Jane set up her equipment with the confidence of someone who had not only learned where everything belonged, but had arranged and rearranged from there until it fit her better. She pulled out mixing bowls and set them in a row on the counter, then gathered her measuring cups and spoons, her scale, and her whisks.

  A month ago, she would have needed someone to tell her what half of these tools were for. Now she knew exactly what she needed for not just one, but several planned tasks, and it felt good.

  It wasn't that she had been helpless, exactly. She had been specialized, trained in arts so complex that nobody expected her to know how to crack an egg on top of everything. But now she could cook. She could clean. She could run a shop and make friends.

  Even better, it was fun.

  She crossed to the shelf where her yeast jar sat, warm from the residual heat of the nearby ovens. The culture inside had grown substantially since Shelby's shade had helped her start it, going from a thin paste to a thick, bubbling mass that smelled of bread and life. It was getting crowded in there.

  "You need a bigger home, kid,” she told it affectionately.

  A quick search of her cabinets turned up a larger jar. Jane cleaned it thoroughly, dried it, and then carefully transferred the culture, scraping every last bit of the precious starter into its new home. Then she fed it, adding flour and water in the proportions Shelby had taught her, and stirred until everything was well-mixed and cozy.

  "There you go." She let a lump of magic flow into the jar, the kind that encouraged small living things to thrive. "Grow strong. I'm counting on you."

  Setting the jar back in its warm spot, she turned her attention to the real work of the evening.

  Premeasuring was a tedious business. It would save time later, but it wasn’t the most exciting part of her job. She did it anyway, considering all the while if there was any way to shorten the process.

  There's no good way to do this with magic. None at all.

  She had thought about it before. The scientific part of her brain was always looking for efficiencies. But magic couldn't tell her how much something weighed in a precise way. It could tell her about the flow of mystical energy, or the alignment of natural forces, or a dozen other things that had nothing at all to do with whether she had added enough flour or water. For that, she needed scales and cups.

  She stared at the scale in wonder. Do ordinary people know how magical these tools are? In their own way?

  The mixing came next. This was another area wherein she was sure she couldn’t make magic work for her. Moving things around was fundamentally a mechanical problem. Her arms could stir. Her hands could knead. There was simply no advantage to using mystical force for work that muscle and bone could accomplish just as well or better.

  The math was simple. Magic was good for things she couldn’t do otherwise. If she wanted to throw a rock over a hill, magic made sense. Her arm couldn't generate that kind of force, but her magical power could, at a cost. But for kneading dough until it turned smooth and elastic, the work of her hands was actually better, because she could feel the texture changing under her fingers in ways that magic couldn't replicate.

  That's one reason there aren't any magical bakeries. For most of the process, the magic doesn't help enough to matter.

  Temperature was where her magic could actually contribute something. For burnt-top bread, it gave her a quick burst of heat she couldn’t easily get any other way. It had worked, but she’d been using magic so furtively that the effect had always been imprecise.

  Now that her magic was out in the open, she might be able to fix that. She could take her time and could do things properly, without worrying about who might see.

  She lit her ovens in the mostly conventional way, using the treated logs and just a bit of magical spark to get them going. But instead of leaving the heat to work unobserved, she placed small markers of magical awareness inside each of the ovens, tiny glowing points that fed information back to her about temperature.

  There was so much that was too risky before. But not anymore. Now Jane can cook however she wants.

  She mixed her dough and let it rise, then shaped it into loaves and set them to bake. The burnt-top loaves came out of the oven first, still slightly under-browned but ready for the final step. Before, she would have hit them with a quick blast of heat, hoping to get lucky on the exact amount of char she wanted. Now she lifted them out of the pans, set them on the counter, and took her time.

  She held her hand above the first loaf and let heat gather, not in an explosion, but in a steady, controlled flow. The crust darkened gradually, going from golden to deep brown to nearly burnt in precisely the way she wanted. This was much closer to how the original baker had prepared it with a lit coal. She could feel the moment when it was perfect.

  This is so much better.

  She did the same with the second loaf, and the third, each one coming out exactly right. The kitchen filled with the smell of proper bakery bread, the kind she had loved in the capital. The kind that came from decades of some blessed scientist-turned-baker’s experience which Jane had somehow managed to compress into weeks.

  When she was finished, she sat at her counter and waited for the loaves to cool enough to cut. There was no rush. This was just for her.

  She finally cut a slice from the first loaf, the crust crackling under her knife. The inside was soft and warm, immediately melting the butter she spread over it. She took a bite and closed her eyes.

  Perfect. Actually perfect.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  This was bread she would have been proud to serve to anyone. She honestly didn’t know any way she could have improved it. She ate the whole slice standing at her counter, then cut another one just because she could.

  The rest of the evening passed in a happy blur of activity. She made cookies with the techniques the other bakers had shown her, reviewing the magic-augmented memory and incorporating their tricks into her own methods as best she could. She was slowly starting to understand why each little angle was important, and to find the rhythms and efficiencies that worked best for her.

  She monitored her ovens with magic, and adjusted them with magic, and never once felt like she was cheating. Because she wasn't. She was just being herself. All of herself, all at once, as unlikely as that felt.

  Ha! I’m Omni-Jane! All possible Janes rolled into one!

  By the time she finally climbed the stairs to bed, her kitchen was full of good bread, so much so that she’d have to give some away. She felt good, though. It had seemed important to give her learnings the chance to coalesce, like it might have been the last piece of low-hanging fruit she could grab.

  Tomorrow there would be work to do with her aunt. Dangerous work. But tonight, she was just Jane: baker and friend, archmage and person.

  Wrapped in the warmth of that, she slept well.

  —

  Jane woke before the sun, which was becoming a habit. She supposed this was appropriate for a baker. But she lay in bed for a few minutes anyway, enjoying the warmth of her blankets and the quiet of the house.

  She dressed and made her way downstairs, where the kitchen waited. Toast seemed like the right kind of breakfast for a morning like this. For one thing, it would help her work through her multiple loaves of burnt-top bread. She cut two thick slices from one of last night's loaves and set them near the stove to warm while she prepared the chocolate-y stimulant drink whose name she had long since forgotten.

  The drink was becoming a favorite. She'd been skeptical at first, but Frank had been right about its ability to shake the fog from a tired mind. She made a full pot of it, more than she needed, and poured herself a cup while the toast finished.

  I should eat outside. It's going to be a nice morning.

  She gathered everything onto a small tray and carried it out to the backyard, settling onto one of the stone benches that overlooked the lake. The sky was just starting to lighten in the east. She ate her toast and drank her drink and watched it happen.

  It was peaceful. The city was still mostly asleep. The lake was calm, reflecting the changing sky like a mirror. She could hear birds starting to wake up in the trees nearby, their songs mixing with the faint noise of the rivers.

  This is what I came here for. Exactly this. This and everything else, but exactly this in so many ways.

  She finished her toast and poured herself another cup from the pot, wrapping her hands around its warmth. The air was cold, but not quite cold enough to drive her inside. She'd stay until the sun was properly up.

  She was so focused on the sunrise that she almost missed the sound of footsteps coming around the side of her house. Turning, she found a middle-aged woman standing at the corner of the building, her attention fixed on the sky rather than on Jane.

  The woman was dressed practically, in clothes meant for work rather than show. She carried a heavy leather bag over one shoulder. Her hair was pulled back in a long, thick braid.

  "Beautiful morning," the woman said, still not looking at Jane. "I always forget how good the sunrise looks from this side of the lake."

  "It is," Jane agreed.

  She considered asking who the woman was and why she was in her backyard, but something about the situation felt fine, without examination. The woman didn't seem threatening. She seemed like someone who had simply wandered by and stopped to appreciate something worth appreciating.

  "Would you like some?" Jane held up the pot of stimulant drink. The woman finally turned to look at her and smiled softly.

  "I would, actually. Thank you."

  Jane ran inside for another mug and poured some of the hot drink. The woman took it with a nod of thanks and settled onto the other end of the stone bench, turning her attention back to the sky. They sat in comfortable silence as the sun continued its climb.

  It was a strange way to start a morning, sharing a bench with a stranger and watching the sunrise. The woman sipped her drink and made small sounds of appreciation. Jane did the same. Neither of them seemed to feel any need to fill the quiet with words.

  She must be nice. Everyone in this town is.

  The thought came easily. Jane let it sit without examining it too closely. She'd been surprised by a lot of things since coming to Glenfall, but the general kindness of the people was so early in the chain of unexpected things that it had become almost normal.

  The sun cleared the horizon. The woman finished her drink and set the cup down on the bench between them.

  "Thank you for that," she said. "And for the break. I needed both."

  "You're welcome. I'm Jane, by the way."

  "I know." The woman smiled. "I'm Doctor Millicent. The council sent me to check on you."

  Oh. That makes more sense than a random sunrise-watcher.

  Jane stood and gathered her things, gesturing toward the back door. "Would you like to come in? I can make more toast, if you're hungry."

  "I wouldn't say no to that."

  They made their way inside, and Jane set about preparing a second breakfast while the doctor settled onto one of the stools by the counter. The kitchen was still full of the smells of last night's baking. Jane saw the woman's eyes move across the rows of bread and cookies with something like professional assessment.

  "You've been busy," Doctor Millicent observed.

  "I wasn't supposed to open the shop, so I practiced instead." Jane cut more slices from the loaf and set them to toast. "It seemed like a good use of time."

  "It does."

  The doctor watched her work, which Jane found slightly unnerving. She wasn’t used to being watched in her kitchen in that way. It bothered her more than having a big audience, but she tried to move naturally.

  Once the toast was ready, she spread butter on both slices and slid one across the counter. They ate in silence for a few minutes, the doctor's attention still fixed on Jane in that measuring way.

  "So," Jane said finally, unable to contain her curiosity any longer. "Are you going to examine me?"

  Doctor Millicent smiled around a bite of toast.

  "I've been doing that since I arrived."

  "You have?"

  "The way you moved around your kitchen just now told me quite a bit. The way you ate your breakfast outside, the way you held your cup, the way you stood up from that bench." The doctor took another bite and chewed thoughtfully. "You're not favoring any limbs, your coordination is good, your appetite is healthy, and your color is normal. If there was something seriously wrong with you, I'd have seen signs of it by now."

  Jane blinked. "That's it? That's all there is to a medical examination?"

  "For something like this? Yes."

  "Then why couldn't I have just cleared myself?" Jane asked. "I knew I was feeling better. I could have told someone that without needing a doctor to come watch me eat breakfast."

  "You could have." Doctor Millicent nodded as she finished her last bite of toast. "But it's usually better to have someone else look. Hurt people tend to try to hide their own hurts, even from themselves. Especially from themselves, sometimes. It's good to have someone who cares to help dig them up."

  "I suppose that makes sense."

  "It's not a criticism. It's just how people are. We're not very good at taking care of ourselves." Doctor Millicent stood and gathered her bag. "You're cleared for normal activity, by the way. Including running your shop, if that's what you're worried about. Just don't go fighting any more dragons for a few more days."

  "I'll do my best."

  Doctor Millicent made her way to the door, then paused with her hand on the frame.

  "That bread was very good. Once you're properly open again, I'd like to be a regular customer."

  Jane smiled. "I'd like that, too."

  The doctor returned Jane’s smile, nodded once, and was gone.

  .