Chapter 20: Winter Preparations

On the afternoon of the day Leohart and Erdo went out to subjugate the chimera.

After finishing cleaning the house, Lydia took a notebook out of the leather bag she always carried with her.

She flipped through the pages and murmured softly.

“This is it.”

On the open page were notes about preparing for winter.

Emma had taught her about it when she went to the Adventurers’ Guild the other day.

“Rosalinde sometimes gets a lot of snow, so everyone prepares for winter!”

“Oh my, that sounds serious.
I need to do that too.
What should I do?”

“Let’s see.
You gather firewood, prepare the stove, and also make preserved foods.”

She had written down everything Emma told her in her notebook and come home thinking she would do it all herself.

Lydia gazed at the notebook.

She decided to start with making preserved foods.

Then she went out into the garden, picked some apples, and began making jam.

She put sugar and apples into a pot and let them simmer, and a sweet fragrance spread throughout the house.

After that, she harvested grapes and persimmons to make dried fruit and laid them out in a sunny spot.

‘Fufu, this is kind of fun.’

She immersed herself in making preserved foods like that for four days.

Near evening, Leohart and Erdo returned, both looking tired.

Apparently, they had had trouble finding the chimera and had searched all over the place.

That night, the three of them enjoyed dinner together.

And then, the next day,

“I’ll come again!
Next time, don’t call me a younger brother!”

“…You’re noisy.
Just hurry up and go home.”

After exchanging words like that, Erdo left, and the two of them began their winter preparations.

Leohart made dried meat and bacon in the garden, while Lydia made pickles and soup bases and preserved them in jars.

They went into town to buy warm boots and coats, as well as fluffy feather duvets.

Walking through town carrying lots of bags, Lydia looked up at Leohart walking beside her.

“Have you ever seen snow?”

“Yes, I have.
The northern part of the Dean Empire is quite cold.
Have you not, Lydia?”

“I have, but I’ve never seen a place where it piles up a lot, so I’m a little excited.”

“I see.
You’ll probably get tired of it once it starts piling up.”

Chatting like that, they returned home.

And by the time the food storage was packed full of delicious provisions, snow had begun to flutter down over the town of Rosalinde.