Clentine kept stirring the stew with a large wooden spoon. She looked at it nervously, and then glanced over at her father, "Are you sure that this is good?"
"Of course it is. You gave it a try earlier too, didn't you?" the Demon replied, pushing all of the peels and other scraps together into a small pile, being on clean-up duty while Clentine kept on cooking. The girl still didn't seem convinced though, "Yeah, but... how do I know if it was actually good, or if I just have a bad taste?"
Eiro stopped for a mont and thought about it, "Well, I guess there's no real way to know that. But I told you, right? It's good. If you can't trust in your own ability, at least trust my tastebuds."
Clentine slowly nodded her head, "Alright, if you say so."
For a few monts, Eiro chose to leave Clentine alone in the kitchen. Of course, he could still tell everything that was going on in there, so it wasn't like he really left her on her own. If anything happened, he could still be there to take care of it imdiately. But he just wanted to quickly get rid of the food scraps, since they were cluttering the kitchen counters.
The Demon carried the scraps in a large bowl down the hallway. There was a door leading into the gardens right here, and Eiro quickly made his way there all the whilst preparing the scraps properly. He pushed his magic into them, using necromancy to make everything rot as quickly as it could, making the whole thing turn into a disgusting, sludgy mass. This would make it easy for the flowers to absorb all their nutrients. Of course, while it wasn't necessarily the best idea to always throw any rotten food into these fields, Eiro controlled the rot as well as he could to make sure that everything was in perfect condition for these flowers.
With a smile, the Demon poured the sludge into the field, using earth magic to make the ground swallow and distribute it evenly. These flowers were a particular kind that he wanted to raise at a natural speed when compared to the ones that he just used magic to grow. Whenever he did that, no matter how much he wanted to avoid it, the plants sotis lost certain qualities, or gained others that he might not want them to have. And while this was all sothing that he could predict well enough, as these changes were simply influenced by his mana, for certain matters it wasn't particularly preferable. After he realized that using his magic would not be the best outco for every single thing, he had started thinking more about these plants. For one, he wanted to know what else could influence the different qualities that could be found in plants, and was raising a number of different herbs and flowers in order to test so things.
Once he grew all of these in a dozen or so different circumstances and ti fras, then he should be able to co up with a few theories and figure out so patterns behind this. Not only would this be helpful for himself in potentially even strengthening his nature magic, but he would be able to write so botanical theses on the process. While he could just write so things up randomly and publish them, he still wanted to do things the way they should be done in situations like this.
After he was done here, Eiro stepped back into the manor and walked back toward the Kitchen, where Clentine was just standing, having stopped stirring. Eiro hadn't noticed anything wrong, though the girl was just standing there, quietly staring into the pot.
"Is everything alright?" Eiro asked, and Clentine slowly shrugged in response, "I guess so."
"...Are you sure?"
"I..." Clentine replied, trying to think of a response, before letting out a groan of frustration, "I don't know, I think so? But maybe not, I just..."
"Hey, just take it slow. You don't have to say anything if you don't know what to say," Eiro reassured Clentine, who just shook her head, "It's not that, just... I think cooking is fun."
The Demon raised his brow, "Isn't that a good thing?"
"Of course it is... the cooking is really fun, I really do want to do this again. I want to get the skill, and level it up, and maybe show off to Rudy at so point, but... the idea of having to eat what I cook just makes sick to my stomach," she replied, scratching her arm nervously, "Just trying it earlier made ... feel sick. It touched my tongue, and I started to feel hungry. Like, really, really hungry, this sort of hunger that's like when you haven't eaten in a few days, the kind that makes you want to just throw up, even though there's nothing to throw up in the first place. Do you get what I an?"
Eiro nodded.
"And I just... Dad, just why do I feel this way? Why am I like this? I want to eat, I want to enjoy this, I want to be able to just... be okay, but..." tears ford in Clentine's eyes that she slowly started to wipe away, "I don't enjoy anything at all anymore. Sammy loves singing, Felix loves art. Rudy just seems to love doing everything he can do with his hands.. and you always seem so happy when it cos to your plants... I'm scared that if I care about sothing like that, if I get careless, then everything is just going to be ssed up. That if I don't keep suffering like this, that my skill is going to just... not stop anymore."
"There's... sothing else to my skill that you don't know about..." Clentine replied, and Eiro stopped. Just completely, altogether, he stopped, "What do you an? What don't I know about your skill?"
Eiro frowned lightly, "What do you an? 'Not stop'?" he asked. At first, he thought that this was simply more of Clentine's fear that resulted in her self-destructive habits, but it seed to be more than just that. During her last sentence, her leg twitched lightly, right at her left, outer thigh. It was one of the few places on Clentine's body that had slight damage to them and so scarring. For anyone else, this would be a scar that would never go away, but Clentine's compatibility with healing was so great that it would be gone within a few years. Eiro thought that maybe this ca from so imnse wound that she 'ate' before he t her, but he felt like maybe there was more to this.
"There's... sothing else to my skill that you don't know about..." Clentine replied, and Eiro stopped. Just completely, altogether, he stopped, "What do you an? What don't I know about your skill?"
"...When I was younger, in my old village... before I was bought and picked up by that priest, I... well, they used to heal everyone. Every injury was put onto . They were basically overfeeding my skill, and it was just... happy. It was satisfied. Even though I was in pain every day, I just felt so happy, because I finally didn't feel that 'hunger' anymore," Clentine explained, "But then, winter ca around... there were less hunts, and everyone was stuck in their hos because of how much it snowed. So, there wasn't much for to do. And the hunger ca back... it was worse, so, so much worse... and because it couldn't eat anything anymore, it started to eat ..."
Eiro's eyes widened, "It ate you? As in, it physically ate you?"
The girl nodded, "Yeah... I an, I think so at least. Most of it was from my leg, I think because that's where the last wound it ate was, but the wound just ca back one day. And would just grow and grow, until I was missing so much of my leg that they thought I would die. Then the priest ca, and he was injured. And then I healed him, the skill settled down again, and you know the rest." Eiro ground his teeth, trying to hide his anger. He still didn't know why the kids were given such skills. Why a skill like this was created in the first place. The mont that he figured out a way, Eiro was going to take the skill from her, and make sure that it could never hurt Clentine ever again. But for now, that wasn't his priority.
"But what does this have to do with you being happy? You can still enjoy things, your skill won't be doing that again. It never will do that again, not if I can do sothing about it," Eiro started, and Clentine imdiately replied, barely giving him a chance to even take a breath, "Well, what if you can't do sothing about it? Life will never be 'good' all the ti. I feed the skill, it's happy for a while, but then it wants more, and more, and more. Everything else is the sa too, right? I don't want to start caring about sothing, if it's just going to make feel horrible in the end anyway."
Eiro looked at his daughter with a sad frown, "Honey, that's not how that works. Yeah, things aren't always going to go well. Yeah, you're going to get annoyed at and feel frustrated about things you care about, but that doesn't an you shouldn't care about anything. And if you're worried that your skill will go out of control if you slip up again, then that's sothing we can figure out together."
"..." Clentine looked at the large pot, which was bubbling away next to the two, "Can I... just go? Do I have to finish this up?"
The Demon looked at his daughter and slowly shook his head, "You can leave. I'll finish this up, and then I'll co to you, alright? Just go rest for now."
Clentine nodded and walked toward the door, silently leaving, as Eiro stepped in front of the pot. He had hoped that this would help Clentine, and while he still believed that there was so worth to all this, Eiro realized that this wasn't just that easy. His daughter was much more broken than he had even realized, and 'cooking' wouldn't be the glue to fix her back up. At least not on its own.
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