Draden’s eyes fluttered open to the soft gray light of pre-dawn filtering through the gaps in the window shutters. For a moment, he lay in bed just staring up at the ceiling, thinking over everything that had happened recently. If he wanted to keep progressing, then he needed to grow stronger, which meant healing his damaged prime meridian.

  Only after he could cultivate again, could he start thinking about rescuing his wife. Until the day he became a proper cultivator again, he wouldn’t even know how long everything would take.

  He had been a gifted cultivator before, but there was no telling if he still was after all the damage he had suffered. Of course, the opposite could also be true; he might be even more talented now. Regardless, cultivation took time, and regaining his previous strength was something that wouldn’t be accomplished overnight.

  All he could do was keep pushing forward and doing his best.

  An hour later, Draden had finished his morning exercises, and the house was filled with the sounds of a new day. Leah was sitting at the small kitchen table, her strawberry-blonde hair a magnificent disaster of sleep-tousled spikes, a piece of toast halfway to her mouth as she chattered about a dream where her magic friends had taught a fish to sing. Coradine sat across from her, a cup of herbal tea steaming in her hands, listening with a patient, amused smile.

  It seemed as though her mother hadn’t appeared in her dreams that night.

  In the kitchen, Draden was already beginning to create the first of his new creations, the rock candy. Before making breakfast for everyone, he had put together a list of items for everything that needed to be summoned.

  The rock candy itself was easy, as it just required a ton of sugar. It was the caramels that he had been forced to write down several ingredients for. First off, they also required a lot of sugar, though not as much. The bigger issue was the light corn syrup and evaporated milk. He could summon the evaporated milk, but it made more sense to go with powdered milk in his opinion. That was what his mother had always done. To make evaporated milk, you could either take regular milk and simmer it until it reduces sufficiently, or you could just use powdered milk and add less water than normal.

  He thought he had even come up with a method to get around the lack of a thermometer, but only time would tell.

  Draden moved with a quiet focus, sorting the gathered ingredients into different piles. He had already summoned everything that he was going to need throughout the day.

  “Daddy, what are you making?” Leah asked, her attention finally shifting from her singing fish dream to the various piles of ingredients on the counter. “Is it a new snack for your tummy aches?”

  He paused, a lump forming in his throat at her innocent description of his painful healing process. “Something like that, sweetie. These are for a couple of old recipes. Something my… something from a long time ago.”

  He stared at his daughter for several long seconds, lost in his memories.

  “Daddy?” She said with a curious tilt of her head.

  “Sorry, sweetie, just remembering… things. Would you like to help me with this first recipe? It’s super easy. I have to warn you though, that it takes a long time for them to be ready.”

  The little girl’s eyes lit up in excitement at the idea of making something with her father. “YES!” She shouted, leaping from her chair and hitting the ground with her arms outstretched so she could maintain her balance. “What are we making?” She asked, running into the kitchen and scrambling up a stool next to him.

  He chuckled and gently smoothed her wild bedhead before kissing her forehead. “It’s called rock candy.”

  “Are rocks edible?” Leah asked, licking her lips as she stared out the nearby window.

  He rolled his eyes and lightly flicked her on the head. “Not those kinds of rocks. These will be made from sugar. First, we take those bamboo skewers right there and add these pins to each one.” He demonstrated what he was doing to her. “Then we put one skewer into each of these thin canning jars. The pin makes it so the skewer hangs a certain distance above the bottom of the jar. See?”

  She nodded, and with the tip of her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth, she carefully repeated his actions with each of the skewers. “Done,” Leah announced as she wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead.

  Draden smiled, unable to contain it. His daughter was just so cute.

  He handed her a measuring cup. “Now, the next step is to get four cups of water and to put them in the pot right there.” He showed her the line on the measuring cup that she needed to fill it to and helped her off the stool.

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  She scurried off to the water tap he had put together and brought it back. “One,” She counted carefully. “Two,” She announced the next time, followed by a solemn, “Free.” The little girl hesitated on the last one, the cup beginning to shake as she held it. “One, two, free… seven? No.” She stamped her foot in irritation, barely avoiding spilling water everywhere. “Daddy, what comes after free?”

  “How old are you, Leah? That’s the number that comes after three.” He told her gently.

  Her brows furrowed in concentration before widening in realization. “Four! Leah is four.” She handed him the measuring cup of water with a smile. “Four cups of water, daddy.”

  Draden poured it into the pot and then picked her up, placing her back on the stool. Making sure he gave her a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek as he did so. “Excellent job, Leah. Now, let’s see how you do with this next part. After the water comes to a boil, you need to add ten cups of sugar to it.”

  He turned on the heat and began going through simple counting exercises with her while they waited.

  Leah kept softly counting on her fingers while they waited for the water to come to a boil. “One, two, free, four, five, fix.” She shook her head and massaged her teeth with her tongue. “Six, seven...” She glanced at her father.

  “Eig-” He dragged out the word for her.

  “Eight,” She said quickly. “Nine, and ten!” Satisfied with herself, she went through them all two more times, finishing just as the water began to boil.

  “Alright, now that the water is boiling, we can start adding the sugar.” He put the container of sugar on the counter next to his daughter. “Remember, ten cups.”

  She nodded seriously. “Ten cups of sugar.” Leah carefully dipped the measuring cup into the pile of white crystals. “Oneee,” She dumped it into the pot. “Ow, ow, hot, mean water, what did Leah ever do to you? She is just trying to make you delicious. Why are you hurting her with your hot breath?”

  Draden chuckled and checked her hand. “That’s steam, Leah, not its breath, and it’s hot; you need to be careful with it.”

  “Steam? It isn’t the same as Leah’s breath when it’s cold outside?”

  “Nope, this is because the water is super-hot.”

  “Oh,” She turned back to the pot. “Leah is sorry, mister water; it was her mistake.” Filling the measuring cup again, she dumped it in again, more carefully this time. “Two.”

  Keeping one eye on her, Draden used a wooden spoon to begin stirring the mixture together. Bit by bit, the water absorbed the sugar. The third cup went in, followed by the fourth, and then the rest. He passed the spoon to his daughter.

  “Keep stirring. We want it all to dissolve in the water.” He had done most of the work for her but had left a little bit of it so she could enjoy the process.

  The look of intense concentration came back on Leah’s face as she stirred the mixture. Once everything had dissolved, she looked at her father. “What now, daddy?”

  “Now, we let it simmer for five minutes. While it's doing that, tell me what flavors sound good to you?” He revealed the fruit syrups he had gathered earlier. “Just know that I have no idea how the recipe will mix with these. The traditional recipe is strictly sugar, no flavoring, kind of boring in my opinion. Mixing in these syrups may work, or it might be nasty. So, we shouldn’t do it for all of them.”

  Leah nodded seriously, acting as though she understood everything he had said. “Raspberry, blueberry, and strawberry.”

  “Sounds good,” He separated those three flavors from the rest and spooned a small portion into the jars. Each of the flavors was separated into two jars apiece, making it so six of the total would be flavored.

  Once he poured the sugar mixture into the jars, they would need to be mixed together.

  Nearby, Leah was watching the pot and singing to it softly. “Simmering water, simmering sugar, boil, boil, simmer, simmer, candy, candy, in my tummy.”

  Draden snorted softly and rolled his eyes. Yup, that was his daughter, alright. He checked the time and turned off the heat. “Now that it has simmered for five minutes, it needs to cool for about fifteen minutes, before we pour it into the jars. If we don’t, then it could crack the containers.”

  A simple wave from Coradine took care of that, as she removed most of the heat from the mixture.

  “Or we can just remove most of the heat with magic,” He said without missing a beat. “Thank you, Coradine.”

  She smiled at him, unwilling to let the show end just yet. She had been enjoying watching him teach his daughter to cook.

  “Leah, would you bring one of the jars with some fruit syrup in it over here, please?”

  The little girl nodded happily and quickly retrieved one that contained a couple spoonfuls of raspberry syrup.

  Draden carefully poured the mixture into the jar, stopping when he judged it had enough. “Now, since this one has the syrup, it needs to be stirred together.” He took hold of the skewer and, making sure that the pin didn’t shift position, he began to lightly stir everything together. “Can you do this for me?”

  Leah nodded emphatically.

  “Alright, here you go. Once the color of the mixture has taken on a similar color as the syrup, it should be able to be mixed together.” He passed the first jar off to her and moved on to filling the rest of them.

  After that was finished, he moved one of the syrup jars close to where his daughter was still stirring the first one and joined her in the simple task. “I think yours is finished,” He told her a minute later as it finally became the right color.

  He had expected her to stir wildly, like any other child would have. It would have created a mess, but the job would have been done in moments; that was how kids thought. Normally. He should have known better. Leah was anything but ordinary. She was special in so many ways.

  The little girl had stirred slowly and without creating the slightest mess. “Hmm,” She agreed, taking another one and beginning to stir again, slightly faster this time, now that she was familiar with the process.

  “What now, daddy?” Leah asked tiredly, after they had finished mixing everything together.

  “Now, we just make sure the skewers are in the proper position and place them to the side,” He explained, already pushing each of the jars to the wall. “Over the next week, the sugar will crystalize around the skewer and grow bigger each day. By lunchtime, we should be able to see the first of the crystals forming, though they’ll be small.”

  “Oh,” Leah frowned. “So we have to wait a week to eat the candy?”

  He nodded.

  “Okay, at least Leah gets to watch it grow. Is it time for Leah to go to school?”

  “Um, about that-”

  (The recipe I use in this chapter can be found on my Patreon for free.)

  Thank you to all the people who have taken the time to rate the story and to my latest Patrons! I have other stories up on my Patreon, including my current WIPs. Which are now Created G.H.O.S.T. System(My Cyberpunk story), WetWorks2, plus The Restaurateur and His Daughter and DungeonFall. :)

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