They shot her a withering look. “I’d rather die, thanks.”
“Well, I’d rather not. So, hurry up and bring me those ingredients. I already feel myself wasting away from hunger.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
Still, for all their bluster and exaggerated sighs, Ren did as she’d asked, retrieving a number of items from a nearby cabinet and depositing them on the counter beside her. The onlyproblem: aside from the mushrooms and chestnuts, Pansy recognized not a single one.
“What’s all this?” she asked, squinting at the assortment of strange plants Ren had brought her. Where was the cooking oil? The cider vinegar? The standard assortment of seasonings she’d come to rely on in her everyday cooking?
“Ingredients,” Ren said blandly. “For the salad.”
“These aren’t ingredients. They’re just a bunch of weird plants! See?” She seized a tightly wrapped bundle of reed-like stems and thrust it out towards them. “How am I supposed to make a vinaigrette with a bunch of leaves?”
Ren blinked. “Do you not know what oilflute is?”
“No?”
At this point, Pansy assumed Ren would offer some kind of explanation. Evidently, she was just as knowledgeable about plants as she was about mushrooms, which was to say “not very”. But Ren didn’t say a thing. Instead, they laughed. And this wasn’t just a giggle or a small chuckle. No, Ren full-onhowledwith laughter, to the point where they could no longer stand upright. Their body shook as they doubled over, hands clutching at their stomach, as if it ached from the strain.
“Stop laughing!” Pansy snapped, heat sparking in her anew. Unfortunately, her injured pride found their subsequent grin no more soothing.
Wiping the last bits of mirth from their eyes, Ren said, “I knew you halflings were an ignorant bunch, but to think that ignorance even extends to the one thing you can never seem to have enough of! The irony, it’s – dare I say it? – delicious!”
“Excuse me?” Pansy demanded, an icy jolt now accompanying the fire licking its way up the sides of her face.
Ren’s smile, however, only stretched wider. “You know, wegoblins joke that halflings must’ve uncovered the secret to time-travel magic, because you all seem to have more feast days than there are days on the calendar.”
“Now, that’s not true—”
“Isn’t it?” Ren cocked their head to the side. “Could’ve fooled me with the state of your pantries, always stuffed to the brim. Though I suppose yours is rather lacking at the moment. How dreadful it must be to have nothing but ‘weird’, ‘nasty’ goblin ingredients at your disposal.Gosh! What will the neighbors think? Better go back to Haverton, where you can have a ‘proper’ kitchen with ‘proper’ ingredients like you sojustlydeserve.”
“First of all, it’s Have-row; not Haver-ton. Secondly, never once did I call your ingredients ‘weird’ or ‘nasty’ or any variation thereof –norwas I thinking it,” Pansy quickly added when she saw Ren open their mouth in protest. “So, stop using your imagination to justify your cruelty towards me. And thirdly, I’m not leaving, so either show me how to use these ingredients properly or live with the consequences of whatever I make in the absence of proper instruction.”
If she wasn’t so furious, Pansy might have laughed at the wide-eyed look of shock Ren gave her, their lips parting uselessly, like a gasping fish out of water. Had they seriously expected her to turn and run because of a few mean words? Unfortunately for them, her time in Haverow had trained her to weather almost anything, her skin thickened beneath the brunt of a thousand tiny cuts. There, she’d already been “the other”, the odd halfling girl too impatient, tooadventurousfor her own good, and every one of her many facets had, over time, been scrutinized into a flaw.
At least, Renknewthey were being cruel; getting her to leavewas the point. But the halflings of Haverow would look upon Pansy’s departure with nothing but confusion, wondering what could have possibly pushed her to leave their “perfect” village behind – as if the decades’ worth of unvarnished criticism had been a kindness rather than a constant torment!
“Here,” Ren said at last, grabbing a bowl from one of the cabinets and extending it towards her; the closest thing, it seemed, she’d be getting to an apology.
“What am I supposed to do with that?”
“You wanted to make a vinaigrette, right? Squeeze the oilflute in your hand over the bowl.”
Pansy’s expression turned dubious. “I don’t see how a bunch of weeds are going to help with that, but okay.” She did as instructed, eyes widening when a steady trickle of cloudy, milk-white fluid escaped from in-between her clenched fingers, pooling in a shallow puddle at the bottom of the bowl.
It wasn’t anything like cooking oil in appearance, but in terms of consistency, the liquid the oilflute had produced was practically identical. Slick with a definite thickness, though not to the point where Pansy would call it viscous. Her curiosity piqued, she lifted her fingers, now glistening with an oily sheen, to her nose and gave them a sniff. A mild, savory aroma greeted her; far less pungent than what she’d expected. But what about the taste?
“Oh!” Pansy jerked away, her features fluttering like a pair of shutters, newly cast open. “It tastes almost like… olive oil! That’s incredible! The flavor’s a bit milder, perhaps, but that shouldn’t be too much of an issue. What about vinegar? I assume you have something for that too?”
Ren nodded and retrieved a jug from a narrow pantry, which proved just as sparse as the rest of the cottage.
“What’s that?” Pansy asked as Ren set the jug down on the counter with a dull thump, enough to send the clear liquid inside sloshing.
“Vinegar,” they replied, the corner of their mouth quirking up into a lopsided smirk that shouldn’t have made them look nearly so handsome, especially after the cruelty they’d just lobbed from those same lips. “Made from sugarfern, which, I’m guessing, you’ve never heard of either.”
“Well, it’s a goblin ingredient, right? So it’s no surprise I wouldn’t be familiar with it.” Pansy shrugged, her attempt at nonchalance thwarted by the visible tightness pulling along her shoulders.
“Which is exactly my point,” Ren continued, their words heavy with emphasis. “You have no idea what you’re doing. If you want to play around, go make mud pies outside like the children do. Don’t waste valuable food on this nonsense of yours.”
