with a stunned look on his face, and from then on he always made a point to go to the orphanage on sunny winter days. It seemed that he quite liked parue cakes.
And he wasn’t the only one; everyone in the orphanage loved them.
“Sister Myne, these are delicious.”
“When will the next sunny day come?”
“There are still plenty of parue leftovers,” I replied, “so we can make more later. And the leftovers can be used for other recipes too, so please look forward to those.”
As a result of me teaching Wilma and the other orphanage cooks the parue cake recipe I had taught Lutz’s family, the battle for parues in the orphanage became more intense than ever.
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