Title: angel of small deaths
Fandom: Xena: Warrior Princess
Rating: General Audiences
Length: 280
Summary: Traveling Greece require supplies. Gabrielle is not best equipped.

The woods and roads of Greece are no place for the lightly armed and unprepared. If it is not the bandits bursting from the bountiful (in the right weeks of spring and summer) bushes - strangely able to negotiate territory between themselves, yet completely incapable of weighing the risk of interrupting Xena's woodland perambulation - there are plentiful creatures looking for easy prey to fend off. Xena has never had any trouble - in fact, considers it a mixture of weapon maintenance and boredom relief. The hide is also good for trading.

Gabrielle has not the training for swords. Case in point - she had tried to chop a tree with Xena's. The poor thing needed an hour with her whetstone to recover its edge.

Unlike Xena, Gabrielle can cook. And while the intricacies of herbs (of varieties flavourful rather than medicinal, Xena is well versed and acquainted with the latter) and even heating arrangement of firepits are not much use in the face of a charging bandit, she is also master of those dished that requires a degree of skill in preparation. Wrapping and placement, to be sure, but also carving and slicing, and, for some reason, stabbing. Xena honestly cannot see what difference it makes compared to stuffing the rabbit with garlic, but she is not going to complain. It tastes good either way.

It doesn't take long at all to save a village blacksmith (from yet more bandits, this lot without ready access to a stream, by the smell) and get a set of her finest blades in thanks. She even throws in a pot in exchange for a pair of squirrels. A good week, in all.