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Zinnia and Lenore had been assigned kitchen duties. At first, Zin had been ecstatic; she and Lenore did not share a dorm, and between training and their duties, they hadn't been able to see much of one another since the parade. Zin had assumed that their duties would consist of something simple, such as peeling potatoes or doing the dishes.

She had been mistaken.

When she walked in, a harried-looking chef had given her a crash course on the preparation of leek soup and had her wash up and dress down in a chef's garb. Soon she was left alone with the recipe in her hands.

Cooking was one of the many skills that her mother had believed was a woman's duty to learn, and thus she had done her damnedest to ingrain the various techniques in her daughter's skull. However, Zin had absolutely refused to retain the smallest piece of information, as she abhorred anything that she considered overly feminine in nature. Thus, the terms that the overworked chef had used in his instruction had flown over her head. Did it matter what kind of cup she used? What was the difference between a teaspoon and a tablespoon? What did 'stock' mean? She was already forgetting the locations of all the ingredients that were on the recipe.

She searched desperately for Lenore. Steam was rising in the kitchen as meals were prepared, and soon chefs were shouting orders and the sound of dishes and cooking tools clattered in the sink as dishwashers scrubbed away. Zin nervously approached the giant pot on the stove that was meant to contain hot soup in an hour and thirty minutes.

"Oh, Lenore!" Zin said in relief as her friend appeared. "It's so good to see you! I guess... we should get started..." She turned nervously the the formidable pot sitting on the stove in front of them. She looked down nervously at the recipe.

"Let's see... We should gather the ingredients first... We need leeks, an onion, a carrot, celery, salt, pepper, butter, a potato, and... dry white wine? What is that? Isn't wine wet?" She turned to Lenore, at a loss, before turning back to the list. "Also... chicken broth, water, bay leaves, parsley, flour, and heavy cream... Do we even have all this stuff? Do you know what bay leaves and parsley looks like?"

She felt very much out of her depth. But the other people in the kitchen were all too busy to ask them for help... They would have to do it themselves. "Well... I mean, this is easy. If we can't find everything, we'll just put in something else, I'm sure it'll turn out all right," she said confidently. "Okay... so first... the vegetables..." She looked where the instructor had pointed, and found a pantry full of vegetables and other ingredients. She grabbed everything easily recognizable-- the vegetables, butter, salt, and pepper-- and placed them on the counter next to their stove.

"Okay so next is... the wine..." Zin started to search once more. She spotted a promising-looking bottle of red wine and pulled it off the shelf, placing it with the rest of the ingredients. She then brought the list over to Lenore so they could look over the rest of the ingredients together.

"Nice one! Next is water, which we have from the sink," Zin commented. "So... Bay leaves and parsley... I know those are, like, plant leaves, but I don't know what they look like..." She scanned the kitchen for something green and leaf-shaped. She wandered around for a while, checking in drawers, and had the luck to find labeled jars, each containing leaves. She pulled out a few bay leaves and sprigs of parsley and carried them back to the pile.

"Awesome, all that's left is heavy cream! I wonder what it means by heavy, though... Does that just mean that we need a lot...?" She shrugged to herself and searched for a white liquidy substance. She found a jug and opened the top, giving it a sniff. It certainly smelled like cream, and when she tried to pick up the jug, it felt very heavy. Satisfied, she brought it back to the rest of the ingredients.

"Now it's time to read the instructions!" she said enthusiastically. At last, they were ready to cook!

While Lenore was washing and insulting the leeks, Zin searched for a spoon to use to measure the butter that was to be melted in the pot. She wasn't sure what a tablespoon was; weren't all spoons used at the table? However, she couldn't find any spoons, measuring or otherwise, and could only locate a butter knife. She took a wild guess and chopped the stick of butter in half, and dropped half of it into the pot and lit the fire in the stove.

After Lenore added the spices, Zinnia chopped up the vegetables and added them to the pot. She checked the recipe again, and noted that she needed to chop up the potato and onion while the other vegetables softened in the pot. She located a large wooden spoon. "Will you stir this while I cut the other stuff?" she asked Lenore with a smile.

She turned to the cutting board and found that chopping was a lot more difficult than it seemed. She had to use all of her strength to get through the potato, which wobbled dangerously in her grasp. Finally, she managed to make them into cube-ish shapes. They weren't exactly bite-sized, but she dumped them into the pot anyway. Unfortunately, the onion got into her eyes, and the stinging made tears roll over her cheeks. She wiped her face and sniffed impatiently; cooking was a lot of work.

"Let's see..." Zin said, blinking the last of her tears away as she read the recipe. "We need to add the half a cup of wine, three cups of chicken stock, three cups of water, and one bay leaf. ... How much is a cup?" She glanced around the kitchen. "Is it just, like... a regular cup...? I'll try to find something."

She was able to reach a cupboard by standing on her tiptoes, and found a ceramic mug. It was the closest thing to a "cup" that she could find, so she used it to dump in the wine, water, and stock. Last of all, she dropped in the bay leaf.

The pot wasn't exactly boiling, but the pair waited for the contents to cook. After approximately fifteen minutes, Zin tossed in the parsley and waited another five minutes. It was quite boring in Zin's opinion; she didn't like cooking very much after all.

Finally, it was time to move on again. The blue-haired girl checked the recipe for instructions, and was daunted by the idea of removing the bay leaf. "Why did we put it in in the first place?" she grumbled. She picked up the large wooden spoon that Lenore had used to stir the pot and attempted to fish it out. At first she had trouble even finding it, but when she finally spotted it, it evaded her. Every time she dipped the spoon beneath it, it would float away. Even when she managed to position the spoon correctly, it got sucked away by the current she created by lifting the spoon up. Finally, she decided to leave it in but instead poked the fire until she was able to bring the pot to a simmer. She stirred the contents of the soup, starting to cheer up again.

"We're almost done, right?" she asked. "Check the recipe, what's next?"



((Whoops, I didn't check the recipe, it calls for a blender and a mixer next. oAo I guess it'll be more like leek stew. Could just be salt and pepper next?))