Swing!
"Focus on your footwork. If you lose your ground, you're dead."
I'm ten, dude. Yet he didn't seem to treat me like a child. He might have been surprised at my attitude at first but he was just powering through everything. If anything, he seemed to be enjoying the role play. Sigh….
Swing!
"Faster!"
Swing!
"More strength!"
I swung so much my hands were virtually on the cusp of falling off.
"That's enough," he said. "I will be back next week. Eat, rest, and try to practice when it doesn't hurt. We will learn new things next week."
Huh… wait, you'll be back next week too? "Weren't you only supposed to come once or twice a month?"
"You seemed a tad more enthusiastic today, so I feel it might be worth teaching you."
The who with the what the fuck?
Fuck.
***
I was so tired, I couldn't focus on anything. Reading, eating, just lying around, nothing.
Times like this where I kept craving video games. Or mindless scrolling. I knew it was bad for me, but I couldn't help it. I needed it, nay, my soul and body craved it.
Yet there was hardly anything to do. So I sat by my window and watched the distant houses, the people going about their days, carriages carrying… on a first glance, there wasn't much magical about this place apart from the different colored sky. But there was. There was a lot of things different. Even the people were different. One of my personal maids was a woman with the head of a cat. She was waiting just outside my door, ready to do whatever I wanted. I'd also seen other kind of people who couldn't be called 'humans' by what I was used to but I suppose this was the new norm of this world. Ah, dark elves….
I need a drink…
"Molly, can you go fetch me a cup of tea," I said.
Apparently, David used to drink a lot of tea. I didn't mind tea but preferred coffee. Oh well, for now tea would suffice. Come to think of it, there wasn't any coffee before either, right?
Hmm…
"I'll go right away, sir-" she said, leaving. Her white furry striped tail bounced with each step. Kind of cute.
Also, kind of towering. She was probably the tallest woman in the mansion. I never paid attention to her face since it was hidden with a thin veil but her ears and tail was cute.
While Molly was bringing me tea, I tried to recall some memories. Particularly memories regarding beverages David had had in this world. Tea, tea, and more tea, no surprise… wine, whisky, rum… vodka? His taste in alcohol was… something. Hmm… a brown liquid he dismissed for-
The memory was vague but he'd once had something that looked similar to black tea but not quite. He didn't like the smokey taste and never bothered. It came from a weird village that no one… hmm….
HMMM….
"Sir," Molly entered. She'd brought tea, milk, and sugar. Cookies too.
Molly poured me a hot cup, mixed the milk and sugar with the tea and let me have it. She'd offered to feed me too the other day since dunking biscuits could be a hazard for me, but I declined.
Sweet aroma filled my nostrils as did the warm sensation. It traveled down my throat, warming me from deep within; sweet. Very good tea but it was tea regardless.
By the evening I'd recovered a fair bit and decided to do some research and poke around for answers. I started by scanning through some culinary books and then interviewed one of the chefs while he was whisking up some cake batter.
"Smokey tea… I could try making it smokey," he said. He clearly didn't understand what I was talking about.
None of the books mentioned anything about coffee beans either. One book mentioned something about some island people making a bitter drink from burnt beans but that was it.
There is a good chance many people won't like it. Even if I managed to actually make coffee, how was I going to sell it?
I was a noble, sure. But I was also a ten-year-old.
A powerless brat.
But someone isn't powerless. Damian.
No, you can't just tell him to invest in coffee. He has to do it himself…
But how?