Pepper & Comfort

It's almost been a week since Hugo ran away and everyone was suffering from that loss. But it was not the whole group who suffered the worst; it was Amicia who hasn't been the same since that morning.

At first everyone thought that she was a bit off as the aftermath of her fall and being unconscious for three days, but more days passed and she capsuled herself more and more off.

Melie watched the whole time out of worry. Since the first day when they found Amicia, she barely left the noble woman's side then, until now.

It took the whole group every bit of strength to talk Amicia out of searching for her brother, because she needs to get every bit of rest to get better. And so Rodric and Arthur search every day for the little boy; from morning till afternoon.

But Amicia still couldn't get any bit of rest. She sat in front of the tree every day for hours, just staring at the now lonely hanging necklace while missing out almost every meal if someone wasn't there to get her or remind her.

That was what concerned Melie the most. Even though she could understand how it feels to not know where your brother is or if he's alright, she also knew that it wasn't healthy for the other young woman and that it has to stop. And so Melie slowly left her watching spot with a sigh, she couldn't watch this suffering anymore and she knew that she had to do something to help. Amicia didn't want to talk about it with anyone and so the thief knew that that wasn't the right way to go.

But she already got an idea of how to help the suffering woman.

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"I'll cook today."

Those were the words Melie entered the cooking area with and those earned her a horrified look of a very concerned Lucas, who stammered at her with wide eyes: "God no- Melie please don't cook, please."

"D'you have anything against my cooking?" The young thief pouted a bit at that reaction. She wasn't bad at cooking, actually she was very confident about her skills there, but the others weren't so fond of her flavoring.

"Uhm- no... no of course not. But- you know- Last time... We know that you really love pepper- but we kinda want to eat something too without having to... drown ourselves in water." Lucas stuttered heavily, trying his best to word it as politely as possible to not make Melie upset or, in the worst case, pissed off.

"And you three call yourselves men?" Melie wasn't upset at all. Instead she starting laughing while walking over to the big kettle, completely ignoring Lucas' request of not cooking, "Thought guys were stronger than to cry at a little bit of spice."

Lucas wanted to give a response to her, somehow he had to defend that little bit of honor, but forgot about that when he saw that Melie wasn't stopped of her idea at all:

"Uhm... are you really sure that you want to cook? Really sure? I was hoping that we could get Amicia to eat something again..."

"Don't you worry, she'll love my soup." Melie turned around to the young alchemist with a proud grin, but only got a skeptical look in return:

"I'm not so sure about that..."

"Tch, you just don't appreciate my skills enough," Melie laughed again before shaking her head, "Anyway- didn't you also want to work on something new in your alchemy thing? Should do that while I make the food."

The young alchemist knew that she only brought his new project up as a convincing argument for accepting her idea, she won't let herself get stopped after all. And so he just nodded, "Yes, it's a time consuming experiment... so it would be the best to use this chance. But please try to not kill us, alright?", before he left with a soft laugh.