As Momo watched Claire bounce from the stove to the sink to the refrigerator, she realized just how much work went into making a single meal. It amazed her that someone could take fifteen or twenty different ingredients and create something wonderfully tasty. It was like watching a magician in action. Claire was the show's star, and the utensils, pots, pans, stove, and refrigerator were her supporting assistants. If Momo was her old self, she’d say that cooking was too much for a girl like her.  

But like everything else about her, Momo had grown to bury that childish part of herself. She was taking the next step in life and discovering her true worth. Her worthiness as a friend, her worthiness as a lover, and her worthiness as a Singi of the world. Momo had all the chancing at grasping as a fulfilling life, and she wasn’t going to let a single one pass her by anymore.  

“Ah! It’s time to pour. With a pot like this, the handles aren’t insulated, so it’s going to be really hot. That’s why I have these!” Claire showed off a pair of thick gloves around her hands. They were black with small splotches of blue and red, but those might've been stains and not a part of the original design. She carefully grabbed the smoldering hot pot and carried it over. When the water hit the cold sink, sizzling steam shot into the air. Momo’s tail stiffened up, and she saw something strange.  

The white steam just started to fade away, and she knew there was a Goddess responsible for that.  

“Huh? That’s kinda odd… Watching the steam go ‘swoosh’ is the best part. Well, it doesn’t matter I guess.” Claire walked the pot back to the stove and returned to the sink to grab the colander. It was filled to the brim with thick noodles, and Claire gave it a bit of a shake. “Momo, take that knife and cut off a piece of butter the same size as your middle finger,” Claire ordered as she jerked the strainer around. There was still a bit of stubborn water clinging about. 

“Okay!” Momo did as she was asked. “Now what? Do I throw it in?” Her eyes stared down at the rectangular, crimson Firewall. Just you wait, Firewall, I’m going to use you soon. The power of burning, starting fires to stay warm, and cooking food, will be mine! Ah, I guess I need to find a place to practice it, but it has to be outside. I absolutely, positively refuse to be known as the girl who played with fire and burnt down a Warden office.  

“Not yet. That goes in after I toss the noodles back into the big pot. Can you take it from the back burner and put it on the left one? And take the sauce from the back right and bring it closer,” Claire answered and asked. She heard the shuffling of feet and knew the tasks were done. She grabbed the colander by the sides and carefully carried it to the stove. The big pot was right there, so Claire just dumped the noodles in. Next, she tossed the butter in there and started to carefully stir it. “Alright! We’re just about done. Momo, if you pour the sauce in pot and stir, I’ll go ahead and start getting the dirty dishes ready to be washed.” 

“Gotcha! Leave it to me, Claire!” Momo formed and fist and gently grabbed the sauce pan’s handle. It was heavier than she thought. To be safe, Momo used both hands and went slow and steady. Soon enough, a waterfall of tasty, delicious, succulent sauce appeared before her blue eyes, and Momo couldn’t help but compare the color to Servi’s eyes. This is for you, Servy! I only barely helped, but I did contribute. Tomorrow—okay, maybe a few days or weeks from now—I will make you a home-cooked meal all by myself.  

Momo grabbed the pasta server and got to work stirring the pot’s contents clockwise. She bounced on her toes and bummed a particular song that meant a lot to her and the girl she loved. She waded the pasta server up, down, left, and right, folded over the noodles so they were on top, and did her best to make the noodles and sauce into one conjoined organism.  

While Momo did that, she took a step back and stirred from a distance. Firewall was still activated, and the heat had started to affect the sweaty Singi. The last thing she wanted was something nasty to compromise the fantastic meal it was shaping out to be. From behind, she heard the sound of running water and the fickle scent of flowers. Well, if Momo could say one thing, it was that hand soap could be used to wash dishes as well. Or maybe it was a different type of soap that smelled the same? 

Now that Momo thought about cleaning and doing dishes, did she need to do that? Itarr was a Goddess who could absorb tiny particles. She could store away droplets of water so small they couldn’t be seen, and she could just purify an area of space by absorbing the foul-smelling molecules. Cleaning some leftover sauce would be like breathing to her.  

No, Itarr’s a Goddess. I can’t just ask her to do the dishes or clean up. Wouldn’t that be sacrilege or maybe some sort of sin? Grampy hated washing up after cooking, so I always helped him. With two people, it never did take so long. With three people, the boring part of making a delicious meal would almost be non-existent! But since I’ll be with Servy, it wouldn’t be boring at all because I’m with her. Then wouldn’t it be good for it to last as long as possible? Maybe…?  

Momo kept her arm moving clockwise for another five minutes, making sure to switch off to give it a break. Claire finished cleaning not long after that, and she walked over to Momo and rested her hand on her head. “It looks good, doesn’t it?” 

“It sure does. I’m doing all I can to not start wolfing it down right now. But wait, what about the bread?” 

Claire turned to the table and saw the last ingredient still wrapped up. “We can slab some butter on there. When I was little, I’d take some bread, put a bit of sauce on it and roll it up. It turns it into a pasta sandwich. AH! Speaking of that, I almost forgot about this.” Claire left Momo alone to stir and returned with a chunk of white cheese. She also had a metal object with holes.  

“What’s that?” Momo had a fondness for cheesy goodness, so her eyes and tail were at full attention.  

“This is cheese from water buffalo. Their milk is incredibly rich. It’s a bit rare around these parts, but it isn’t that expensive for what it is. And this is a cheese grater. You take your cheese and scrape it across the side, and it comes out right here. This is like the best thing ever.” 

“I do like cheese. How much longer do we have? I think my belly’s about to eat me.” 

“You’re almost there. I’ll tell you what. Keep mixing it up, and I’ll start to light some candles. I have a few lanterns I can pull out, so I’ll go ahead and grab those too. The sun’s starting to go down, and we have about 40 minutes of light left, but we don’t want to eat in the dark.” Claire went upstairs and did a bit of searching and gathering.  

While Claire did that, Momo collected a helping of pasta and brought it to her nose. “Servy, come over here and smell the food!”

Servi wordlessly stood up, pushed her chair in, and walked over. She leaned forward just a bit and sniffed a few times.  

“It sure does smell good, doesn’t it? I bet it’s gonna taste even better. Don’t worry, we’ll eat soon. We’ll probably start plating it up when Claire comes back.” 

Six minutes later, three people sat down at a table illuminated by candles and lanterns. Daylight was still alive, but it would soon perish. The moon was predicted to be shy, so it wouldn’t come out to play. And sure enough, the nightly celestial object stayed in its home. A cool darkness was cast over the city of Canary, making it somewhat chillier than usual, especially since it was the middle of summer.  

Momo watched as Claire grated some white cheese over her pasta, coating the delicious red sauce with cheesy goodness. The flakes acted like boats in the ocean, and when Claire started to stir everything together, the sweet nectar melted.  

Momo grabbed the cheese and started to do the same, but she went a bit happy with it. She had two slices of buttered bread with pasta on them, so she added some extra dairy to it. She then did the same for Servy, who was just waiting there with a fork in hand.  

“Alright, be sure to eat it all up, okay?” Momo said. Servi somewhat nodded her head and began to ferry food to her mouth. The noodles were just perfect, and the sauce wasn’t too runny or thick, sticking to the noodles like glue.  

Momo then turned to her own plate and rolled up one of the pieces of pasta-covered bread. The red sauce vividly clashed against the buttery surface. With care, the Singi tried her best to transport from the plate to her mouth, but the sauce was too heavy, and the bread tragically tore in half. 

Claire snickered and ate her own rolled-up pasta sandwich. The bread was delicious on its own, but the added pasta sauce and veggies took it to a different level. It was like an explosion of flavor in her mouth, and Claire just couldn’t stop eating. When the sun did completely set, Claire's illuminated face looked like something out of a horror book.  The red sauce dripping down her lips made her look like a cannibal.  

The same could be said for Servi and Momo as well. The former was a messy eater in her current state, so she had bits of red sauce and veggies covering her lips. Somehow, she even had sauce near her cheeks, and Momo had no idea how that happened. She continued to chew while tidying Servi’s face.  

Nothing of note happened during the dinner. It started off well, and it ended well. Conversation and jokes were had, and by the time Momo placed her fork on the plate, she had nothing left to eat but a few stray drops of sauce. She leaned back in the wooden chair and placed a hand to her stomach. “I feel like I’m about to burst…” She turned to look at Servi and discovered her plate was utterly devoid of anything. It looked like it was licked clean because there wasn’t even a tiny drop of sauce left. 

On the other hand, poor Claire couldn’t finish her mountainous pile of pasta, and the proof was there on her plate. She had only conquered about three-quarters of it. An Elf didn’t need that much food to survive, and Claire was never a big eater. That was why she could sustain such a slender figure without any exercise.  

“Did it beat you, Claire?” Momo asked as she drank from her cup of water.  

“I am… I haven’t felt this full in years,” Claire replied. She also had a hand to her stomach and started to get up. Even though the dishes were mostly done, there was still a pot of food to take care of.  

Momo followed and watched, leaving Servi alone with her empty plate. Her vacant eyes stared deep into the colorful surface, but whatever flowed through her mind was only known to her. During dinner, Momo and Claire tried to make conversation with her, but she never spoke. But like the Elf said, Servi must’ve been fighting hard because that adorable smile never left her face for a second.  

Claire didn’t say it out loud, but she kind of wanted a relationship with someone that mimicked what Servi and Momo had. It had been a long while since she felt the electric touch of a lover, and she had thought it was about time to get back into the dating scene. She did have someone she fancied, but she didn’t know if that person would feel the same about her. Still, this wasn’t the time to think about such things as her love life. The evening and dinner she had prepared were for Momo and Servi, not her, and the friendly Elf planned to keep it that way.  

“Momo, can you go grab two more plates from that cabinet? And there should be a folded-up roll of green parchment. Could you get that too?” Claire asked, bringing her mind back to the present. She stood over the stove. Even though the Firewall had been deactivated forty minutes ago, the burners were hot to the touch.  

“Yep! Give me one second,” said the helpful Singi. She slipped over and retrieved what was asked for. But before she did that, Momo took the dirty plates and forks to the sink and gently sat them down. When she went back to Claire, she was waiting with a pasta server full of delicious food. The metal pot she had used had sauce covering its tall walls. Cleaning it would be a hassle, but that would have to wait until the uses on her Drip Stone had reset.  

“Thanks. Okay, so that green thing is something we Elves make. If you roll it on a plate of food that you want to eat later, it encloses it. Think of it like wrapping it for later. But while you could use just regular paper or whatever, it doesn’t do what the leaf wrap does.” 

“Leaf wrap?” Momo asked. She touched the rolled-up object, but it didn’t feel like it came from nature at all.  

“Yep!” Claire said. She took a plate and slapped a helping of pasta on it. “It’s made from crushing a particular type of leaf and adding it to a bucket. You add water and a few other ingredients, then you stir until it’s all consistent. You let it dry, you pluck it out, and you run it through a flattener, which makes it really thin. And then it’s pretty much done. Just find something like a stick to roll it around, and you have leaf paper. It looks flimsy, but it’s hard to actually cut through. With your hands, I mean. Even a child could rip a piece off if they had a knife.” 

“Grampy never told me anything about this,” Momo said while walking to the table. She wished the stove had a small side-table attached to it, but it didn’t. She walked back to get the second plate, which Claire had already filled to the brim with a tower of pasta. Just looking at it was enough to make Momo have the hunger of a lion, but the poor girl couldn’t eat anymore. If she did, she was bound to explode from gluttony.  

Claire checked the pot one last time to see if it was empty. It wasn’t, but she was sure her ancestors would forgive her for wasting a few drops of sauce and four noodles.  

The conversation didn’t continue until after Claire had dropped the pot in the sink next to the three dirty plates and three sauce-stained forks and went back to the dinner table. Momo was there, messing and poking the leaf-colored paper. It was as green as a leaf, and when Momo sniffed it, it smelled like one, too. “Claire, I realize just how much I have to learn about the world. Grampy taught me the best he could, but even if he had a thousand years… I still know I’d be discovering something new every day.”  

As Claire took the leaf paper from Momo and started to cover the two plates of leftovers, she explored more about that subject. “Even for an Elf, I think the world is impossible to understand. We can live for a thousand years, but the world is much older than that. Even if you do find an Elf that old, who’s to say they can remember what happened when they were 146 years old?” 

Momo poked Servi’s hand and watched Claire. “Hearing stuff like that makes me feel less like a Singi and more like an ant. There’s just so much unknown in the world. Even if people have the power to explore the world, there are a lot of secrets out there that have yet to be found. Like, have you wondered why there aren’t any people with bunny ears?” 

“Bunny ears?” Claire questionably asked. She stood up and stored the two plates in her fridge and groaned. She’d been a bit lacking with her cleaning, and her refrigerator desperately needed a good scrubbing down. How had Claire ignored the stains when they were right in clear sight? There wasn’t anything more embarrassing to a host than having a messy kitchen. Claire could excuse the upstairs since it wasn’t the focus of the get-together, but a dirty refrigerator? She was glad Momo didn’t say anything. But what Claire didn’t know was that Momo never noticed the stains in the first place. Her brain was just overloaded by the amount of fun she was having. 

“Yeah. I have cat ears, so I’m a Singi. Grampy said Singi came from a heroic cat who fought for the world. The Gods and Goddesses blessed that brave feline and turned it into the first Singi along with their friends and family. I don’t know how true it is, but no one knows where we came from. I bet you can ask a hundred people, and most would say the Gods and Goddesses made us. A few would say something completely else that’s probably far-fetched… Er… I went off-topic, but what I’m saying is that why aren’t there any bunny people? Or dog people? Why are Singi the only race out there with animal characteristics?” 

“Uhh…?” When Claire sat back down, she was caught off guard. The red-haired Elf never took Momo as someone to think about such deep topics like existentialism. With the candlelight illuminating her face with a wispy orange glow, Momo looked like a different person. Her hair had a slightly bright tint to it. “Where did this come from?” Claire eventually said.

“I don’t really know. It just doesn’t seem right that only Humans, Singi, Koena, Dwarves, Elves, Earth Elves, and Kobolds are the only skill-using people of the world. I mean, there’s a few more like Dryads, I think, but grampy, when he talked with me, didn’t know if one was still alive.  

“A few days ago, Servy was in one of her happy moods, and she was hopping around like a bunny. That’s what got me thinking like this, but the more I think about it, it doesn’t make sense. I mean… Those are the races we know of, but there has to be more. The world’s so big and wide, and I’m sure a part of it is unexplored… But I don’t know… I guess it’s kinda out of character for me to talk like this, isn’t it?”  

“I wouldn’t say so. You’re not the only one who wants to know what lies in places that haven’t been charted or mapped. For example, take the ocean. It covers like 70% of the planet, but we don’t have a way to truly explore the bottom of it. I’m not even sure if it has a bottom. Once you get down far enough, it all turns black. And hey, there could be a race of bunny people sitting at the bottom in an underwater city. But I don’t think it’s possible to reach that far. There’s a skill that allows you to breathe underwater, but it has a time limit. Even with refreshing the duration, you’d run out of Skill Energy before too long. If not that, then you would definitely be exhausted from constantly swimming. On top of that, there’s the water pressure you have to worry about.” 

“Well, that’s true,” Momo said, dejected. She placed her palm on the back of Servi’s hand and rubbed her fingers. 

“You know, the easiest solution would be to ask a God or Goddess. But what are the chances of running into one in a place like Canary? The only time they ever came down to the world was to set up Warden, and I don’t even know how long ago that was. Even the eldest of Elves say Warden was already an organization when they were born. So what? We’re looking at ten thousand years ago? Maybe even a hundred thousand? That’s 100 times the lifespan of an Elf, and there isn’t anyone alive now who was breathing back then.” 

But there is… Itarr was sealed up for 730,000 years... Claire, there’s seriously a Goddess sitting not even a meter away from you. But she lost her memories... And she knows just as much as Servy…