A Simple Song (Semi-Advanced)

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    The lad shrugged, managing to catch up with her. "I- I am unsure, to be quite honest. Oftentimes, my- my parents would scold me in a sort of teasing way because when they would make pirozhki, I would sit down to talk with them, and while we talked, I would eat most of them. And then they would scold me and we would laugh and eat the rest before supper." Dmitri bit his lip, blinking hard to keep back any possible tears that might well up. "So I- I do not really know what it is that they are usually served with."

    Abigail nodded with a soft smile. "Hm, alright then, we can get everything we need to make it, then pick a main course. How's that sound?" She asked with a bright smile, taking his hand in hers as she looked up at him. As she looked at all the market carts, dragging him towards one with vegetables. "Do we need any vegetables?" She asked, looking over the freshly grown cabbage, carrots, and other varieties.

    "They can have different fillings," Dmitri told her rather quietly, keeping his hand in hers. "But for now, I- I think we will need some cabbage, and then some of...these." He pointed to the onions. "I apologize. I cannot remember their name in this language. But we need some. And that is all for vegetables." He bit his lip slightly, still just a little embarrassed that he wasn't quite able to communicate effectively in English.

    Abigail gave a tiny nod and grabbed a head of cabbage as well as a couple of onions. "Onions." She smiled, turning to look up at Dmitri. "We can have an English lesson if you like, once we get back. We can do it while we cook dinner. And you can teach me Russian." She suggested, paying for the vegetables before moving along. "We need dough, right? To put the filling in?" She asked, approaching another cart. She gently grabbed ingredients to make dough and glanced to Dmitri with a tiny smile. "I don't know much about Russian meals, but it sounds good so far..." She hummed and glanced around the market, running a hand through her hair.

    "Yes, but there is something different in the dough than for other things. It is the...cream, but not regular cream? It does not seem so much like normal cream, really. But it is white and smooth and is scooped out of a container with a spoon, and it doesn't taste at all normal..." Dmitri shook his head, clearly both frustrated and a little upset with himself. He tried to force a smile for her sake, but failed completely. "I- I don't know that I can teach you Russian—it is very different from this language," he admitted softly. "But I think I will need help with English."

    "Do you mean sour cream?" Abigail asked curiously, offering a small smile. As Dmitri continued to speak, she shrugged lightly. "Yeah, okay. I can teach you some more english." She grinned and continued to shop. Once they'd bought all the ingredients for pirozhki, Abigail picked up a freshly baked apple pie. "We can have it for dessert." She explained, glancing at Dmitri with a light smile. She turned to the seller and asked for two free aamples, handing one to Dmitri. "It's apple pie. It's really good." She grinned.

    He nodded, staring down at the apple pie for a moment. "Th- thank you! I've seen desserts like this, but I've never had one before. I- I mean, we had desserts in Russia, but they're not really like this." Dmitri offered a shy smile, then took a cautious bite of the pie. His eyes widened, then slowly closed, a wide and completely genuine smile spreading over his face.

    Abigail gave a tiny smile at his reaction to the dessert. "I'm glad you like it!" She smiled cheerfully and ate her sample. She bought the pie quickly and gently took his hand once more with her free hand. "I think we have everything we need for a yummy pirozhki." She smiled, looking at Dmitri happily

    He nodded, glancing around to try and determine the way back to the house. "And you have dill in your home? That is the one other thing that we might need a little of, I think." That he knew 'dill' but not 'onion' was a bit odd, perhaps, but Dmitri didn't get to choose which words he remembered. "Are we going back to the house now?"

    "Dill? Um...I think we do, but we should buy some, just in case." Abigail gave a tiny shrug, purchasing two long dill pickles, making sure they were fresh. As he asked about returning home, she tapped her chin thoughtfully. "I think we have everything, do you like ice-cream? It goes really good with a warm apple pie." She explained with a tiny smile "but you have to eat it quickly, before it melts. Do you want some?" She asked, nodding to a stall close to a small house. They sold vanilla ice-cream by the tub here. It was quite hot outside so they needed to keep the frozen treat inside. Walking over, she requested some, but when she looked at the price, her eyes widened. "Ten? B-but last week it was only five!" She blinked with confusion as she looked at the seller.


    "Do you want some or not? It's quite hot outside, so demand is pretty high. If you can't afford it, that's not my problem."


    "But no one can afford ten silver coins!"


    "Everyone can. Who isn't you, your brother, or this beggar." The seller spat as he gave a pointed look to Dmitri. "Now run off, you're scaring off my customers."


    Abigail complied and clenched her hands into fists as she stepped aside, someone immediately taking her place and purchasing a tub for a mere three silver coins. Her jaw dropped and she felt tears peeking at her eyelids. Turning her back on the stall, she started back home, biting her lip as she looked at the ground.

    Dmitri considered pointing out that he needed the actual dill itself, and not the pickles, but decided against it. After all, she probably did have some dill back at the house. He did follow her over to the stall for ice cream, though, although he stayed a few steps back and simply watched. What transpired there was rather disturbing to him, although not wholly unexpected. When Abigail turned and started away, though, Dmitri followed her, resting a hand on her shoulder. "It's alright," he murmured. "We- we didn't really need it. Maybe another time, when it's not so expensive..."

    Abigail glanced up at Dmitri and offered a tiny smile. "But...we were going to have is with our pie..." She whispered, biting her lip. "It's fine though, because we're going to have pirozkhi! It might not be perfect the first time, but I'll have you to help me!" She grinned "and I'll try my best." She promised as they made their way back to the little cabin in the woods. Abigail opened the door slowly and entered, setting all the ingredients down in the kitchen counter and grabbing the dill herb from the fridge. "Alright! So where do we start?" She asked, throwing a tattered apron over her clothes, placing her hands firmly on her hips.

    "The dough," Dmitri said with a smile. "I think it is a lot like regular dough, so if we get out the ingredients you might use for that, we can take a look and see how much of each thing we need." He shrugged, ruffling his hair with one hand. "It is not exact measurements, though...not being perfectly exact is just a part of cooking, no?"

    Abigail gave a small nod before clearing the counter of everything except what they needed for dough, and a wooden mixing bowl. She quickly threw the ingredients together, mixing them together with her hands, that she'd thankfully washed, until it was a thick dough.

    Dmitri watched carefully, pointing out how much of various ingredients they needed and adding a bit of cream cheese at the proper time. "The dough is ready," he finally said, "but it needs to cool for several hours. Do you have something which we could use...? We can start the filling while the dough cools."

    Abigail gave a tiny nod and grabbed the bowl with the dough in it, placing it into her small refrigerator. "What's next?" She asked with a grin, moving to the sink to clean her hands, drying them on her apron. She placed her hands on her hips as she smiled at Dmitri. "What kind of person is your aunt?" She asked suddenly, her smile had faded and she looked at her feet, almost as if she felt guilty for asking.

    "Well," he replied softly, beginning to cut an onion, "She is a strong woman...she's not afraid to turn people away. She is practical. And she- she disliked my family. So she did not have so many troubles realizing that there was not enough money to support the young man whose parents she had never liked, especially when he had no way of bettering himself beyond playing music on street corners."

    ((Did you draw your profile picture? It looks amazing!))


    Abigail listened silently and looked up at him with a tilt of her head as she began to chop the other ingredients to assist him. "But...surely she helped you for a short while before asking to to pay?" She asked softly, sliding the cut vegetables into a bowl and off the cutting board.

    "Only for a little while," he murmured. "Two weeks, nothing more." A slight pause, then a change of subject. "Do you have ground pork on hand, or must we grind some ourselves?" Dmitri knew that he was casting his aunt in as favorable a light as possible, that there were other things he was not saying, but he kept this to himself—after all, there was no need to say everything, not unless she truly wanted to know.


    (I did indeed—thank you!)