This particular patch of forest is relatively unremarkable save for the path - wide enough for a good-sized wagon, though not smooth enough for the wheels of one - running through it; a skunk browses on low-hanging raspberries planted alongside the path while songbirds flit from branch to branch overhead, and there's the sound of underbrush being cut away somewhere in the middle distance.
Yeah! That's kind of why she said at first that she couldn't craft, although she doesn't know if honeysuckle's mom would have told her that -- Mabel was thinking crafting was referring to one of the types of "crafting like things" in her own world, which does have its own name when you want to specify. She guesses technically crafting does still refer to this specific thing only, but she still needs a way to talk about the broader concept so she's probably going to continue to call it all crafting.
Yeah, she'll want to be clearer when she's writing to other people, at least at first - 'the superset of crafting' does what she wants - but honeysuckle gets it.
Anyway. Honeysuckle's starting to want lunch; does Mabel have any requests now that she's got some taste- and texture-related words to work with?
Thank you! That will be helpful. There's definitely a lot of things that will need some explaining, probably. She will do her best to be more precise when writing new people.
She likes soup, and fruit, and bread -- any or all of these sound good, if they're available?
Good soup takes a while, or at least she's not aware of a trick to speed it up without sacrificing flavor. Bread and fruit she can do, though, and she can ask blue-streak to put a pot on for dinner if he's not busy.
That sounds great, thank you!
Probably honeysuckle's not going to do any cooking or crafting the plants to grow faster now, but Mabel's interested enough in how things work here that she's going to watch her and see if she does anything interesting. You never know!
Yes! Will it involve leaving the house? Mabel Will leave the house if so but she will probably have to do a few deep breaths about it.
It will; honeysuckle doesn't seem to think there's anything odd about this taking some effort, and offers her a hand over the threshold.
That's very sweet! Mabel will take it and follow her out. She's unsure if the handholding is only for the threshold, so she's going to keep holding it and watch honeysuckle to see what she wants to do about continued physical contact, which as a bonus distracts her from being outside.
She doesn't comment or pull away, just leads the way down the path to the main building - peach themed with a rainbow pastel splatter overlaid - and helps her inside. It's put together in the same physical style as the cottage; the bulk of the interior is one large room, with different areas set up for different purposes. Closest to the door is a pastel-rainbow-themed workspace, with a long table flanked by seating and storage; behind that are freestanding island countertops and lower worktables and chairs themed for the three crafters she's met in the household, with various storage along the wall behind them. Off to the side, there's lounge space - a recessed seating area with an elaborate chandelier hanging over it and some cozy-looking rounded couches behind it. On the far wall there are four bed-cabinets like the one in the cottage, one in each theme including the rainbow pastel.
Honeysuckle guides her past the worktable and to a cabinet by the islands; it turns out to be refrigerated inside, and she takes a container of dough from it over to her island to craft up a pan to bake it on and a countertop-sized oven to bake it in.
How's Mabel doing? Honeysuckle is going to go craft up some fruit from the gardens next; it's not far, but she can drop her back off at the cottage if she's having trouble.
Mabel's okay! She's interested enough in what's going on still that she's less anxious than she'd usually be, or at least is not considerably more anxious than she was at her house.
Everything is so lovely and different. She nods to indicate that she's okay with going to the garden.
All right!
The path between the main building and the cottages continues past them out of the clearing, turning a bit not long after it enters the forest surrounding them, and a few minutes' walk past that they come to another clearing off to one side of the path with five huge, cage-topped platforms sitting in it, each with half a dozen insect-style legs tucked in close to it. Four of the platforms, including the closest, are full of plants, while the fourth houses a tree, a small internal building, and some two dozen chickens, who stop their pecking and gather to watch the pair approach. Honeysuckle broadcasts that she'll get them a melon on her way out, and leads Mabel to where the nearest platform has steps leading up to a door in its side, where the peach theme of its bars is interrupted by stripes of green and gold and black and blue around the doorframe. She helps Mabel across the threshold again, and takes a basket from the stack just inside the door.
They can get things to freshen up the food supply at the cottage while they're here, if she'd like? Or there's always the option of coming back another time for that, if it's too much for today. Anyway, all the stuff in here is good to eat; she'll identify the plants as they walk through if Mabel doesn't recognize them, and grow out whatever she wants.
Mabel has essentially never seen a farm; she's seen gardens and parks, but mostly the fancy curated ones full of flowers meant to be beautiful and not useful.
So: identification, please! She's glad she thought to bring her writing pad -- she writes that they can get a variety of foods now, she likes most foods. And then another "thank you"!
A variety it is, then! The garden is about half and half fruit to vegetables, generally only with a plant or two of each though occasionally with a cluster of different varieties of the same species, like the four kinds of strawberries and seven kinds of potato that honeysuckle explains are better in different recipes or according to different members of the household, or the five kinds of corn they keep to cater to the preferences of guests. There are a few trees in the back of the garden, espaliered almost to unrecognizability but still producing quite tasty apples, peaches, plums, pecans, and chestnuts on demand; nearby, trellised vines offer squashes and melons.
There are a couple of plants that honeysuckle warns her away from - the grapes, avocado, onions, and garlic - explaining that since they aren't sure of her species' food tolerances they don't recommend she eat anything that can make non-crafter animals sick, or that she at least stick to very small quantities at first.
She's familiar with a lot of these foods, actually! She doesn't have a lot of preferences and can't identify plants but at least she recognizes the food parts. But she's familiar with grapes and both the alliums, and she'll write this. Avocados not so much and she agrees to avoid them.
She'd still recommend sticking to small quantities to start with in case there's a difference in the specific varieties, but she'll include the grapes and alliums in the basket if Mabel wants them.
When they're done, brings the chickens the extra melon she crafted for them, transmuting a bit of material from the end of her sleeve into a knife to halve it with; would Mabel like to be the one to give it to them?
They are, especially when they run to get the melon after she tosses it in.
She offers Mabel her hand again to lead her back to the cottage.
Mabel will take it! She's definitely done with the outdoors for the day and will focus mostly on honeysuckle's hand and her own feet as they head back.
Thankfully it's not far.
Does Mabel feel up to portioning out some fruit for the two of them while she goes to get the bread? It's fine if not.
That's fine! She has a knife as part of her toolkit and it's spelled to stay very sharp; she's not going to write this but honeysuckle might note that's it's faster for her.
She'll set some out for both of them and put the rest aside!
And honeysuckle returns with the bread; it's fresh out of the oven and smells wonderful, and she's brought a little decanter of oil to dip it in, as well.
Once they've settled in to eat, she asks: how's Mabel doing? Does she feel like she's getting used to the new world all right, is there anything they ought to be doing differently for her?
Bread!! Bread! Mabel has maybe not been eating as much or as consistently as she should these past few weeks, which in retrospect might have contributed to her accident. She is very excited by the bread.
She writes that mostly everything's fine! She's a little confused still, and everything is still uncomfortably new, but there's not really anything to do about that. Probably the best thing is just for her to keep having conversations and learning new words and maybe getting grammar corrections, because she's sure she's making a lot of mistakes.
There are only two things that maybe could be improved -- one, there's no scrap metal around she can tinker with, could she maybe have some steel or iron sheets or something? And... she has no idea how to phrase this, it's not something she often talks about -- she could use some synthetic estrogen and a testosterone blocker, she usually makes her own but doesn't have materials right now.
They can make her sheets of something if she can describe the traits she wants it to have, sure! And... she's not sure if her mom knows how to separate out estrogen from, presumably, blood, or if she knows a trick for blocking testosterone instead of just arranging for it not to be produced, but she can ask, that's the kind of esoterica she might have picked up somewhere, she specializes in reproductive stuff. Or - uh, did Mabel want those for herself? It'd be much easier to just fleshcraft her about it, if she wants that.
For herself, yes. That's fleshcraftable? That makes sense, actually, Mabel just didn't think through it. She'd like that, thank you!