Sisters of the Wilderness: New Gauntlet Preparation

TheCuriousSeed

Prologue over, time for the real tale!

~Heidi, Gloriosa, Elva, Jessie and Xenops one day decided to return to the Wilderness for old times' sake. They'd each packed enough cookies and cupcakes to carry them through at least one long adventure apiece. Everything was going swimmingly and the five girls had even put on their Wilderness gear when…

~"Yoo-hoo!" called Daylily, accompanied by Tansy, Hickory, Gardenia and Saffron.

~"Where are you headed?" asked Hickory.

~"To the Wilderness," answered Heidi. "It's been ages!"

~"We're off to the wilderness too! We even packed at least seventeen of each cupcake per person! That's, like, 85 cupcakes together!"

~"That many?" asked Elva. "We only packed eleven of each sweet per."

~"Then you'd best get your wings in gear and bake at least six more of each type of cookie so you don't run out!"

~"Hickory, I had to do all the baking, remember?" asked Saffron. "Daylily kept undercooking the sweets, so I had to finish that task."

~"Nuances, nuances."

~"Besides, I managed to bake 36 per sweet per fairy."

~"Again, nuances, nuances. Let's go!"

~And off the ten girls went.

~Actually, make that thirteen because Lavender, Onyx and Magnolia joined in too. Onyx wasn't as good at baking as preparing soup, so that's what she brought instead. Kyra, a Baker, was too sick to join after Magnolia asked her to join in, so Lavender took her place and carried the sweets too. Lavender may have been a Garden Talent, but she was definitely not afraid of messes, even culinary ones as evidenced by her flour-covered clothes, hands and…

~"Oh, Lavender, you actually walked in that flour barefoot?!" asked Heidi.

~Daylily felt the sudden urge to throw up. Even though Lavender was very careful to clean her every limb thoroughly, to Daylily, any food touched by any feet, even cleansed ones, sounded unfit for consumption. After fighting that sickly urge, she won and the feeling subsided.

~"I was not expecting that," said Jessie, also a bit grossed out.

~"And that's why I had a few other Bakers bake some in advance for us," said Magnolia.

~Off to adventure!

~Each of the thirteen girls had already tried the Bubbly Bog, the Silver Trees and the Never Mine, so they knew what to do there and had more than enough sweets for those three areas, but…

~"I don't remember seeing this area," said Xenops.

~"We Scouts have to test out new areas of the Wilderness first to make sure said areas are safe for the rest of the fairies," said Daylily. "Heidi, Holly, Phoebe and I have gone through this area a few hundred times."

~"It's a gauntlet," said Heidi. "It's the toughest Wilderness area we've ever tested and to succeed here, you have to have at least a capacity of 180 smidges of Pixie Dust and one friend of at least that smidge capacity."

~"Check your inventories," Phoebe called from afar, bringing Holly.

~Everyone did. Only Phoebe and Holly had at least enough for the gauntlet alone apiece.

~"Once you enter this gauntlet, there is no turning back," Holly warned everyone.

~"We'd better get the baking then, but Kyra's sick!" exclaimed Jessie. "Thankfully to make up for my lack of lifting capacity I'm an excellent baker."

~"I can bake too," said Xenops.

~"Same here," said Heidi.

~"Ditto," said Saffron.

~"Saaaaaaaaame," drawled Lavender, raising her hand.

~"That's going to be a problem," said Heidi.

~"Why?" asked Magnolia.

~"Only four of us can bake."

~"Wait, Phoebe can cook too!" Daylily pointed out. "Well, she can cook better than I can."

~"And maybe Hickory can cook the food too?" asked Onyx.

~"I don't know, I tend to burn my cookies," said Hickory.

~"And I tend to undercook," said Daylily. "We really need help."

~The girls decided to visit Dulcie for their baking lessons, but try as they might, Daylily and Hickory were terrible at actually cooking the food, but at least they could prepare it easy-peasy summer breezy. As for the actual cooking, Onyx wasn't much help because soup was all she could cook, but she could make a soup from almost anything. Lavender didn't exactly use the most sanitary means of preparation, but she could finally tell when things were cooked enough without even having to touch them; her eyes weren't the keenest, but her tastebuds, ears and nose were pretty keen even by Garden Talent standards. Because Lavender couldn't speak that fast, she rang a bell when the cookies were done and it was time to remove them.

~"Wow, these are tastier than a batch of acorn chips!" exclaimed Elva after tasting one.

~Dulcie agreed and the rest of the batch was bagged.

~Batch after batch was cooked and soon the girls had enough sweets not only for the three areas of the Wilderness they knew, but also for the gauntlet too! Also, good thing each fairy had at least 180 daily smidges of Pixie Dust because they would need all of their dust and at least a few dozen sweets. Lavender herself somehow wound up with twelve hundred smidges of dust, five times the maximum of 240!

~"How did you end up with that many smidges?" asked Heidi. "Even the Scouts cap at 240!"

~Lavender somehow ran the gauntlet of all three known Wilderness areas 24 times with the Silver Trees, Bubbly Bog and Never Mine, in that order every time in one day all by herself and soon she quintupled her capacity... or the Pixie Dust she was given, upon touching her, quintupled in potency! Maybe her large size was another possible culprit or perhaps her down-to-earth gardening methods, but whatever the reason, it seemed she could store five times as much power for the Wilderness, but would even that be enough?

~Once everyone had more than enough sweets apiece to run a comparable gauntlet to Lavender's 24 times, they were...

~"I don't know about this yet," sang Jessie upon returning to the gauntlet.

~"Well, we'd better know about it soon," sang Daylily in response. "This gauntlet is the hardest one I know."

~"Soup kitchen!" sang Onyx.

~And that's where the fifteen went.

~Now, Xenops, Jessie and Gardenia excelled in tea, but Onyx was the gal to call for soup. Gardenia even figured it wouldn't hurt to pack seasonal clothes and other supplies for this gauntlet, so after checking their inventories, everyone was good to go. As for the soup, Onyx, Xenops, Heidi, Gardenia and Jessie worked together to make the best soup imaginable: it tasted like your favourite meal, sort of like the Comfort Cake Dulcie baked so long ago.

~"I hereby dub this," began Onyx. "Comfort Soup!"

~Onyx even had some special containers on hand built specifically for the Wilderness that Magnolia and Jessie made to replenish automatically until gauntlet complete, but they were a last resort for when no sweets remained. Tinker Bell was indeed the best Tinker ever, but those two were almost as good at Tinkering. Onyx even decided to make a Get Well Soup of her own recipe because she really wanted Kyra on this expedition too. The soup tasted like fresh water, but looked like herbal tea and smelt like vegetable stew, so she put that in a much larger container she had, a glass one that had a biodegradable straw made of flexible grass so Kyra could drink the soup.

~"Could you fly this to Kyra, please?" Onyx asked Magnolia before giving her a mask to wear.

~"On it!" said Magnolia, who zoomed off to deliver the soup and returned ten minutes later with Kyra holding a special container.

~"I told you I was sick," said Kyra before coughing into a leafkerchief.

~"Not for long," said Onyx. "I finally made a soup that'll cure any ailment almost instantly."

~"Kyra has a point," said Elva. "She should really be resting."

~"But it won't be as much fun without her."

~"And what of Ginkgo, Strawberry, both Silvers, Lenora, Primrose, Heather, Labyrinth and Foxglove, hmm?"

~"They were already on quests and exploring the Wilderness."

~"Could you hold this, please?" Kyra asked Magnolia before the former fainted.

~"I rest my case."

~Magnolia decided to take Kyra to the Sick Bay immediately to heal while the rest readied for the gauntlet.

Don't touch that dial! More to follow!