“Will this ladle work?” he asked, holding up the water ladle we used to drink from.
“There should be a wooden stirrer for mixing in one of the pockets on the left.”
“Oh, okay.” He went back to searching, only to cheer, “Found it.” Holding up the stirrer, he approached and held it out.
“Thank you.” After accepting the spoon, I began to pour the ingredients into the big bowl he’d already found for me. “So to begin, you need one-part water, two-parts flour. Then two big spoons of oil and a small spoon each of sugar, salt, and yeast.”
He shifted closer, watching curiously. “Yeast?”
“Yes. It’ll ferment the sugars in the flour, which releases bubbles of air inside the dough that make it grow bigger and lighter. Fluffier.”
“No shit, really?” he demanded incredulously. “Yeast is what makes your bread look so much more appetizing than the flat and hard, dry, tasteless crap I’ve been eating? Just one little spoonful of that grainy-looking muck?”
My lips tightened in the attempt to keep in a smile. “Your hardtack is unleavened, yes,” I explained. “But your bread will last longer and would be better to have on hand for extended trips. This type of bread we’re making here will perish and grow mold much faster.”
Did he not already know all this? I don’t think he did, because he seemed extremely interested to learn it, and his expression was full of shock. It was kind of entertaining to watch. I liked teaching something new to him.
“No, it wouldn’t perish,” he finally concluded. “Because I’d eat it a damn sight faster, way before it could even think of doing such a thing.”
I blurted out a laugh before I could stop myself. “Is that what bread would think?” I asked. “If it had a brain?”
A playful grin spread across his face as he shrugged. “What else would they think about aside from ways not to get eaten?”
“Like the gingerbread man?” I countered teasingly with a roll of my eyes.
His eyebrows crinkled. “Who?”
So I spent the entire time it took to mix the ingredients into dough telling him the story of the gingerbread man. That was nice too—being able to share stories and experiences I’d learned on Earth. I’d never been able to talk to anyone about any of that before. And Indigo was always eager to hear everything there was to know about the old world.
“Anyway,” I went on, returning to my bread-making instructions when I finished mixing the ingredients. “If we had the counter space, we’d knead this by folding the dough and kind of pushing it back down with the heel of our palms.”
“What does that do to it?” he asked curiously, lifting his attention from the bowl full of dough.
His blue eyes were so dark and sincere, I got caught staring at them, momentarily stunned that this man—this beautiful, lively, easygoing, quick-to-smile, and even-quicker-to-defend-me man—belonged to me.
I knew I could reach out right now and touch him, and he wouldn’t reject the contact. I could run my fingers over the dark stubble growing on his jaw, and he’d probably like it and invite me to do more. The thought of being so accepted and cherished was tempting. I nearly lifted my tingling fingers to stretch them his way but stopped myself at the last moment.
What the hell was I doing? This was stupid. It was all an illusion. Indigo didn’t know me. His mark was compelling him against his human nature to feel a responsibility and affection toward me that had nothing to do with his own mind or reasoning. If he didn’t have that magical tattoo telling him we were meant to be together, he would’ve killed me by now or captured me to turn me over to his king for a fate worse than death.
I hated his mark for forcing him to chase me down, for forcing him to protect me and talk to me and get to know me. In the natural order of things, we were supposed to be enemies. He would despise everything I was and he’d hunt me. And I would run and escape him every time.
The stupid love mark of his was messing everything up. It was making me get to know him. Now I was starting to like him. And that was dangerous. I was already loosening my guard around him. And a loosened guard was bad. It always led to death. I was going to get myself killed if I wasn’t careful.
“Quilla?” he said, making me jump and realize I’d spaced out.
Woolgathering. Another dangerous pastime that came about from a loosened guard.
Brow furrowing with concern, he reached for my arm. “What’s wrong? You went from a hopeful, sad, longing to fearful worry in the snap of the fingers.”
I scowled. There was another thing I hated about his damn mark. I hated how it showed him my emotions and coerced him to respond to them. It was just another illusion that he cared about me, though how could he really care?
“I’m fine,” I mumbled, lowering my attention to the mixed bowl of dough and remembering his question. “Kneading builds up the strength of the dough so it can capture more air pockets inside it, which helps the bread’s texture so that it ends up even lighter and fluffier in the end. But making stick bread a little denser will keep it from falling apart quite so easily when selling it at the market. So, at this point, we’d just wait for the bread to rise about double in size. Except…”
I pulled a pouch of powder from my cloak that sped the time-growth process along. The mage I bought it from sold it to women who wanted to immediately lengthen their hair. But it worked for this too.
“We don’t have the time for that, ergo, poof…” I released a few sprinkles and the dough immediately expanded in the bowl.
Indigo leaned closer to watch. “Cool,” he murmured.
Still drawn to his fascination, I bit my lip to hold in a smile, and I shook my head again. Gathering the dough from the bowl, I explained, “Now we divide this into about eight parts.”
When I pinched it into two equal balls, Indigo held out a hand, offering, “I’ll take half.”
There was no reason to deny him, so I handed over one of the halves, and we each turned them into four more each before stretching them into sausage-shaped strips.
Picking up one of the cooking sticks I had fashioned from a maple tree, I handed it to him before getting my own, and we each spent a minute holding our sticks over the fire to sterilize them. Then I showed him how to pinch one end of the sausage dough to the sharpened tip of his spit and coil it down and around the stick.
“Find some hot embers,” I told him. “They’re the best to cook over.”
He followed my advice without question and rotated his bread every time I did mine so it would cook evenly.
“How long do they take to cook?”
“Whenever it’s a nice golden brown,” I answered. “Maybe about ten minutes or so.”
And so we waited until our bread was finished. As I slid my loaf from the pike that I’d cooked it on and set it aside, Indigo tore a chunk of his straight from his stick and popped it into his mouth.
My eyes widened. “Careful! That might be—”
“Hot!” He hissed, his eyes immediately watering and cheeks bulging. “Damn, that’s hot.”
I burst out laughing as he tried to deal with the temperature without spitting the bread out.
“Here.” Having mercy, I handed him a ladle full of water, which he gratefully accepted.