A Friend Indeed (Kung Fu Panda)

Tea

Tigress's recovery was a slow and frustrating slog. One that was not helped by her limited ability to move around the palace. There were precious few places in the palace that could be accessed without going up or down in elevation, either through natural incline or through a flight of stairs. As she found her tolerance level for how much she could get away with before her side started to burn, she started to have a better idea of why Po hated stairs so much; they were more physically demanding than she had noticed.

It was for this reason that she had been banned from the training hall, the Hall of Heroes, and the Sacred Peach Tree of Heavenly Wisdom. She had wanted declare it an outrage, but she had held her tongue. It only took a few attempts for her to concede her Master's point.

As much as she knew that she shouldn't, she started to resent the other students some. While she was in effect confined to the barracks and kitchen, they not only could go anywhere in the palace, they were being trained harder than they ever were.

Judging from the exhausted groans they gave before collapsing into there bedrolls daily, it was an experience that she had no right to envy. All the same, there was a firm sense of exclusion. Not helping matters was her own boredom.

She had always felt at peace with her life being dedicated to Kung Fu. Perfecting her style of fighting, learning self control, learning when to let go of that control, it had all filled her with a sense of accomplishment. For the larger part of her life, it was a purpose. Now that she was forced into taking a break from it, (despite her pleas with Shifu to at least let her use the training dummy,) she found herself lacking on any meaningful activities.

The first thing that she had tried was the dominoes. They were satisfying for a while. The fact that she knew that she was using a gift from a close friend made her happy. After a while, however, she found that there were only so many paths she could arrange them in. She could only set them up and watch them fall so many times before it felt like she was simply exercising her patience.

Not having many options in her room and feeling a bit uneasy about using the others' possessions without permission, she began to wander, eventually finding her way to the kitchen. For a moment, she considered making something for herself. Her by now half-repressed memories of somehow turning a bowl of noodles into dragon's fire cut that way of thinking off before it even had the time to go anywhere.

Besides, she wasn't even hungry. She had just spent the night catching Po eating for no other reason than the sensation of eating. It would be quite the twist of irony to berate Po's own coping mechanism only to pick up the same habit herself.

A thought crossed her mind. She might not be able to be trusted with any type ingredient that needed any type of preparation in any way whatsoever, but there was still things that could be done here. The tea bricks (*) that the palace had to have brought up were bland, bitter things that could only provide the barest dictionary definition of tea. As long as she was confined to these few areas, Tigress saw no reason not to try to change that.

Besides, as long as it wasn't bottled spirits, there were more advantages to drinking more often than eating often.

She soon set to work. It was a bit awkward to play hostess to herself in regards to the tea ceremony that she had only ever been on the opposite end of, but she felt that after seeing it so many times, she could at least brew something edible.

After breaking the tea bricks and using the stones to create a fire to heat the water, she heard the floorboards creak behind her. Briefly, she wondered how someone could have snuck up on her, but her thoughts soon narrowed into a hyper-focus. Giving no indication that she had heard, she discreetly reached for a ladle.