Chapter 4.0: Fuga

chapter four of the 4th gate. Abe learns a little about Laura and the academy.

Fuga



It was half an hour later and Abe was sitting in mister Sparrow’s kitchen. It was hot and steamy inside due to the enormous wood stove that was currently boiling three separate pots. Laura stood behind these pots wearing a heavy white apron over her gray tunic. She as the moment was chopping a strange yellow spongy looking fungus into small cubes. When she had finished and dropped them into one of the pots they immediately began to hiss as air escaped. The cubes, which had been approximately one square inch before heading into the pot, settled at just under half that size. The gas that had escaped from them filled the air with a strange nutty fragrance that was not at all unpleasant.

“What was that one.” Abe asked from the small table inside the kitchen. It seemed to have been used very frequently as there were small stains and gouges in the wood. He was sitting in what he thought to be mister Sparrow’s chair, for it was far older than the other. Mister Sparrow’s chair’s arms were both well worn as if someone had laid their arm against it for many years. The other seemed to have been built comparatively recently. When Abe had asked Laura had told him that she had been at mister Sparrow’s learning for about two years. She had received the old storeroom as a bedroom, and had made it her own. Mister Sparrow had taught her the ways of The Screaming Cliff Dream Catchers, and she was now a master of flight engineering, steam technology, and psyche magic. Psyche magic she informed him was magic for altering the mind and how it perceives the world. He had been thoroughly impressed by all of this, and from what she told him he could not understand why she had not received her license earlier. From what she told him she had been ready for nearly a year, but mister Sparrow had insisted on keeping her here for extra training.

“It’s called Rex Rgis Diripio, but it is more commonly known as King’s mold. It grows in the caves along the cliff, and we grow it in the garden.” She said this while taking out several soft-shell crabs, and skewering them along with two different types of mushroom caps he had already asked about. They grew a lot in the garden from what she had told him, but it was entirely fungal based. He had already seen several different types of meat, including dried spider, the soft-shell crabs, bat, and what most surprised him they even had several long flat Leecher steaks. 

“You sure are full of questions.  We don’t normally cook with this many ingredients either, but we don’t normally have guests.” She shoved the last crab onto the skewer and laid them on the small grill at one end of the stove. There were four of them, one for each of them. With surprise Abe realized he wanted more than that. He was hungry, as if eating that apple earlier had been the spark reigniting his want for food. Laura had been strangely nice to him ever since they had entered the kitchen, he got the sense that she had some strange respect for him now that she had learned he was a out worlder. She had flat out refused his help when he offered it.

“You must be a out worlder.” She stated as if reading his thoughts “No adventurer would have come here knowing so little about local edibles.” She said as he began to slice off the strange organic balloon like fungi from their stems, which when ripe would fill with gas and begin to float. She momentarily scrambled as she grabbed one that tried to float up towards the ceiling. She missed it and it began to float towards Abe. Abe immediately jumped up and grabbed the bulb. He unfortunately walked into the path Laura had attempted to take in order to retrieve the bulb, and she ran into him. They both fell onto the floor. Abe twisted his body so that he caught the impact of the floor making Laura fall on top of him. Laura’s body pressed against Abe’s. Both breathed hard and neither said anything for a moment.

Reviews

[Deaths Cold Kiss]

great chapter