Chapter Text
There was once a small cookie who was newly created by the witches. Him, along with four others were created with the freshest and purest of ingredients. The witches told the four that they would guide the cookies of earthbread, that they would each embody a virtue to protect others.
They were all separated across the continent to do just that. Though as they were all quite young, it would take years before they could fully grow into their own.
A small Blueberry Yogurt Cookie scurried quickly through the light blue coloured halls of the Academy. It was a small school that had been created only a few years ago, around the same time that some wandering cookies found him and brought him back to the small town he now resided in.
Because he was super important (or at least that’s what the witch ladies and his teacher guardians said) and because he is the virtue of knowledge, he has to learn a lot! Which Blueberry Yogurt doesn’t really mind, learning new stuff is fun! And everyday he gets to learn something new!
He clutches the three books in his arms close to his chest, weaving past others and trying to stay upright.
“Blueberry Yogurt! Are you sure you don’t need help?” One of his teachers calls from their class. He shakes his head adamantly, “No thanks!”
Halfway through the week he gets a longer break on school days to read more, and he gets to sit wherever he wants. So he runs out the back doors of the schoolhouse and down into the empty field.
Normally no one would let Blueberry Yogurt come all the way out here without someone watching over him, but reading days were always an exception (plus, the field was fenced off so no unwanted predators could come in).
Blueberry Yogurt set down his pile of books and sat against a great evergreen tree. Opening the first page to eagerly read through the older stories depicting accounts of cookies that had fought brave battles. Although his teacher, Ambrosia Apple Cookie, had told him that those times were dark before the witches had stepped in, Blueberry Yogurt couldn’t help but get sucked into all the fanciful stories.
‘Baa’
He slowly looks up from his book to see a young cream sheep right in front of him. Slowly he tilted his head to the side, the sheep did the same. As far as Blueberry Yogurt knew, the farm should be on the other side of the town..? He tilts his head to the other side and the sheep walks forward and sits on his lap, and his book.
The small cookie frowns and attempts to pull out the book from under the sheep, but it doesn’t budge. Though, there is one thing he notices, “It’s so soft…” Blueberry Yogurt can’t help but face plant his face into the fluffiness of the sheep. It was so fluffy! Blueberry Yogurt’s teachers didn’t often let him visit the farm, they were always worried he’d get hurt or wander off somewhere or get taken.
“Chantilly! Chantilly, where are you!”
Blueberry Yogurt looks up into the field, the voice doesn’t sound familiar. But just where the hill rises he can see a few other cream sheep’s run up and into his view. Then, a cookie with cream blonde hair.
Was there someone new in town? Maybe they’re from the other village? The small shepherd looks around with a concerned face.
Blueberry Yogurt gently pushes the cream sheep to the side of his lap, causing it to huff at the lack of warmth but settle into the grass instead.
“Hello!” He calls out, the other boy turns in his direction so Blueberry Yogurt calls out again, “I have your cream sheep! It sat on me!” Then he rethinks his words, “Well- it’s not sitting on me anymore but it was sitting on me!” He clarifies.
The other cookie walks towards him, and for some reason, just for a moment, Blueberry Yogurt feels really nervous. But just as the feeling appears it simmers into excitement. There’s a new cookie in town! Who… somehow got lost in the field with all of their cream sheep.
“Is this sheep yours?” He asks, pointing at the now sleeping cream sheep.
“It is! Thank you for finding her.”
“I didn’t really find her, she just kinda sat on me…” Blueberry Yogurt says back, his tone slowly getting a bit sheepish.
“Chantilly doesn’t usually sleep on people, she must’ve thought you were really nice,” Pure Vanilla smiles brightly, and it looks as if he were an incarnation of the sun. Then Pure Vanilla looks at the sleeping sheep and decides to let her rest for a while, “oh, I’m Pure Vanilla Cookie.”
“I’m Blueberry Yogurt, are you new?”
Pure Vanilla looked a bit confused, “New to… the field?”
“To the town silly! I haven’t seen you around town before.” At that there was a slowly setting in worry settling over the bright cookie’s features.
“We’re in a town? I thought the town was supposed to be further…” His voice trails off, suddenly becoming unsure.
“Are you lost then?”
“I… think so. There was a weird tree and Chantilly got scared and ran…”
He could go get the teachers… they’d probably help. But… It's his reading time, and Blueberry Yogurt wants to learn more about this cookie himself. Plus, he could always go get them later.
“Well, I-I’m not really doing much, you could rest here while your sheep sleep”
“Hmm… okay,” The yellow haired cookie sat near one of the small sheep. There were so many questions Blueberry Yogurt wanted to ask but he wasn’t sure where to start.
There’s a short silence where they both look out at the field, the cream sheep settling down to nap around them. Blueberry Yogurt cookies at Pure Vanilla, really looks at him, “Your eyes look like mine,” He says slowly, then realizes, “We have the same eye colour!”
“Really? You have blue and yellow too?”
He nods eagerly, “Mhm! It’s the same side too! Yellow and Blue!” Maybe it was fate. Blueberry Yogurt Cookie hasn't met anyone else with dual coloured eyes like himself before. He wondered if maybe one of their ancestors maybe shared the same ingredients, “Where are you from anyway?”
Pure Vanilla’s other place (wherever Pure Vanilla had come from) was bigger. Pure Vanilla said that there were some old kingdoms and large cities. None that were near Pure Vanilla’s village but ones that were well known. Yet… There were a few things about the other place that were strange. But none of the books Blueberry Yogurt Cookie could remember detailed any or the same histories Pure Vanilla remembers from any of his own stories.
The golden haired cookie told him about a city of Wizards to which Blueberry Yogurt showed a book detailing the city. Though his book said that the wizards were still there…
“Magic is really fun! But only one teacher really knows how to do it at my school.”
“You’ve already learned magic?”
Blueberry Yogurt nods, “Mhm! They said that it’s important that I know every facet of knowledge before I become a guide to all,” He smiled with a bit of pride, then remembered one of the books he brought, “This one is one of the books I’m reading right now, if your really interested in magic then you can have it! I finished reading it anyway.” Despite the fact that he hadn’t, in fact, finished reading it all, the light of knowledge figured giving knowledge was a part of his job too.
“I can’t really… um… read it.”
The blue cookie blinked once, “You can’t?”
“I can’t really see well…”
“Oh- I- no it’s fine! Just wait here a moment.” He stood up and proceeded to run over to the school. The distance wasn’t all that long, but for Blueberry Yogurt’s short legs, it seemed like a long path. Opening up the back doors and going over to the library, they had a few books in braille. Well, not many because it was invented only a few years ago, but there was the first edition of magic that he could give. He quickly grabbed it and ran out the back once more, he was out of breath by the time he got back.
Pure Vanilla got up and patted him on the back, “You didn’t have to run all the way- are you okay?”
“Haah- yeah, I’m fine- here,” He held out the first edition book, “This was the only one that we had, sorry.”
Pure Vanilla carefully took the book and then smiled brightly once more, “Thank you Blueberry Yogurt.”
The cookie felt his cheeks get a bit hotter, but he brushed it off as the heat from the sun, instead he sat down again, “Why don’t you bring back that book when you go back?”
“But I’m not sure how I’m going to get back…”
He thought about it for a moment, “Maybe we could try to find that tree you were talking about. If we retrace your steps then we could get back to it.”
“Alright, you really think we can find it?”
Blueberry Yogurt nods, “Mhm, you just have to tell me what path you used to get here.”
Pure Vanilla stood up and held out his hand to the other, who took it in stride.
Their venture around the forest was the most fun Blueberry Yogurt Cookie had had in months! He kept a close eye on all of the cream sheep to make sure they didn’t run off, and he got to pet them as much as he wanted while they walked.
Soon enough they had found a strange tree, the same one Pure Vanilla had seemed to be talking about.
It was another evergreen tree, but it wasn’t exactly green at all. Rather a shade of dark blue with a large gash at the bottom. The tree felt a bit familiar, “Woah…” He says with a wispy voice of awe.
“This is how I got here,” Pure Vanilla looks at the cream sheep and then back to him, “The others will probably get worried if I’m gone for too long…”
“Are you sure you have to go..? Can’t you stay a little while longer?” Blueberry asked, though it came out a bit more like a whine. He couldn’t leave now, they had been having so much fun!
Pure Vanilla hesitates, “The cream sheep are really tired… we can play more tomorrow!” The cookie says hopefully, “I’ll meet you here at the same time tomorrow okay?”
Although Blueberry Yogurt really didn’t want to wait for tomorrow, the cream sheep did look really sleepy. He would have to go have dinner anyway… “Okay, promise?”
“Promise.”
The next day the tree was no longer blue, the bark was back to the plain colour of dark brown. There was no Pure Vanilla that day, nor the next, or the day after that.
And yet, the small cookie had the strangest feeling that he would see Pure Vanilla again no matter what.
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The Virtue of Knowledge rarely visits the old great evergreen tree anymore.
After he’s deemed ‘old enough’, Blueberry Yogurt is pushed into an intense study schedule. As the Virtue of Knowledge, he technically has all the time in the world to learn everything about the world. But the people want answers now. Why it snows, why rainbows happen, why crops die, why disease occurs. Why the witches don’t answer their prayers no matter how much they plead for their life to be spared on the battlefield.
Everyone wants to know something, and Blueberry Yogurt Cookie is supposed to have the answers.
And he does! Most of the time at least. But usually questions lead to more questions which usually lead to him having to explain a concept or idea, which leaves little to no time for playing.
But that’s fine, his teachers told him that playing is only for normal cookies. And Blueberry Yogurt is not a normal cookie.
And although as decades pass and Blueberry Yogurt Cookie learns to not get too close to the cookies with such short life spans, (learns to mourn for a few minutes at a time because the next thing you know a century has passed and you have a hundred thousand new cookies to mourn.
Is it easier for Red Spice Cookie to deal with the constant change in faces from decade to decade? Surely for the Virtue of Change it must be easier.)
Blueberry Yogurt can’t forget the cookie with the herd of cream sheeps. Perhaps he’s delusional. It feels that way.
Sometimes when Blueberry Yogurt gets briefly tired of the constant questions and study, he imagines meeting that cookie again. Even with all the knowledge in the world Blueberry Yogurt Cookie isn’t able to find neither hide nor hair of Pure Vanilla Cookie. Even as the means of communication became easier and travelers came back with tales of other continents, never was there word of a cookie with blue and yellow eyes.
Sometimes he believed it to be some kind of hallucination his mostly stagnant childhood provided him with to fend off the boredom of being stuck learning such trivial facts. But Blueberry Yogurt knew better, his soul jam resonated with that cookie when it rarely did so for anything else but himself.
For a cookie he met as a child for one day, that disappeared through a blue tree and never returned.
Blueberry Yogurt Cookie was baked to know all, and yet no knowledge could lead him to the one cookie he wanted to know all about.
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Pure Vanilla recognized the paintings on the wall. Each Headmaster was held in high esteem, the academy’s history spanned almost three millennia.
At the fall end of the hall you could find the first, a large portrait with a golden plaque embedded in the purple frame.
[ Blueberry Yogurt Cookie ]
Distant memories of a broken promise, a forgotten book and cream sheep plagued his mind. And in that one short moment, looking at the face of a cookie who he shouldn’t remember at all, Pure Vanilla felt as though the truth was just out of reach.
It was all so long ago, and yet he quite couldn’t forget that cookie with the same eyes as him, even if he couldn’t quite see them as well.
“Pure Vanilla Cookie, are you coming?” White Lily asked further down the hall.
Pure Vanilla nodded idly before ripping his eyes away from the portrait, following after the other cookie.
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Deep within the Silver Tree, in an endless prison of silver chains and cold cells, five cookies reside.
The pure hate and resentment within that tree could outlast a thousand suns. The deprivation of everything drove each further into the jaws of insanity.
Shadow Milk Cookie doesn’t think about that small school in a town of only one hundred anymore. That era of his life had been classified as unbearably dull and shoved to the back of his thoughts.
There was a tug on his soul jam, just a slight tug. But in a tree without the ability to feel anything, it was the first thing Shadow Milk noticed.
He could hear the distant angered screams of Burning Spice Cookie, and if he focused reaaallly closely, the pure apathy from Mystic Flour that seemed to radiate outwards further everyday. Shadow Milk himself laughed, in neither joy nor petty anger. This confirmed it, that their soul jams were not thrown away. No, because of course the witches couldn’t just let cookie kind deal with their own mistakes and monsters they themselves created, they had to have more heroes.
The connection is weak, but not impossible to see through. There are only hazy colours and vague blobs. It takes months before the connection even gets a modicum stronger on his end, and when he looks…
His counterpart looks at a mirror, and through the soul jam Shadow Milk can see cream blonde hair, and two dual coloured eyes.
“Haha… Ahahaha!” He laughs hysterically, because what else could be done. Of course this would happen, of course the one cookie he’s bothered to remember from his long gone past had appeared once more. Worse- as the thief of his soul jam!
So that’s where Pure Vanilla had come from. Well, it wasn’t as if this wasn’t one of the possibilities he had put together way back when. Time was a very confusing matter that could be manipulated when in his domain, but that instance was outside of his domain… so how?
“Sweet Vanilly took my soul jam!” He didn’t know whether to be angry or happy, perhaps both. It was fate. The cookie he had met, that had unknowingly gone thousands of years into the past just to visit him weekly.
A smile stretches painfully across his face.
They would meet again. Two pieces destined to collide once more. How kind of the witches to give him this one last gift.