Editing City Series:Volume5b Chapter15 (section)

===Rosetta’s Journal===

It is almost 8 PM.

Today was a busy day. I wrote a letter to my master. It was a fulfilling day. I am taking a break after finishing washing the dishes. Lady Beretta is preparing the bath outside. She seems to be chopping some new firewood. I can hear it. She has apparently become an expert at chopping firewood lately and the villagers will come by asking for her help. She started off pinching her belly flesh every night but for the past few days she has been checking the width of her arms and sighing instead.

“My abs are pretty impressive now. Wanna see them?”

[[Image:City_v05b_083.jpg|thumb]]

I was not sure why I would want to do that and it seemed meaningless so I declined.

Before dinner today Lady Beretta and Mother Rose were arguing again.

I heard some destruction from downstairs while writing a letter to my master so I went down to the combined kitchen and living room to stop them.

As soon as I opened the door a small ceramic plate flew through the air and broke on my forehead. I think it was while the pieces were falling to my feet that I saw the surprised looks on their faces. I started crying.

It hurt but that is not why I cried. Nor was I crying because it saddened me to see them fight. If only that was the reason.

I cried simply because the plate surprised me.

It makes me blush when I think back to it. That is the first time I cried for no real reason like that. I have cried before because of some kind of emotion I was feeling but this was different.

I remember Lady Beretta placing her hands on my shoulders and saying some things to comfort me while I cried out loud. I also remember Mother Rose taking me to the clinic to examine my forehead.

I had a bruise but she said it would be gone without a trace in three days’ time. Yet she still cut off a small piece of a healing charm and pasted it to my forehead while I sobbed. Then she gave me a deep hug. She did not say a word but the way she rubbed my back calmed me down.

“Are you okay?”

I could not answer that question out loud. I was sobbing too much to speak.

I did not Signe which one of them threw the plate that hit me.

After that we had to fix dinner so I forgot all about my tears.

Come to think of it Mother Rose said this at dinnertime.

“Rosetta. Your cooking repertoire seems to be based on this region’s cooking. …Do you have any specialty dishes?”

“''Volaille'' and ''pôchouse''. I often make them with ''saupiquet'' sauce. And since my master does not like sweet things I will make ''pain d'épice'' for dessert.”

“Did someone teach you to make that?”

Only after saying no did I realize that it was true. No one had taught me that.

I had simply made what I thought would be good and my master had told me what it was called. All of the dishes I made had already been developed among the countless recipes of French cuisine. I always had my master determine what it was I had made.

But I had definitely come up with the idea for making those things on my own.

Lady Beretta looked across the table at me with a look of surprise and Mother Rose nodded next to her.

“Your specialty dishes are from Bourgogne. Both the whole chicken dish and the freshwater fish dish. You can find the ingredients and the cooking methods in nature here. In France’s royal palace style of cooking they chop up the chicken and rarely ever cook it whole.”

“Really?”

“It was the same for me. When I moved to Paris I realized no one had actually taught me how to cook and yet I ended up cooking the same way my mother had. This means there must be more to your roots than just Paris.”

That made sense. And it reminded me that Lady Beretta had first brought me to her room to cook. I wonder if she had sensed something of Mother Rose’s cooking in my cooking.

That would make me kind of happy but also kind of sad. I would prefer it if she had been drawn to the flavor of my cooking. I would prefer not to consider the possibility that she only liked it because it was similar to Mother Rose’s.

But it surprised me to learn I had some foundational memories like that.

I had been told my foundational memories were only my language skills and my decision-making abilities and the control functions for my various sensory devices and evolution. But Lady Beretta said a lot of things were installed in Belle de Marionnettes during the manufacturing process. She said the more varied their foundational memories the more things they would be able to do on their own.

Was I the same? It has only shown itself in cooking so far but there might be many more abilities hidden inside me.

<Lady Beretta is shouting from the backyard.

“The bath is ready!”>

Lady Beretta is calling for me. We had a lot of work to do today and we will probably have even more tomorrow. I think that is a good thing.