Chapter 64: We Totally Survived

“Don’t worry so much, Arthur,” Mizu said. He had been doing his best to not look concerned, and thought he had been doing a pretty good job until she broke the illusion.

“I’m trying not to. But if they don’t make it through, or if something else goes wrong… it just feels like all of this is my fault.”

“No.” Mizu shook her head. “It’s weather. Not your fault. But if you really feel bad, you could probably reassure her.”

She nodded in the direction of Lily, who was badly losing a game of modified-rules hide and seek with Corbin, who would materialize behind her, tag her, and then disappear again, leaving her shrieking and laughing like a loon.

“She looks pretty reassured.”

“She’s hiding how she feels. Like you.” Mizu shoved him in her direction a bit. “Trust me. I’m a bit of an expert.”

Arthur waited until a break in the stealth-game to approach Lily.

“So how are you holding up? It’s a bit scary just waiting up here.”

“I’m fine.” Arthur saw what Mizu meant. Lily was abrupt, like she was trying to convince herself and move on as quickly as possible. “Really. It’s okay.”

“Well, I’m not. I’m stressed, and I need company. I think I have just enough stuff to make one more s’mores if you need a bribe.”

Whether she needed the bribe or not, she was to the fire in record time. Arthur and Mizu sat down as he confirmed he did, in fact, have two crackers, one marshmallow, and just enough chocolate left for a single s’more.

“So how far do you think they are, Mizu?”

“They should be out of the cave by now, or else they would have come back. And after that, it wouldn’t take Ern long to make the trip back to the city. He might be there now.”

“Where was he going to head?”

“Straight to Pico.”

“Oh, he’ll handle it,” Lily said. “The first time I met the mayor, he didn’t seem so… anything. But he can handle anything.”

“Why’s that?” Arthur slid the roasted marshmallow onto the cracker with the chocolate and handed it over to Lily. “A class thing?”

Lily stopped the s’more halfway to her mouth while she considered the answer to that question. “You know, I don’t even know what his class is. I don’t think it’s that. I think it’s that he knows who to send.”

“Hmm. Yeah. I guess that’s a pretty important skill for a mayor.”

Lily raised the snack to her mouth and stopped just an inch away from biting it. “It feels mean to eat it alone.”

“Well, you can’t really cut those up. The crackers fall apart.”

“We could each take a bite.”

“Same problem. It’s gonna get everywhere.” Arthur shivered a little. “You know, I’ve never really thought about it before, but I think I have low confidence in my ability to take clean bites of things.”

“That’s an oddly specific fear, Arthur.” Mizu gave him a friendly sort of laughing side eye.

“It is. And I absolutely have to see this now. Mizu, you go last, okay?” Lily asked.

“Fine.”

Lily lifted the s’more up, taking a more-or-less clean bite of it, then handing it off to Arthur, who tried to do the same thing. But he was jinxed now, and even if his fear was unfounded before, it was coming true in real-time. The cracker more or less exploded on him, dividing into several sections as the marshmallow absolutely refused to cut under the pressure from his teeth. He eventually gripped down hard on the whole assembly and tore the stretchy bit off, but that only abused the poor crackers more.

By the time he dumped the remainder in Mizu’s hand, it looked like it had been stepped on. She looked down at her palm and, for the first time since he had met her, got the giggles. She couldn’t stop them, either. After several seconds, she lifted her chocolate-streaked hand up, more or less poured the remainder of the treat into her mouth, and then desperately tried to stop chortle-launching crumbs towards Arthur and Lily.

Lily didn’t even try for delicacy. As soon as Arthur’s teeth nuked the structural integrity of the cracker, she lost one hundred percent of her self-control, laughing so hard she ended up rolling around in the snow.

“It’s…. Heee. It’s so cold, but I can’t get up. Arthur. You can’t… do that anymore. I don’t even know if I can eat at the same table with you now. Heee…”

And this, in the end, was exactly what Arthur had been hoping to get out of the smores. Were the crackers perfect? No. Was the marshmallow round or exactly right? Double no. But everyone around the fire was absurdly happy about it. For him, that was where the winning part of cooking lived. It wasn’t about him getting props. It was about how people felt when eating his food, quality be damned.

And somewhere inside him, that was finally enough to unlock something.

Comfort Baking

A pinch of this, a dash of that, and an eyeballed scoop of whatever. For the comfort baker, that’s how things go. It’s less about recipes, and more about improvising warmth. For you, perfection takes a back seat to making the right general thing at the right general timing to make people smile.

Comfort Baking is a skill that makes you bake better, but in a much less direct way than a baking-class primary skill would. Instead of amplifying the results of an exact process, Comfort Baking instead relaxes the requirements of ingredient proportions, temperature selection and bake-time to give you the freedom to think less and bake more in a flexible, customer-accommodating sort of way.

Comfort Baking ignores all class skills except Empathic Host, and scales with your wisdom stat.

“Arthur, are you all right?” Mizu asked.

“He’s fine, Mizu. He goes glassy like that when he gets a skill,” Lily replied.

“Do you think…” Mizu was once again caught in a giggling fit. “Do you think he got a skill to help him with his chewing?”

Arthur laughed a little himself, then wait for as both Mizu and Lily got their guffaws under control.

“It’s odd. Every other skill talks about what it does to the end product. Like how it makes things better than they should be,” Arthur said. “This is different. But I’m not sure I understand why.”

“Could you read me the exact wording, Arthur?” Mizu asked.

He did. Mizu nodded as he reached the end of the description, like she had expected most of it.

“It sounds like it’s a permissive skill. Those are a bit less common, but they aren’t bad.”

“Oh, yeah, like Rapid Repairman. They talked about that in school.”

“I’m still not following. Remember, I don’t know what any of these skills are.”

“Hmm. Well, actually, Lily’s example is very good. Imagine the roof of your house is very conventional. No enchantments and made with normal materials, that sort of thing. One day, part of it caved in. Who would you rather have come fix it? A roofer who takes a week to make an enchanted dragon-bone roof that will last centuries, or the person who can turn it back into a normal, serviceable roof in an hour or so?”

“Ah, I see, the second most of the time. Although it’s hard to imagine someone wanting that when it comes to food.”

“Arthur, that's where you haven’t been listening. You kept saying nobody would want level zero food, but you don’t get it. You liked the s’mores you made, right? Everyone else liked them too. And you didn’t even have a class then.”

“I guess.”

“Don’t guess. People eat food made by those who don’t have a class for cooking all the time. Almost every food stand is like that with drinks. It works both ways.”

“She’s right. Especially for your shop, Arthur. When you’re eating good food, the drinks matter less. And vice versa. Unless you’re going to bring in a dedicated baker, most people don’t expect your pastries to be world-class.” Mizu brushed some hair out of her face, tucking it back inside the hood of her jacket. “Plus, this skill will help you make better food. Just not in the way you expect. I’m not sure how to explain it well. They have whole classes on this kind of thing at school.”

“It’s okay. I can always ask Ella or Eito. I’m not going to be doing much cooking up here, anyway.” Arthur walked over as close to the edge of the cliff as he was comfortable getting on slippery ground. “So if they got through the cave already, how long do you think?”

“I can’t say for sure. Maybe a few minutes, or a few hours. It depends on who they send to clear things up. Higher level people are quicker.”

It turned out to take only another half hour. By the time the first visible signs of approaching help materialized, most of the others had gathered around the edge of the cliff as well, bored and searching in the distance for anything of interest.

“Corbin, is something happening with the trees down there?”

“Huh. Yes. Although it’s too far off to see.” Corbin squinted. “But it’s getting closer. It looks like some of them are falling down? Or getting bent down. It’s weird. There’s no wind or anything.”

Arthur got a weird premonition in the pit of his stomach as he sighted the motion the others were talking about. “It’s just in that once place, right? Not all over?”

“Yeah.” Corbin pointed. “Like a line of weird motion coming towards us, just in that one area but getting closer.”

“Got it. Lily, Mizu, let’s… step back.” Arthur put a hand on both of them, guiding them away from the edge at his briskest non-walking pace. “No, farther than that. Even farther. Okay, that should do it.”

“Arthur, what is this?” Mizu had followed along, looking confused the whole time. “We weren’t going to fall.”

“I don’t think falling is the issue. If I’m right, then… Yup, there he is.”

From somewhere far below them, a wild yell sounded, followed by a boom that left the whole forest shaking. Karbo appeared over the edge of the cliff like an avenging red angle, overshooting it by a good twenty feet straight up, arcing over the assembled group, and landing only slightly behind them with a loud crash. The snow on the ground dealt with this sudden infusion of force by deciding to splatter in all directions.

Arthur hadn’t walked quite as far as he would have needed to stay out of the snow-cloud entirely, and all three of his little group still caught a chill, wet wind out at the edges of the disturbance. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was nothing like what happened to the rest of the group. Those unlucky people were all caught in their own localized aerosol avalanche, and once the cloud cleared, Arthur could see they were almost completely soaked with snow.

“No warning, Arthur?” Milo yelled. “You saved Mizu. Why not me?”

“I thought it would be funny.”

“That’s fair! I forgive you. Karbo, did you think that through at all?”

“Not even a little.” He glanced around the area, paying special attention to the ramp they had used to get up. “Looks like Ern was right about not trying to get down yourselves. That’s nasty.”

“He got through okay?”

“He’s filthy from the cave, but otherwise fine. Chuck too.”

“Good.” Arthur let the tension he had been carrying around mostly dissipate. Everyone would be fine now. “How long do you think it will take to clear the path down?”

“What do you mean?” Karbo asked. “I’m not a snowplow.”

Arthur almost asked what he meant before his self-preservation instincts kicked in as Karbo started to reach for him.

“Karbo, wait a second…” It was too late. Karbo had already hooked his and Lily’s waists and jumped again. Arthur’s heart climbed up to his forehead as he fell with Karbo down the entire height of the cliff, who slowed the fall by kicking off the wall at the last moment. Arthur was certain beyond a reasonable doubt that the g-force of the fall should have killed both of them if it wasn’t for Karbo’s protective aura wrapping around both of them.

“Okay, next trip. Wait here, you two.”

Without waiting for a response, Karbo kicked off the ground again, effortlessly flying up the cliff face once more. Arthur didn’t complain. He couldn’t. His body hadn’t caught up to the fact that they were safe again yet. All he could do was lay there and try to convince it to breathe. Lily had fared a little better.

“That was amazing. Absolutely great. Do you think he will take me up and down again if I ask him? I probably shouldn’t, I guess. Still, so good. Right?” She looked down at Arthur, who was still gasping in air on the soil as the next set of screams sounded from the cliff-top. “Oh, stop being a baby. We totally survived.”