A witch, or a cook?

"It's today's specialty!"

A group of ragged children with chipped wooden bowls formed a long line in front of my crucible.

My name is Sophie.

It's a witch.

Ex, witch, I should say.

Today's magic potion is made with pumpkin and fresh fall salmon, with rice and colored peppers added. It'll give these malnourished kids back a lot of their strength, as well as being able to combat the gradually dropping temperatures.

You may wonder why it is a magic potion when it is just a normal soup, like the chefs in the castle make for the jazz lords every day.

This matter started many years ago, when I was still a trainee witch, studying at a famous magic potion maker witch.

"Put less centipede and scorpion venom in it next time!"

She would say something similar every time she tasted my magic potions.

For the record, we're not like those bad witches with wands who turn princes into frogs or kidnap princesses. We just produce magic potions to cure diseases or provide various special effects, such as being able to make people glow at night, breathe underwater, and so on.

But what the people who buy away our magic potions will do with them is none of our business.

I used to think that putting more ingredients than the "FYI" amount in the book would produce more obvious and longer-lasting effects.

But my teacher always criticized me for putting in too much.

I thought she thought my potion was too strong, and once I added some water to the crucible.

I was almost expelled from the division this time.

"You can't mix water into magic potions no matter what! Don't you understand such a simple truth?"

This depressed me for quite a while.

During that time, I often think about the occasion when I first wanted to come to learn magic potions.

When I was eight years old, there was an outbreak of the bubonic plague in my hometown village, and as a young child, I often saw a group of doctors wearing bird's beak masks that looked like crows, as well as workers carrying corpses in and out of houses.

As the outbreak became worse, people began to give up on treating the heavily infected, choosing to throw them out into the woods to die.

I was one of them.

At that point I felt dead, I couldn't feel anything.

Darkness, infinite darkness.

Couldn't even feel the pain in my body.

I even saw my mom, who had died at the very beginning of the epidemic.

Then, I don't know how long it took.

I felt something again.

I felt power pneumatically.

I sat up and touched the corner of my mouth, a few drops of a strange, clear liquid scented with willow and peach.

"It's a good thing your body hasn't rotted so I can still get you back."

The person who saved me was a woman with a strange accent, and I rubbed my blurry eyes to see what she looked like.

It was a woman with pitch black hair, dressed in a long, pure white dress and head scarf, and she carried a slender vase with a willow branch in one hand.

"You don't deserve to die here, I know that in the future you will do great things."The mysterious woman said to me, her figure disappearing into the mist of dawn.

I was amazed at such a miracle, but quickly calmed down and I decided to go back to the village first.

When I got back to the village, I realized that there was no one left alive.

The horror of the situation and the disgusting odor made my stomach twist, but since I had survived, there had to be something I could do.

I went into every unlocked room and rummaged through boxes until I could scrape together the money for a trip where I could go find the witch and learn about potion making.

The potion that kept me alive, I had to find out how to make it.

After that, I left my hometown for a more lively town and found my teacher.

But I realized that all of her healing magic potion recipes didn't have willow branches or peaches.

"Willow branches? Peach? Where do witches use such things in their magic potions?"

When I asked about my teacher, this was how she answered me.

But even though I couldn't learn the magical magic potion I was drinking at the time, at least I could learn something else.

And one day, things became different.

That day, for the first time, I perfectly followed the recipe in the book, mastered the amount of scorpion venom and centipede, and created the magic potion.

But before I could show it to my teacher, she rushed me to escape through the back door.

It was a witch hunt.

I got away with it, but they caught the teacher and sent her to the stake.

After that, the teacher's friends came, and they were a coven of witches. One of the witches could manipulate the weather, and she summoned heavy rain to extinguish the flames. Another witch who could summon animals called in snakes, lions, and wolves that scared the witch hunters away.

I worked like mad to save my teacher from the stake, took out the healing potion I had just made and poured it into her.

But the teacher was still dead.

It's not your fault she's hopeless.

The head of the coven told me so.

Traditional witches' magic potions use the interaction between toxicity to produce their effects. There's no way a dying body can withstand such a strong potion, no matter what kind of magic potion it is.

I was depressed for a long time.

However, an event afterward made me feel a new light.

After that day, the head of the coven took me in and let me finish the rest of my magic potion studies. One day, she took me to visit a far eastern country. There was a sorcerer there who had built an army and challenged the emperor there.

Why was he able to build an army? Because he saved countless people with his magic potion.

And the main ingredients were simply water and rice, and a little bit of the ashes of a charm.

There, I learned that the magic potions of the Eastern schools are all slow to work, but, relatively, they can make magic potions with mild foods.

More importantly, I finally learned that the woman who saved my life back then also had an eastern accent.

During this trip to the East, I used all my allowance to buy many local magic potion books, as well as language books and dictionaries. I went back and worked my ass off to teach myself.

After graduating, I set up my own business and opened a magic potion store that specializes in mild magic potions.

For over a thousand years.

As time passed, my potion store began to change gradually.

From "Sophie's Magical Potion Shop" to "Sophie's Family Restaurant".

The customers changed from Rangers, Warriors and Mages to Muggles, and they all said that my soup had magical powers and was very good for their health.

Was it the magic potion I made, or the soup?

Was it that woman's magic potion that kept me alive until now?

These questions don't matter now.

I only wish now that I could help more people in need.

But that day's magic potion with the scent of willow branches and peaches, I've been trying to concoct it even now. I hope I'll finally have the day when I succeed.

*The mysterious woman is Avalokitasvara, often depicted in Chinese Buddhist mythology as a woman holding a water bottle with a willow branch, whose water is said to bring the dead back to life. Meanwhile, in the Chinese story. Peaches are a symbol of life.

*In the Romance of The Three Kingdoms, the leader of the Yellow Turban Army, Zhang Jiao, raised his army by saving many starving people with rice soup mixed with talisman ash