Chapter Text
Good morrow! Good morrow!
Tis not time to rest weary eyes.
Out there, they cry for God
And they be well by your lies.
Good morrow! Good morrow!
Worry not of your chains
If man is happy and good
Then it matters not of pain
Good morrow! Good morrow!
The youth runs amok,
They have you to thank,
Now isn’t that luck?
Good morrow! Good morrow!
Come now, step forth
Fill their ego and pride
And give till you give no more
In a quiet sector of the Sanctum of Healing, the sound of footsteps makes a rhythmic beat. The room is almost completely barren, save for the thin metal bars that stand in parallel together.
First Milk walks, leaning against the bars for support. She talks to herself, counting, “One, two, three, four…” and so on to count her steps going from one end to the other.
When she finishes, she turns around and repeats the same process again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
She’s done this for 2 straight days now. Ever since Pure Vanilla Cookie got her hooked up with these prosthetics, she’s been working herself day and night to get used to walking in them.
According to the books Skim Milk Cookie bought on a whim a few months ago, this physical process of recovery is meant to span over the course of 3 to 6 months. All the while, she must take care to not wear these prosthetics for no more than 30 minutes, lest the pressure of her thigh digging into the cool metal will result in more injuries, benching her for at least another month.
First Milk Cookie does not have time to practice for 3 months. For every day that she spends here, walking the same path over and over to learn how to walk with these brand new legs of hers, another patient lying somewhere in the Sanctum could be begging for help. Begging for someone, anyone, to save them from their misery and pain.
She does not have time to be selfish when there are lives on the line.
She recalls a memory, distant and fading, that she learned the value of taking care of herself and putting her own needs before the many. She recalls, however far away it is, that [A Loving Hug] was her own prescription, that she remembers the faint joy she felt in letting her dough relax.
Even still, she can’t in good faith take a break now. Things are different. She is different. She has changed. She cannot in good conscience take a break now, not when war lies on a distant continent, not when Skim Milk Cookie may nearly crumble himself from taking over her duties in her place, and especially not when her Creation suffered so greatly from her transgressions.
How could she slow down and take a breather, when that very action could condemn another Cookie to an inescapable fate?
She keeps walking the same path, snaking around the bars in a slow monotony. No one is around to stop her. Skim Milk and Cottage Cheese are too busy running the Sanctum in her stead. Pure Vanilla is plotting how to go home. And Shadow Milk…well, it’s only just for him to not stop her now, isn’t it?
A sharp pain suddenly radiates from her left foot to her leg. A stabbing, burning, awful kind of pain that feels as though her dough is being ripped apart layer by layer. It’s enough to make her stumble and collapse to the ground. It feels separate from the dulling pressure against the stump of her thigh, and it feels like a completely different entity to her prosthetic. It’s loud and all-consuming, directing the entirety of her attention to a pain she cannot get rid of.
She tries anyway, scraping at the leg, trying to claw off the pain as if it were tangible.
Unsurprisingly, she cannot. She sits with her legs spread out, tears cascading down her face. No sound escapes past her lips besides her frantic breaths.
She misses the feeling of her toes. A new memory calls itself to her, one where she was bigger and taller than the entirety of Earthbread. She used to wiggle her toes in the grass and feel the tickling of it all underneath her. If she was feeling adventurous, she’d run down the grassy plains and imagine that she was embarking on a journey far, far away from the cruelties of the real world, reveling in the faux sense of freedom beneath her feet.
She has no toes now. Her “feet” are simply extensions of her calves. There is nothing to wiggle. There is nothing to sense the ground underneath her to prove that she’s still alive.
Her lack of toes and feet never bothered her before this. But now, as she glides her hands over the rigid metal, that feeling in her stomach manifests itself once more. She puts a hand to her mouth and holds back the urge to throw up at the sight of her legs.
The prosthetics are hardly the ones to blame. They are immaculate for a child’s first attempt, no matter how much of a genius they claimed to be. Not even in her wildest dreams, whether in her life as a human or a Cookie, could she have even designed the blueprints for these. To have them is a blessing, a seed of hope that can pave her way back to normalcy.
And yet, she wants nothing to do with them. She wants them gone. She wants her old legs back, no matter how impossible it could’ve been to reattach them. She feels sick just from being unable to truly feel anything past her knees.
She curls into herself, the tears still dripping down on her dress. She wonders, faintly, if this is the payment for her happiness. A fair cost to her easy breathing and dreamless nights, as if God was looking down on her and deemed her ready for yet another arduous trial.
Somehow, she does not feel surprised at the thought of it. As if it has been a long-standing truth that she has always kept rooted in her heart as a definition of her being.
First Milk hears three hesitant knocks at the door.
“First Milk Cookie?” Cottage Cheese Cookie’s muffled voice speaks through, “Are you still in there? There’s…um, there’s someone who wants to meet you. She says her name is First Grain Cookie.”
The woman looks up upon hearing that name. First Grain Cookie…could it really be?
“I-” she starts, trying to keep her voice steady. She forces her breath to slow and says, “I’ll be right there, don’t worry about me.”
Cottage Cheese says nothing back except for a quiet, “...If you say so,” and leaves.
First Milk heaves herself back up on her fake legs, hissing at the phantom pain.
Slowly, she grits her teeth and makes her way to the front entrance.
The journey is agonizing, to put it bluntly. The pain in her legs makes her head feel fuzzy, and the minutes stretch on like hours.
When she finally, finally, makes it to the door, she opens it to reveal a familiar face. Though she looks much more doughy and certainly less natural humanwise, the Cookie that stands before her is undoubtedly the new form of the Witch of Grains.
The second First Milk opens the door wide enough for her to enter, First Grain immediately brings her into a tight hug.
“It really is you!” she exclaims, “I was so worried that I heard wrong…!”
“Agh-um,” First Milk squeaks, “It’s…nice to see you too…First Grain Cookie.”
First Grain pulls back, tears springing from her eyecings. “And you remember me, too! How thankful am I to not be the only one who remembers our past!”
Her excitement feels infectious, First Milk thinks, because soon she too is smiling despite the phantom pain from her legs before.
“Come in,” the nurse says, dragging her in. “Let me take you to the garden. I have plenty of tea leaves in the cabinets there.”
“Of course! There’s certainly much we have to talk about! For instance, I…”
First Grain’s voice trails off when she finally looks down and sees that First Milk’s legs no longer match the rest of her dough.
“Oh…Oh deary,” she whispers, “Just what happened to you? H-how did you…?”
First Milk feels an avalanche of words bubbling in her throat, ready to spill out at a moment’s notice. She wants to tell her, she wants to tell her so badly.
“It’s…it’s a long story,” is what she says instead. “Let’s…let’s just go to the garden now.”
With that, she keeps tugging on First Grain’s hand and keeps walking. She doesn’t know what look is on her fellow Witch’s face, she doesn’t want to turn around to look.
Thankfully, by some miracle, the ensuing conversation is remarkably calm. Their talk is only filled with memories of days long past. Though First Milk cannot recognize some of the names she speaks of, it doesn’t impede either of them from still enjoying each other’s company.
First Grain doesn’t bring up her new legs again after her initial reaction. She considers it a blessing in disguise.
What she does bring up instead, however, could be argued to be much more important.
When their idle chatter dies down, First Grain sets her teacup down and says, “Alright, alright. As much as reminiscing about our past has been simply lovely…there is something I did want to talk to you about.”
She looks up at First Milk, staring straight into her eyecings.
“Have you heard about First Egg Cookie?” she asks.
First Milk blinks. She didn’t expect for her to come up at all.
“I, yes,” she replies, “I have. Why do you ask?”
“Then I suppose I don’t have to explain anything. Your First Batch, is he alright?”
First Milk freezes. Truthfully, she hasn’t been able to check up on him in a long while. Her health was directly tied to Toughie’s incubator; she’s been afraid of the worst whilst she had been recovering. However, neither Skim Milk or Cottage Cheese Cookie gave any indication that Toughie had passed away in the midst of all the chaos. Cottage Cheese certainly wouldn’t have been able to hide it, at least.
“...He’s fine,” she answers after a brief moment of silence, “There…there was an attack against the Sanctum by one of her minions, but I haven’t seen her since then. There have been at least a few attempts by some Egg Drones, but Toughie is still under my care.”
First Grain Cookie lets out a massive sigh of relief. “Oh thank goodness…I don’t know what I would’ve done if she had succeeded in taking away your First Batch. First Egg Cookie nearly made off with mine not too long ago.”
“Oh no!” First Milk exclaims, “Are they okay?”
“Just fine,” First Grain reassures, “I managed to catch her little spy just in the nick of time with an old ex-friend of hers. And yet, I realized that I wouldn’t have enough power to drive away First Egg Cookie herself if she ever arrived at my Temple of Abundance- you know how she was with her magic. So when a certain Cookie arrived at my doorstep a few days later to ask for Yummers…I let her take him.”
The blond woman fidgets with the tea cup in her hands. “I suppose what I’m saying is…are you willing to let me take your own First Batch to where that Cookie resides? Though she may not be how we remember her, I suspect that you still revere her quite well.”
First Milk stills once more. First Grain…she wanted to take Toughie away? How could she even do that? His incubator was tied to her health, the wires of it running through the Sanctum. To rip it out would surely mean leaving him to crumble inside of his tube!
“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that,” she says, “Toughie…he has to stay here with me. This is the only place that can support his incubator.”
“I see,” First Grain responds, “Then I won’t push on it any further.”
And then she smiles. Her smile carries undertones of pain and disappointment, but also relief and kindness.
First Milk doesn’t know if she should be sick or not.
“I suppose that I’ll have to get back to the Temple of Abundance soon,” First Grain announces, standing up from her seat. “I’m afraid Chickpea Cookie might work himself into a tizzy if I leave for too long, and I should certainly check up on Buckwheat Cookie to see how she fares…”
Before she even knows it, First Milk Cookie is reaching over and grabbing at her sleeve, crying, “Please, wait!”
When First Grain does, in fact, wait, she feels a bloom of embarrassment paint red over her cheeks.
“I…there’s something I want to ask you about,” she mumbles.
“Goodness,” First Grain replies, “I was never the smart one in our little coven, but if you want to ask me something, by all means go ahead, deary.”
“Suppose that…that you knew everything that would happen to you,” she proposes, “Before you even did it, I mean. If you knew all the pain that you would inflict, all the suffering you’d feel…would you still end up doing the things you did?”
First Grain loses the smile on her face as she falls into deep contemplation.
“Is this about…how we came to meet her?” she asks.
“About…everything, really,” is what First Milk answers with.
“...Then, I suppose I would.”
“You would? Really?”
“Yes, really. I know, very well, of the pain and the suffering I went through because of my actions. It would be so easy to say that I’d rather not go through all of that if I knew better firsthand.”
First Grain’s eyecings glaze over, as if her mind is transporting itself to a place of nostalgia. “Yet all the same, I also know that if I would refuse the pain that I would come to experience, I would also refuse the ones who benefited from my actions the happiness they received because of me. I can still remember, though faint, the smiles and tears of joy others felt when I could help them with my abilities. I don’t think I’d be able to turn away from them if I was back in that place again. And though I don’t remember the ones I hurt, though it’s rather selfish of me to admit it, I think I’d still keep on with what I was planning for anyway. If I could let even only one child go home with a full belly, I think I would still go along the path I’ve chosen.”
First Milk lets go of her sleeve, mumbling an “I see,” whilst contemplating her words.
First Grain takes the chance to start walking to the exit, saying, “It truly was wonderful to meet up with you again, First Milk Cookie. If the times ever get more peaceful without First Egg Cookie’s machinations, I’d love to visit again.”
When she opens the garden’s door, however, she comes nearly face to face with Pure Vanilla Cookie, who looks like he was just in the middle of pretending he wasn’t eavesdropping. There are bags under his eyecings, and any Cookie could plainly see that something had been keeping him up at night.
“Oh my,” she hums, “And just who might you be, dear?”
“Greetings,” he bows, “My name is Pure Vanilla Cookie. I was…well, I was wondering if I could ask you…a favor of sorts.”
“A favor? For what?”
Pure Vanilla looks like he just swallowed a lemon, as if he wasn’t intending on actually asking First Grain at all.
“It’s-well, my homeland is…it’s technically in the middle of wartime,” he tries to explain, “And I…I’m far too weak to take on the one who started it all. I know this is incredibly selfish of me to ask and I’m sorry for even requesting this, but…do you know any other Cookies like yourself that I could ask for help?”
“Wartime?” First Grain gasps, “Oh deary, I’m so sorry. I never thought this world would ever experience war…”
She starts patting Pure Vanilla’s head gently, like a mother consoling her son. “Tell you what, there are two cookies that I know of that could possibly be of help to you. I can’t promise that they’ll listen, but I’m sure that they’d still be willing to help if you plead your case.”
Pure Vanilla gasps, stepping forward in excitement. “Can you tell me who they are?” he asks.
First Grain herself steps backwards to keep her distance. “My my, calm down deary! Alright then, the first one that I think could be of great assistance to you is First Choco Cookie. From what I remember of her, she used to be an incredible warrior before she joined us as a Witch. The second Cookie I recommend seeing, if she’s still alive, is First Honey Cookie. My memories of her are faint - we never talked that much - but I believe that she used to be incredibly invested in helping a certain someone in our group create the magic mainframe you little Cookies rely on today. I’m sure that there’s no one else in this land who knows spellwork like her.”
She squeezes past Pure Vanilla and waves both he and First Milk farewell.
“I really must go back to my temple now,” she says, “I heard First Green Tea Cookie’s caravan is en route to go past the temple, and I too must warn her of First Egg Cookie’s schemes. May we meet again someday.”
And then she’s gone, just like that.
Moments later, Pure Vanilla is nearly gone just like her as well. He runs to the small chambers he’s been staying in and grabs the meager possessions he’s accrued during his stay at the Sanctum. First Milk barely makes it there before he’s already vying to sprint out the door.
“Pure Vanilla!” she cried, “Where are you going?”
“To the Cookies First Grain Cookie mentioned,” he replies, still speedwalking to the front entrance. “I don’t have any time to waste anymore, I have to be there for my friends. I have to get their support…I’m just not strong enough on my own!”
They wouldn’t listen, First Milk thinks. The nurse herself didn’t even know another continent besides the one they were currently on existed until Shadow Milk Cookie had infiltrated and broken into her Sanctum. They could believe him about Crispia and Beast-Yeast, yes, but there was a nagging feeling in her heart that they still wouldn’t listen to him, even so. They had their First Batches, they wouldn’t abandon them just for a war they didn’t even know existed. He wouldn’t have enough leverage, he needed…
“Take me with you!” she blurts, “I…I can help you convince them! I may not have all of my memories, but they’ll still listen to me, I’m sure!”
At these words, Pure Vanilla stops dead in his tracks and turns around. His normally closed eyecings are blown wide open, full of concern and worry.
“First Milk Cookie, I can’t ask that of you,” he says, “You already got hurt when I took you along to Beast-Yeast, if something were to happen to you again…”
“You’ll need as much assurance as you can get,” she insists, “And I…I simply must warn them about First Egg Cookie, too. I must.”
“I…I can’t. How could I-”
“I won’t allow myself to rest easy knowing that my presence caused all of this. It’s my fault you’re here to begin with, so it has to be my responsibility to get you back with the proper backup you need to take on Dark Enchantress Cookie. Please, Pure Vanilla Cookie, I’m begging you to take me along.”
Against what could be argued to be his better judgement, Pure Vanilla nods his head and starts walking to the front entrance once more. Slower this time, so First Milk can follow not that far behind him.
They’ll have to stock up on Coins and supplies first, they won’t be able to make it far without them.
Then after that, they’ll be headed to where, at least where First Milk is concerned, there’s sure to be one of the two Cookies First Grain mentioned: the Honey Drop Colony.