Bárbara

Bárbara is one hundred and fifty-two years old and still gets up before the sun.

The first thing she does every morning is light the oven. The second, three sets of thrusts against the kitchen pillar. She does not notice she is doing them. They were drilled into her body at fifteen and nobody can get them out now.

She enlisted in the mountain guard before she was grown. She remembers little of her life before: a courtyard, a fig tree and the smell of bread. Everything else is war.

She defended the gates of the kingdom through three sieges. In the last one, her axe shattered against an ogre's helmet. The only thing within reach was an iron frying pan.

The ogre did not get up.

She has not picked up an axe since that day. She says the pan hits harder, and you can fry eggs in it too.

On her belt she carries a long dagger she calls Toothpick. Nobody has ever asked her why. Nobody wants to know.

When she hung up her uniform, she devoted herself to what she truly loved: raising her granddaughter. Mel grew up among flour, battle stories and shield drills before breakfast.

One day Mel left home to sell her magic to the highest bidder. Bárbara said nothing. She packed her bag, put the frying pan in and went after her.

Now the two of them fight with the Black Fang. Mel says it is a coincidence. Bárbara keeps slipping cookies into her backpack.

She offers cookies to everyone she meets. To her allies, fresh from the oven. To her enemies too, but after the frying pan.

Nobody has ever said no to one of her cookies.

Nobody has dared.

If a dwarf grandmother ever offers you cookies in the middle of a battle, take them and say thank you.

It is not manners. It is survival.