My Food Stall Serves SSS-Grade Delicacies!

The road was still silver with dawn when Marron left Meadowbrook.

Mist clung low over the fields, curling around her boots and the wheels of her cart like breath on glass. The sky was the pale color of cooled cream, and the air held that soft, forgiving chill that came before the sun's heat found its courage.

Behind her, the town was quiet. A few windows glowed faintly with morning candles, but no one stirred yet. The dwarves were still asleep, and normally the builders were the first to wake before sunrise.

This morning, only the smell of bread and wet earth followed her.

She looked back once at the diner. The bell over the door glinted faintly in the first light. Somewhere inside, Elena was probably already awake, sweeping the floor, humming softly. She would keep the place alive.

And Balen would finally go home to Whetvale and get some well-deserved rest.

Marron adjusted the straps of her pack and took her first step onto the open road.

Her cart rolled beside her, humming lightly, the sound almost companionable. The path ahead stretched east through the valley, past windmills and the creek that split the meadows into mirror pools. Somewhere beyond those hills lay Lumeria, the cooking idol capital of Savoria. A month's walk if she went slow, three weeks if she didn't stop too often.

It felt strange to walk toward something instead of away.

"Road's too quiet," Mokko said after a while, swinging a wooden spoon like a walking stick. His heavy boots left deep tracks in the damp earth. "Almost suspicious."

"Suspiciously peaceful," Marron said. "Maybe the world finally got tired of trying to kill us."

"I'll believe that when onions stop making me cry."

Lucy's voice came faintly from the glass jar Marron carried in the side pouch of her cart. The jar was filled with clear water, and inside it, the slime girl floated like a drifting jellyfish, faintly blue in the morning light.

"Speak for yourself," Lucy said. "This jar is humid. You try being a sentient pudding in a jam jar."

Mokko leaned close and grinned. "You look like dessert."

"Keep talking, I'll eat your spoon."

Marron laughed, the sound startlingly light. She hadn't realized how much she'd missed their bickering.

"Be nice," she said, tapping Lucy's jar gently. "You're the one who insisted on coming."

Lucy's form rippled in mock offense. "Because someone needs to make sure you don't collapse from exhaustion again."

"And someone needs to carry the heavy stuff," Mokko added. "You're lucky I like you, Chef."

"I am," Marron said simply. And she meant it.

The three of them fell into a rhythm. The cart wheels turning, Mokko's deep humming, Lucy occasionally grumbling about hydration levels. The morning light turned the grass gold, and for a few hours, the world felt mercifully ordinary.

By midmorning, the wind changed.

It carried a faint metallic scent. Like a hearth fire, or worse, smoke that had burned too hot for too long. Marron frowned and shaded her eyes, scanning the horizon. The hills blurred into distance, peaceful and green, but there was a smudge at the far edge of the sky. A dark haze.

Mokko noticed it too. "Storm?"

"Too steady," Marron said. "Looks like… smoke."

Lucy's jellylike surface dimmed. "Maybe a forge. Or Borin clearing land."

Marron wanted to believe that. She shook her head and forced a smile. "Probably. Let's keep going."

The cart gave a low, uncertain hum. Marron ignored it.

By noon, they stopped near a stream. Mokko waded in barefoot with a pleased grunt, while Marron filled the flask and swapped out Lucy's water. The slime sighed dramatically as the fresh water surrounded her.

"Finally," she murmured. "I was starting to taste like old potatoes."

Marron chuckled. "Then you fit right in with us."

They ate quietly—Balen's leftover rice and eggs from the diner. Lucy watched, envious. "You're lucky. I miss chewing."

"Want me to drop a crouton in there?" Mokko teased.

"Don't you dare."

It was peaceful, almost enough to forget the lingering smoke on the wind. But by the time they packed up, the scent had grown stronger.

They reached Sableford village by late afternoon.

The streets were half-empty. Shutters closed, doors barred. A few villagers stood near the well, whispering. Marron slowed her cart, Mokko frowning beside her.

"Something's wrong," he said.

"You don't say," Lucy muttered from her jar.

Marron approached a woman by the well. "Excuse me. Is something the matter?"

The woman looked up, startled, then wary. Her eyes flicked over Marron's cart, Mokko's height, the jar on the side. But exhaustion softened her suspicion. "You haven't heard?"

"Heard what?"

"Brookvale burned," she said. "Two nights ago. Bandits, maybe. Or townsfolk from the ridge. No one knows who struck first. But it's gone."

Marron's heart dropped. "Gone?"

"Flattened. Fire took everything." The woman's hands twisted in her apron. "If you had kin there… I'm sorry."

Mokko's spoon clattered to the ground. "Alexander," he whispered.

Lucy's glow dimmed to a sickly gray. "And the mimics…"

"They can't all be gone," Marron said, her voice thin, disbelieving. "They were supposed to start over."

The woman's gaze was pitying. "There's no starting over when hate burns faster than mercy."

Marron couldn't answer. She thanked the woman numbly and turned away, walking until the village was a smear of color behind them.

They stopped again at dusk in a meadow streaked gold by the setting sun. None of them spoke for a while. The wind brushed through the grass like the hiss of frying oil. Marron stared at the horizon until her eyes ached.

"I keep thinking," Mokko said finally, sitting heavily on a rock, "if we'd gone with them—"

"Then we'd have burned too," Lucy said quietly. "Doesn't mean it hurts less."

Marron placed her hands on the cart's handle, the copper cool beneath her palms. "He was supposed to make it work. He believed he could." Her throat closed. "He tried."

The cart thrummed low, sympathetic. Marron knelt and rested her forehead against it. "I should've done more."

"Chef," Mokko said gently. "You did enough. You can't fix every kitchen in the world."

"I can try."

Silence fell again. The kind that wasn't peace but the exhaustion that followed loss.

That night, they camped beneath a canopy of willow trees. The air smelled of water and moss. Marron built a small fire, the flames flickering soft against her cart's copper trim. She stirred a thin pot of soup—rice, ginger, a few herbs from her pouch.

Lucy floated near the edge of the firelight, her voice barely a whisper. "What'll you do now?"

Marron looked into the pot. "I'll keep walking. I'll find Lumeria. And when I do, I'll learn how to stop this. How to keep what's left safe."

Mokko nodded slowly. "Then we'll keep walking too."

"Even if I don't deserve you two," Marron murmured.

Lucy's surface rippled faintly. "You're stuck with us. Like burnt caramel."

Marron managed a smile. "Then we'd better not let the pot boil over."

The cart hummed softly, like laughter.

She ate her soup in silence, the stars bright above. The flavor was faint—unfinished—but warm enough to keep the ache from hollowing her completely.

When she finally lay down beside the fire, Lucy's jar glowing faintly beside her and Mokko's snores rumbling in rhythm with the cart's quiet hum, Marron let her eyes close.

Tomorrow, they would keep walking.

Toward Lumeria, and hopefully get some answers.

And maybe some clarity on what I can do next, Marron thought.

Across the blackened remains of Brookvale, beneath the ash, stirred a creature's head crackling with flame. It opened its molten gold eyes and yawned.

It had been a long time since it had seen this mortal coil, and it was very hungry.