Week 16: Wednesday Who: Mira and Ita What: "This is not the dining hall." -- Mira makes her first kitchen raid, accidentally. Where: Kitchens When: After classes
Mirael was lost.
A lost elf, she berated herself, pausing momentarily at the intersection of two stone hallways. Weren't elves supposed to be natural guides? Good navigators? Well, here was the true test: throw one inside a new environment, indoors instead of out, and the entirety of one's adeptness could be thrown right out the window. With a resolute sigh and a grumbling stomach, Mirael examined the crux of hallways once more. They were impassive; the stone was cool and cold, surrendering no clues to the fencing-calloused tips of her curious fingers.
Well; if one could not count on one's eyes ...
One must follow one's nose, she decided, thinking back to the most recent instructions she'd been given -- from an older student who seemed to be in quite a hurry to go about his business; totally uninterested in helping a new student find her way back to the dining hall. "Oh, it's that way," he'd gestured, irritably. "And turn right when you've passed Defense." That was all well and good, assuming one knew what 'Defense' was. Mirael decidedly did not, and here she stood. Logically concluding that she'd already missed the right of which he'd spoken, the elf made a right at this intersection. A turn in that direction was due, though at this stage backtracking was probably a more prudent option. Another dozen steps passed, silent in the hallway and virtually inaudible, and then she caught it.
Wafting through the air was the smell of something delicious and after two days of homesickness, poking around at her meals, Mira's stomach was finally protesting. And protesting loudly. Following this sense, she soon came to a set of swinging doors that did not at all resemble the ones she thought she remembered; but the smell persisted. When Mirael stepped through the doors she was definitely not where she intended. On a much larger scale the room resembled the kitchens at Gardener Hall -- but these were obviously in use, and the ones at the manor were lucky if the stove was ever lit, the elves had such little use for them.
"This," she said, almost to herself, and paling already, "is not the dining hall."