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As the sun rose on the first Saturday in the first month of Winter, Evan set to work making breakfast for his fellow travelers. They were three days out of Clearbrook and the journey had been a hard one. The weather was cold, and the road was snowy and ice-covered, making travel dangerous and slow. Fortunately, the road they followed was flat and the surrounding farmland stretched for miles in all directions making it hard to surprise unwary travelers.

The camp was a few yards from the road and the tents were a welcome relief from the icy wind that blew out of the south and sliced through all but the thickest woolen cloak. The people in camp took turns standing watch too in case some wild animal or bandit wandered by and decided to help itself to their supplies. Evan took the last watch and so it was his job to make breakfast.

Evan wasn't the best cook just a simple one. This morning, for example, he decided to toast bread over the camp's open flame and opened several jars of preserves. Next, he cut wedges of cheese and set them aside. "Not the most elegant breakfast" he thought "but nourishing. Bread, cheese, fruit."

Evan stowed the cheese and roused everyone. Slowly his comrades crawled out of their tents, stiff and sore. Three days of sleeping on the frozen ground had taken its toll. Only Daniel seemed unaffected.

Evan was not sure why. Perhaps the Aglari that Daniel carried muted the effects of the cold and sleeping on the ground, or perhaps Daniel's Qua'ril training made him stronger than the rest.

As the others rubbed sleep from their eyes and wrapped themselves in woolen cloaks against the cold air, Evan smeared preserves on a piece of toast and added several wedges of cheese to the plate he prepared. James looked at the dish Evan handed him.

"Is there nothing hot to eat?" asked the bard.

"No, there isn't," said Evan. "Sorry."

"I could heat something for you," offered Brashani.

James thought about what the mage was suggesting, but the thought of magically cooked food didn't appeal to him. "No, thanks," said James.

"Besides," said Evan to Brashani, "you should conserve your strength. You never know when you might need to defend yourself and your spellcasting is an enormous advantage to the group; you shouldn't waste it heating toast or cooking oatmeal."

Brashani appreciated the importance placed on his skills by Evan but as a natural-born fire mage, it cost him nothing to heat food or start a fire. It was the bigger spells, such as throwing fireballs, creating a fire sword, or summoning fire to rain down from the heavens, that were costly and not invoked lightly. Still, Brashani did not correct Evan because he did not want the job of cook.

They all began eating. As Iriel ate her toast she said, "How about a story, James, while we eat?"

Ordinarily James would have declined; he disliked performing while eating. However it had been three days since he last performed and he was feeling a little rusty and in need of practice.

"All right," said the bard.