Clear Air

Well, if you count purely by mass, that is a true statement.

While the head chef being more amicable to the monster's shenanigans was a boon when it came to expediently picking up snacks on the way back home, it did mean that Grigg had started to run out of tricks to actually surprise the good gentleman. Sometimes he even found his japes endearing, that's unfair, only they got to decide who got to laugh at the end. Grigg would've sat down and been content with letting Serena talk shop while they scouted for some new patron to grief, but even before the man set off, the monster already had scampered to the counter, smelling for something...unique. Out of all the times the monster had come in peace to the bakery, it was only with Serena that they finally broke decorum, greedily reaching over to take this strange, almost offensive treat, squatting down and contemplating it silence.

What was that smell? Was it the mint? No, the chocolate, the cinnamon, the wildberries, oh that smelled like it was from Pulic. How could this happen? How could so many things be contained in such a diminutive space, yet retain their delicious waft? Most importantly, what were they doing sitting still oogling the damn thing, put it in your mouth, Grigg! As soon as this realization came through, the monster quite rapidly opened his mouth and swallowed it whole, standing there wide eyed. The monster tilted over from his mid-squat and slammed towards the back walk, skidding downwards as their throat purred with what sounded like a struggle to savor every single detail. Despite the alarming, paralyzing stupor, Grigg was fine, Serena could faintly hear the monster enumerate the ingredients through this elated groan, it was almost unthinkable, but were they...sated? The euphoria of finaly having their fill, if even for a fleeting moment had broken the monster to a slobbering vagrant. Grigg was never much for words, but they currently didn't have any, if anything, they would soon begrudge this man for making every further meal fall short for the rest of their existence.

Mass production, that sounded good, that way this recipe would outlive this man and Grigg could ensure they would always have access to this heretical piece of food.

Grigg hadn't figured out the formula in one go, but they were certain Serena wasn't going to like it as much. Perhaps it was still good for humans, hopefully, but to them, it was clear that being able to savor the whole spectrum at once was where the real experience laid, if anything, it just meant that it would end up being more food forhim. Grigg groaned lazily as they heard Serena speak, oh, she had more surprises for them, that's grand, he'll get up for that in a moment, certainly, time isn't real at the moment. Serena incited the grandest frenzy Grigg had witnessed since their arrival, ah, they wished they willed themselves up to see it, it was fine, they were still tall enough to observe the ruckus from here. The frog laughed as they tilted their head back ponderously, wondering if that was linden they tasted.

Oh woe to poor humans, who do not have the faculties to taste the bliss of this masterpiece in its entirety.

Grigg turned face down and crawled up against the wall to right themselves up again, the euphoria was starting to fade, but they were indeed content in a way Serena had not seen before. It is, of course, not any exagerated physical drive that drives Grigg's gluttony, but a much baser impulse of savoring delicious things, perhaps a holdover from their much larger ancestors. It felt like there was nothing left for him to taste for the moment, they had communed with every flavor in the span of a second. They wouldn't even oogle the pastry Serena was hesitating to follow through, and were now able to take in the sights of a good old fashioned brawl. Damn, they missed the context through this elated spell, it only elevated the spectacle as the frog was free to try and connect the dots.

Grigg chortled, the stash was filling up quite nicely. Serena needn't worry it would go to waste, their newfound sense of humility wouldn't be short lived, but it was mortal altogether.

Grigg mock-whined, Serena didn't bribe them often enough in the first place.

While the monster allowed Serena to push the cart outside, Grigg was quick to offer themselves as porter to move the goodies forward. It was convenient that the chef unlocked the secret to placating the frog, as maybe half of it would've arrived to the library otherwise. Grigg tilted their head as Serena said these things out loud, she must've sounded like a noble extentric to anyone that caught that past the bedlam inside of the bakery. In his experience, humans aren't as percetive as Grigg has calculated them to be, but it always pays to be careful. They hummed and shook their head side to side with so-so enthusiasm before pushing the cart along on their way, having hoped to spend their new stint of free time with Serena with something more exciting than reading. She promised it would be something different, they hoped it was something more interesting than learning more letters. 

Cart hauling was somehow a more interesting experience than walking, though it was still apparent that Grigg was becoming quite impassive as they started to run out of weird ways of pushing it along. Grigg took a pekk at what Serena was reading on the way, and was quite unsuccesful at being discreet about it. Nope, they weren't going to try to puzzle it out, wheels were a bad start.

Back at the manor, the monster relaxed their posture and moved with much more poise, sitting down cross legged rather than on their froggy squat as some sort of empathic mimicry. Grigg gurgled as they recalled, they didn't think they could produce a chalkboard exactly, those are not the kind of things that they tend to consider adding to their repertoire of knickknacks, but there was one. Grigg placed their large hand on their mouth and pretended to rummage for a moment before retreiving a big, flat, red square, and handing it over to Serena. They looked at her with interest, they always wanted to see how these weird machines worked.

Given the likely possibility that Serena refused to teach them music on an Etch-A-Sketch, Grigg rolled their eyes with a groan and ran their left hand through their forearm, producing a sheet of gilded paper that took on its pale sheen as it peeled off from their skin, handing it to Serena with a pencil for her troubles.

Serena makes it all sound so easy, but what's a note? It sounded like that kind of thing that they always keep in mind but never think about, like gravity, or strength, or tension, all of those make a lot less sense when they're on a spreadsheet and multiplied as if they were numbers.

The frog followed along, seeming quite eager to sing a reprise of the Fortisian jingle. Fortunately they knew this one, as they clearly squinted at the weird lines a circles, did they had to reverse engineer the whole thing? Grigg approached the piano and held the first note (notes are the letters of music, alright, fair), they lost track of which one it was by Serena's instruction, so they just went up until they found it, pressing down the key perpendicularly with their index nail. The next one was in the middle, what, this one was on the line, so that meant it was two, no, three notes ahead. They attempted to press it and then press the other one with the same finger, but that just sounded wrong, it ended too early, did they also have to hold it or else it stopped making noise?

The frog did a lot of counting and a lot of looking back and forth, starting to build the pattern from memory. Of course, it didn't helped they were using a piano from someone whose hands were half their size, and plenty of notes were fumbled along the way, including those black ones that they didn't even know made noise. It was odd seeing Grigg struggle at something, in fact, why were they struggling? They're more dexterous with their extraneous senses, and yet the piano was still clean of gold as they continued to try and get it right for once with their cramped hands.

"Ghrrieg", Grigg agreed that they could do it, then continued to keep trying anyways, perhaps if they used both of their index digits, it would be easier. They didn't need their other hand, right, some people do this crazy thing of playing two different parts on the.

Grigg would pause for a moment, expecting Serena to not be satisfied by the answer.

The frog leaned in on the keys absentmindedly and flinched away from them as they pressed no less than 3 full scales at once. They then very carefully closed the lid on the keys and leaned in again. "srgggg?", Grigg wanted to know if Serena would 'find that interesting'. For the monster, it was a foregone conclusion that, with this understanding, they could play the piano through telemetry, they had plenty of time on their own to do that, to perfect that, and to plan some sort of big performance for her even, but if he did that, then they would probably be here for all of ten minutes and call it a day, it didn't sound like much of an outing, unlike the reading excercise that was much more reliant on the only known monster interpreter in the continent. Grigg tilted their head and groaned, asking of Serena if she 'wanted to teach them' or if she 'wanted them to know'.