Chapter 5: Grandmother Mia...Engages in Embellishment!

After her planning session with Citrina concluded, Mia took a bath and returned to her room. Lounging there in soft sleep attire, she enjoyed a period of peaceful idleness. A glance at Bel revealed her to be sitting on her bed, grinning in pure pleasure as she rubbed her face against the sleeve cuffs of her fluffy pajamas. The young girl was especially fond of this particular nightwear. Every time she changed into it, she’d bury her face in its fabric and breathe in its scent. As Mia watched, her mind drifted into nostalgia.

That reminds me... I used to get worked up like that too.

A fluffy blanket and a pair of pajamas made with the soft, fuzzy wool of fullmoon sheep had been enough to keep her grinning for hours relishing their wonderful texture.

So easily moved... Such innocent exuberance... Ah, youth is such a gift...

The sight of her granddaughter brought a tender smile to Grandmother Mia’s lips.

“Wait, hold on! I’m no grandma! I’m still young myself!”

Mia twacked the rearing head of her inner grandmother and stomped her back down, verbally reassuring herself of her youthfulness in the process. The outburst elicited a puzzled glance from Bel.

“Huh? Miss Mia? What did you just say?”

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it. Also, I’d been wondering what you were spending so much time on by yourself lately. It was that thing you gave Rina, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, yes it was. I made friends with Malong, and he taught me how to make it. Heh heh. Rina is the first friend I ever made, so I’m glad I got to give her a gift,” Bel said with a bright smile.

“Mmm. That’s nice to hear.”

Pleased to see that her granddaughter was developing healthy friendships, a tender smile spread across Mia’s lips. It had a distinctly senior aura to it. Her inner grandmother proved particularly hardy today, having clawed her way back up and reared her boot-printed head again.

“I must admit, I didn’t know you were—” Remembering how the troya had looked, Mia snuck a glance at Bel’s hands to find her index fingers wrapped in bandages. Victims of the girl’s attempt at sewing, presumably. She decided to pretend she hadn’t seen anything. “Uh, so good with your hands. Maybe you’re an artisan in the making.”

Alas, her inner grandmother had taken the upper hand. Faced with Bel’s earnest delight at having handmade a present for her friend, Mia could hardly speak the awkward truth of its dubious quality. Instead, she went with a small white lie.

“Heh heh, right? I know I don’t look it, but I’m actually pretty talented.” Bel proudly puffed up her chest. Then, her eyes narrowed a little with nostalgia. “It’s all thanks to Mother Elise. She was a really good teacher. Oh, but it was tough because at first, she didn’t want to teach me housekeeping. She said I shouldn’t be doing stuff like that because I’m a princess. So I told her that the girls in town all know those things, and it would look weird if I didn’t, and that convinced her.”

“Bel...”

The anecdote was brief but poignant, evoking the cruel reality of Bel’s earlier life—one in which she was used to thinking on her feet and crafting persuasive arguments to achieve even a simple goal.

“Heh heh, Mr. Ludwig told me to say that to Mother Elise, and it worked.”

“...Bel.”

Mia’s expression grew appreciative as she listened to Bel’s method of persuasion and she thought about how the young girl’s difficult early life must have forced her to always think on her feet.

Mia’s expression promptly grew less appreciative as she smelled a whiff of her own tendencies in Bel’s behavior. Suddenly, the story felt less poignant.

“Once I convinced her,” continued Bel, “she taught me all sorts of things. After the situation in the empire got really bad, she started focusing a lot on cooking and sewing. She told me it was so I could survive on my own...”

“I see...”

Poignancy restored. Mia imagined the harsh environment Bel had to endure. She was manually dexterous (...was she?) because she’d needed to be. If she was good at sewing (a big if), then that would also be a consequence of her circumstances requiring it. Between Mia’s year spent in a dungeon and Bel’s life in hiding and on the run, it was hard to tell who’d had it worse. What she could say for sure, however, was that Bel had suffered a good deal of hardship.

Just as the beginnings of tears were welling up in Mia’s eyes, Bel placed her hands on her hips and declared, “I can do housework too. All of it. In fact, in terms of marriageability, I think I’ve got you beat, Miss Mia. I mean, you’ve never cooked, have you?”

“M-Marri— What?”

Mia winced. For some reason, Bel’s statement felt like a hammer to the gut. Deeper, even. It hurt her soul. The word “marriageability” did not ring a bell for her. Being a princess, she had never concerned herself with the competencies the term entailed. She didn’t need to know how to cook or sew. That’s what servants were for. She could be clueless about all forms of housework, and it would be perfectly fine. There was no shame in it. No shame at all, but...

Hnnngh... Marriageability...

Her aching soul begged to differ. Being told she was of inferior marriageability came uncomfortably close to a repudiation of her very identity as a young, healthy member of the female population. It made her feel like she was past her prime, as if her inner grandmother wasn’t actually all that inner.

Th-This is a problem! What if Abel loses interest in me? Augh, I’ve been too focused on figuring out how to survive this winter lately. When was the last time I reminded him what a charming young lady I am?

Driven by desperation, Mia resolved to demonstrate that she did, in fact, possess a great deal of marriageability. More than Bel, at least. This was a contest she couldn’t afford to lose.

“W-Well, actually, I can be pretty marriable when I want to be. I made some sandwiches a while back, you know?” she said in a desperate attempt to mount a counterargument.

“You did? Really?” Bel asked in genuine surprise.

“I certainly did! It was a piece of cake!” Mia declared with confidence. But she didn’t stop there. She proceeded to embellish the story, adding frosting to her figurative cake. “And it wasn’t just any old sandwich. It was horse-shaped!”

“H-Horse-shaped?!”

Pleased by the response to the first dollop, she proceeded to add more.

“Let me tell you, that sandwich was art. Innovation at its finest. It looked so majestic, you’d think it was about to gallop off at any moment.”

Then, emboldened by Bel’s widening eyes, Mia was overcome by a sentiment known colloquially as Ah, what the hell and proceeded to dump the whole bowl of frosting on.

“The taste too. It was just...mwah! On par with the best of imperial cuisine. The fragrant juiciness of roasted meat...the crunchy texture of vegetables...and the soft bread enveloping them all... That was the kind of food that changes lives.”

“Wow! Wow! That’s so amazing, Miss Mia!” Bel bounced with earnest, unsuspecting wonder. “I wish I could have tried one. It sounds so good...”

“Oho ho, they sure were.”

Mia savored the admiration in Bel’s eyes for a moment before a thought came to her.

“Huh... In that case, I should get Abel to... Mmm, I think I just had a very good idea!”

She smiled with glowing enthusiasm, entirely heedless of the fact that her “very good idea” was going to be an unqualified nightmare for a certain workhorse of a man who’d kept his yeasty brethren from turning a picnic into a massacre.