living skyward

His stay in this castle has gotten a lot longer than expected.

Which is a bit worrying for a variety of different reasons. But then there's the more practical concerns of being trapped in a magical castle, too--like the fact that most of the food to be found so far consists of either fruits from the garden or cakes from the ballroom, mostly. (Cakes with strange not-edible things inside them...) And that's just...not enough, honestly. A growing boy is a perpetually hungry one, and there's a lot to be said for the lack of actual meals lately.

But today Lucas finally stumbles into a kitchen in his wanderings. It's disappointingly ghost-free, much the way the rest of the castle has been--he wonders what Duster would think of all this--but still, the room is large, and there are pots and utensils hung across the walls, and vegetables in the cabinets. ...Perfectly fresh vegetables. Which is pretty odd, but...everything else about this place is odd already. Lucas sets them out on the counter anyway.

Because he does know how to cook, a bit. Flint would often be away for multiple days at a time, and so Lucas is mostly self-taught, using advice from fellow villagers and experimenting a bit on his own...after three years, putting together a decent vegetable stew isn't too hard at all. There's a wood stove that's easy enough to light a fire in, and there's water here and a large pot there...

And so visitors might be drawn in by a faint but pleasant smell, wafting through the open kitchen doorway. Lucas is found standing at a counter (on top of a tall stool, so that he can actually reach everything), carefully chopping more assorted vegetables with a knife while a large pot simmers gently on the stove nearby. He's humming to himself very softly, but is otherwise absorbed in deep concentration as he tries to get these vegetable chunks just the right size, and doesn't notice anyone coming in or watching just yet.