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“Whatcha doing, mister pretty-wings?”
Chop chop chop.
“I’m making food,” Mithos replies patiently, not looking away from the chives he’s cutting up. He can feel Makina fidgeting, trying to angle herself to watch what he’s doing. “Dinner.”
“Can I help?” she asks. “I wanna learn how to make food!”
“... I thought you didn’t need to eat.” Technically, neither does Mithos, but he enjoys the routine and the benefits of a healthy meal, plus the fond memories of cooking alongside…
No, nevermind that. If he understood those two men correctly, Makina is an enforcer, and therefore not made of flesh and blood despite her appearance. Does she even have a digestive system?
“I don’t, but Forte and Assid do! You’re cooking for them, too, right? So I wanna help.”
He sets the knife down carefully and turns to Makina, feet settling down a few inches until he’s standing solidly on the floor. “If you’re going to do that, you have to promise to follow all my instructions.”
“Okay!”
“Even if you don’t like them.”
“I promise!”
“You’re really sure?” he presses, staring at her intensely. “If you don’t understand one, I’ll explain why. But you still have to do what I say, because I know what has to be done for this meal, and in what order. If you can’t do that, you have to leave.”
“I’m really, really sure, mister pretty-wings, so please!” The girl - enforcer - is bouncing in excitement, only barely restrained. Her… weapon? Pet? is almost as tense, mouth open in a silent whine. Mithos sighs. He’s still not convinced this won’t end in culinary disaster, but…
“Then you can start by helping me wash these potatoes in the sink.”
Makina immediately groans, deflating. “That’s not cooking!”
“It’s preparation, and it’s just as important. Do you know how potatoes grow?” Mithos picks up several of the taters, handing them to Makina before she can object, and picking up more for himself.
“Nuh-uh.”
“They grow underground. So, unlike an apple or a berry, they’re covered in…”
He trails off as he moves to the sink, letting Makina follow behind him and work it out for herself. After a moment, she lets out an offended little shriek. “Dirt! They’re dirty!”
“Yes, and humans don’t like eating dirt. It’s not good for them. So you have to wash it all off and make sure the potatoes are clean before you can eat them.” The sink hisses to life immediately when Mithos turns the knob, gushing hot, clear water. He takes a moment to test the temperature, adjusting it until he’s sure they won’t burn their fingers on it. “Watch what I’m doing.”
He carefully rinses off the potato, turning it over in the stream of water to hit every side and scrubbing at it with his fingers, and when he’s satisfied it’s clean he demonstrates it to Makina. “See? Make sure you check for stubborn spots with your fingers. You can’t just dunk it in water and be done with it.”
“Okaaay.”
Mithos tries not to smile at her obvious pouting. “We’ll take turns, so it’s you next while I dry this off.” He plucks the towel he laid out for this earlier off the counter, wrapping the potato up and drying it while Makina leans over the sink and rinses hers off.
“There! I’m done!”
“I can still see dirt on it. There, next to your thumb.”
It’s probably slower than if he’d just done it alone, but they do eventually get everything cleaned and dried off to Mithos’ standards. Six squeaky-clean potatoes get carried back over to the cutting board. At this point, he pauses.
“... Do you know how to use a knife?”
“Umm… Makina’s never used one. It can’t be hard, though! Right?”
He considers his reply carefully. “I’m going to go ahead and do this part alone, okay,” Mithos says. “You can still watch, but I’m not sure you’re tall enough.”
Spreading his wings, he lifts up a few inches once again to get a better angle, but he hardly picks up the knife before he feels mana shifting beside him. When Mithos turns, it’s to find that Makina has clambered onto her weapon’s back, and that her weapon has grown. Even sitting down, she’s now higher up than he is. “I can be tall enough!” she says cheerfully as Mithos stares at her in blank surprise.
“I’m… still going to do this part alone.”
Knife in hand, he begins to prick holes in the potatoes, trying his best to keep them evenly spaced despite the irregular shapes. “This is so they can vent when they’re cooking,” he explains. “Otherwise they’d - I guess they’d probably explode, and then you would have mashed potatoes. More or less.”
“More or less?”
“Well, they’d still have the skins on… I think you might be good at making mashed potatoes.”
“Nuh-uh! Makina only mashes transgressors, silly!” She giggles happily at her own joke, and Mithos reminds himself that she is, of course, not actually a girl. Still, it’s a little odd to see something with the shape of a child talking so cheerfully about what amounts to murder.
… Not that he’s in any position to criticize.
“Grab the glass bowl over there, and the brush next to it,” he instructs as he works on the next potato. “It’s melted butter.” It does look like it’s started cooling more than he prefers, but Mithos isn’t overly worried about it. It’s still liquid, and that’s what matters. “Use the brush to coat the top of the potatoes as evenly as you can, then flip it over and do the same on the other side. Then you can set them down.”
“Like painting!” Makina chirps. “I wanna try painting. One time when Eleanor took me outside we went through the…” She pauses, um-ing to herself for a moment. “Oh! The portrait gallery! I don’t remember too well, because that was an old Makina, but she was telling me about all the pictures of the old kings and stuff, and...”
She trails off into silence. Mithos continues poking holes for a solid fifteen seconds before he pauses and glances over at Makina, who has stopped moving and is staring down sadly at the potato she’s holding. Butter is dripping off of it onto her weapon, which grimaces at the drops rolling down its ‘face’.
“And what?” Mithos prompts.
“I miss Eleanor,” Makina says quietly. “Forte and Assid said she’s bad now, ‘cause she helped transgressors and betrayed Kasque. So… I guess if I saw her again, I’d have to squish her, because if she’s bad now she must have been condemned. But she was nice to Makina. She gave me snacks, even when Forte and Assid said I shouldn’t have any.”
“She sounds like a very kind person.” He doesn’t want to say the words older sister, but Mithos can’t help recognizing the shape of it, and the ache of loss. He grips the knife’s handle a little tighter. “I had someone like that before. Someone who took care of me. It was a long time ago, though.”
“You did? How long ago?”
“Take a guess.”
“Um… A year!”
Mithos smiles, strained. “A little bit longer than that.” He moves on to the next potato, stabbing it somewhat more aggressively than is strictly necessary.
“Two years?” Makina asks. She’s begun, very slowly, to butter her potato again. “Five years?”
“Both wrong.”
“Huh… How old is mister pretty-wings?”
“That’s a secret.”
“Then how am I supposed to guess?!” Makina bursts out, sulking. “That’s no fair!”
“Haha. I never said I would play fair, did I?” Mithos sets the excessively-punctured potato aside and continues on, a little calmer now. It seems his distraction ploy is working for the both of them. “What isn’t a secret is my name. Do you know it?”
“You’re mister pretty-wings.”
“I’m Mithos.”
Makina stays silent for a long moment. “Mithos,” she says, like she’s testing it. “Mithos?”
“Yes, Makina. That’s me. Friends... call each other by name.” He’s not actually so sure of that - it’s not as if he has a great deal of experience making friends. In any other situation, Mithos doubts he would have broken that word out so soon. But… for all that she’s an enforcer, Makina is also a lonely child.
He understands what that’s like.
“Friends!” Makina exclaims. “Mithos, we’re friends!” Even seated, she’s still bouncing in her excitement, dripping yet more butter on her weapon. “I’ve never had a friend before! Mithos, does this mean we’re going to go out and squish transgressors together now?”
“For the time being, let’s worry about the potatoes,” he says as soothingly as he can.
Yes, he understands what that’s like, even if he doesn’t quite understand her the rest of the time.