The Tale of Tales

Chapter 46

The next day Jellal and his pack left for the mountains while Lucy, Erza, the fairies, and dwarfs decided to go look for Natsu. They suspected that Minerva was involved with that chimera and since Juvia was her prime target they insisted that she stay behind at the cottage with Elfman looking after her.

"Elfman you pig!" She scolded. "You ate all of my buns! I was going to serve them tonight with dinner."

"Sorry." He said in a voice that sounded like an innocent child.

"Well thanks to you I'll have to make more from scratch." She went to open the cupboard. "Oh dear I'm out of flour."

"I can go to the village and buy you so more."

"Really?"

"It's the least I could do since I ate all the buns."

"Thank you Elfman."

"You're welcome and by the way you're a great cook. I haven't eaten food that good since my sister's cooking."

"I didn't know you had a sister."

"I had two sisters. When we were kids, my parents were always working in the fields so my oldest sister Mirajane would cook breakfast and lunch for me and my younger sister Lisanna. She would also get us dressed, comb our hair, make sure we got all our chores done, and she home schooled us since we couldn't afford to go to school."

"She sounds like a second mother."

"She was."

"What happened to her and your other sister?"

Elfman stiffened before answering.

"When we were still kids something terrible happened... Something that resulted in our parents getting killed and Mirajane running away. Lisanna and I had to take care of each other after that and when we became adults we split up and decided to look for her. We meet up every few weeks to talk about how things have been going and if we've found her yet. So far we've found no trace of her."

"I'm so sorry. Why did your sister run away?"

"I'd rather not talk about it. Let's just say she blames herself for what happened to our parents and she thought that we would hate her for it. But that's not true at all and if we find her the first thing we're going to do is tell her that it wasn't her fault and that we love her and miss her."

"I hope you find her."

"Not nearly as much as Lisanna and I hope. But I don't want to talk about anymore sad things today. I...I think I'll go get that flour now."

"Alright."

"Do you want to come with me?"

"I would but there's so much I have to do. Sweep the floors, do the laundry, wash the dishes, dust the furniture."

"Okay then but while I'm gone don't let anyone in the house and don't take anything from anyone."

"I won't."

"I'm going to lock the door so you should be safe as long as you don't let anybody in."

"Don't worry I'll be careful."