bigapplesauce | My muffin top is all that / whole grain, low fat [closed]

Current Music: April 25th, 2013, very early (backdated)

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My muffin top is all that / whole grain, low fat [closed]

It's o'dark thirty, and Sunshine is in the base's cafeteria, making muffins like it's her job, because it used to be. Her hair is in a messy bun and her face is streaked with flour, but she's in… well, it's probably the best mood she's been in since she got here.

It's been a week since she arrived, but her internal clock is still set to coffeehouse hours. She woke up a little before four, stared at her ceiling in disgust for a few minutes, and then rolled out of bed and came to the one place she knows that has a decently-equipped kitchen. She is going to make some goddamn muffins, and that's that.

This is the first time she's used the place, and it's deserted… so whether it turns out to actually be all that decent remains to be seen. There's no one to introduce her to the ovens and their various quirks, and she's had to track down the equipment and ingredients she needs via intuition and guesswork. She sort of prefers it this way, though. She's used to being queen of her domain, not having some other baker breathing down her neck while she works. (Okay, so this isn't her domain - but as long as no one else is here, she doesn't feel so much like a trespasser.)

Speaking of, she figures she might have an hour before the quote-unquote real cooks arrive to make the real breakfast. But that's enough time for her to turn out a few trays of excellent muffins, so how upset could they really be if they find her here? She's basically just making their jobs easier, right?

Never mind that she's also that desperate for a little bit of her old routine. Well, if she wants to land another gig in an above-ground bakery, she's going to need a resume, which will mean borrowing these facilities, anyway. She's just being… proactive. And they're pretty well-stocked, so it's not like she's using up the last of their anything.

Yes. This is totally fine.

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"Ah." Peeta blinks at her, not all that surprised anymore to hear unfamiliar and strange words pour out of people's mouths when asked about their worlds. It seems he is in the minority coming from a world where there is nothing supernatural.

As he arranges his freshly formed loaves on a baking sheet, he throws her a wry smile. "It's my third day."

She's going to go ahead and infer that Peeta's universe is a bit less Other-filled. The only consolation she has for her lack of wards is that they aren't so necessary, here, but she can only follow that train of thought so far before it hits You Live In A Building Full Of Rifties Station. Yeah, the overwhelming majority of the people on this island are entirely free of magic or Other-related abnormalities, but her apartment is surrounded by the minority of those who aren't.

Plus, while many wards are designed to keep out specifically supernatural threats, there are plenty that are there to stop regular joes from picking your lock or wedging open your window. A properly warded house - or apartment - is going to keep out anyone you don't go out of your way to invite in. A few extra deadbolts are pretty goddamn paltry by comparison.

"Only three days?" she asks, opening the oven door and sliding in the second muffin pan. Poor kid. Granted, they're both in the same boat, here, but it's got to be a bit harder on a teenager than it is on her. She gives the first muffin pan an assessing once-over and concludes that they still have a little ways to go before closing the oven and turning to Peeta. "I'd offer you sage advice, but…" she doesn't have any.

She wanders over to inspect his handiwork, then nods curiously. "I've never seen that shape before."

"It's common in one part of my country," he explains. "I don't know all the herbs and spices they have here, so I just picked out a few I thought would go well together. They reminded me of this bread, so I thought I'd shape it the same, too."

Peeta sighs a little. The bread looks mostly the same. It's the wrong color, and the taste won't be exactly right, but the shape is identical. It's a metaphor for everything here. Most of the people he has met look normal enough - they look like they could have come from anywhere in Panem - but then they talk about worlds with magic and vampires and gods.

Everything is almost but not quite and somehow that makes it all worse.

"Huh." There's something that hadn't occurred to her: that this universe might have more ingredients. The natural world hasn't struck her as all that different - even the almost-tame animals in the park remind her of the desperately friendly creatures that frequent Old Town. The only real difference there is circumstantial: the animals in Old Town moved into the city because the wild got too dicey during the Wars, whereas these animals don't have a conveniently located 'wild' to go back to. The Park is the closest thing the island has to wilderness.

So yeah, the natural world seems to match up. It's the Others that are mostly absent except for the rift.

She catches his little sigh, and comes to a decision. Maybe it's because he reminds her of Paulie, or maybe it's because cheering him up will give her something to focus on besides her own anxiety. "Okay. If you teach me how to make stuff from your universe, I'll teach you how to make the stuff I normally serve at the coffeehouse: Cinnamon Rolls as Big as Your Head and so on." She raises her eyebrows, hoping to convey that this is an offer she doesn't make for just anyone. Even Paulie had to work for it before she let him in on the secret of Bitter Chocolate Death. "Toxic sugar concoctions are my specialty."

Peeta catches the uniqueness of the offer and appreciates it, baker to baker and riftie to riftie. He eyes Sunshine as he walks a full tray over to one of the other ovens, wondering about her. He slides the tray in, sets the timer, and turns back to her.

He smiles. "Deal." As he starts to gather up his equipment to be cleaned, a thought occurs to him. "My baking is pretty good, but my decorating is really good," he says, a grin spreading across his face. "You teach me how to make your specialties, I'll throw in my decorating secrets, too?"

She raises her eyebrows, intrigued. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn't be interested: life is too short for her to spend three hours piping frosting onto one cake. But her calendar is currently wide open thanks to her lack of a job, and if Peeta has some tricks that aren't too time consuming, it can't hurt to learn. "Sure," she agrees, returning the smile as she piles her used utensils into a bowl. "I don't normally go in for decorating, so I'm a blank slate."

Peeta's pleased that he'll get to teach on top of learning new recipes. Though he enjoys teaching, he rarely gets the opportunity to do so. And between working with Sunshine and offering his knowledge to the base's kitchen staff, he should be able to kill a lot of time.

He mostly ignores the practical voice in the back of his head assuring him that learning new skills - and getting to practice his own in this new environment - will be beneficial when he needs to look for a job. Thinking in the long term isn't something he wants to do. At all.

At the sink, Peeta surveys their combined bowls and utensils. He meets Sunshine's eyes. "I wash, you dry?" he offers.

"Deal," she echoes, nodding. She'll have to check her muffins in a minute, but there's a drying rack, so it shouldn't matter if she has to step away for the few seconds it'll take to get the first pan out of the oven and onto the stove to cool.

They work in companionable silence for a few minutes before she ventures, "So, no magic where you're from, I take it." She gets that the only reason this universe has that stuff is because the rift keeps spitting it out, but it's still weird to think of coming from a world with nothing Other-related.

"None," Peeta confirms. "From what I've heard so far, it seems like I'm in the minority there. Does everyone have magic where you're from?" he asks, thinking of Daine and her world.

"There aren't that many magic-handlers," she says, "and even fewer good ones. But most towns will have a decent wardskeeper or two, and you can get charms anywhere." They might not be great charms, and they might not last very long before they start to go a bit mental, but they're not hard to find.

Her nose informs her that the first pan of muffins is done, so she throws her dishtowel over her shoulder, grabs a potholder from beside the oven, and fishes them out. She gives the muffins a critical look - they're not dead ringers for what she'd have made back home (in part because the rebels don't take flour quality as seriously as she does), but they'll probably taste fine to less discerning people than her. She sets the pan on the stovetop to cool, then returns to the sink.

"Some partbloods have a little magic, too - or what looks like magic, anyway. Peris, especially."

Peeta watches Sunshine remove the muffins and makes a mental note to check his bread soon. Back home, he wouldn't need to - he knows his ovens so well, and he doesn't have a reason to burn bread anymore - but since he's never used this particular oven, it's better to play it safe.

He frowns at her explanation of the magic in her world. "Partbloods? Peris?" he asks in confusion.

"People with demon or peri blood," she clarifies. "If you have enough peri blood, you might be able to, say, stitch a seam that never unravels. It's usually just one little, specific thing like that. Mary, one of our waitresses, has peri blood. The coffee she pours is always hot, just because she poured it." And the regulars all know it, too, so there's definitely a marked preference for Mary when it comes to having their cups topped off.

"Huh." It's an odd image, the world Sunshine's words paint, but Peeta knows that, magic or no, Panem would be considered just as strange. He gives Sunshine an appraising and curious look from the corner of his eye as he finishes with the last bowl and rinses out the sink.

"Do you have any magic?"

Sunshines gives a little shrug as she dries the bowl. There's no need for her to go into her affinity (or counteraffinity), but it's probably safe to tell him about the transmutation. She only does little stuff, anyway, so it's more novel than off-putting - especially to someone new to the whole idea.

"I can transmute little things. Nothing fancy." She remembers standing in an elementary school classroom, watching a magic-handling peer showing off, and acting as if she was wholly incapable of doing such little tricks, herself.

Changing things just for the sake of it isn't something she'd normally do. But then again, she hasn't done much since she got here besides give a cursory demonstration to the higher-ups, and Peeta's never seen anything, from the sounds of it. "I can show you, if you want."

Peeta's eyebrows rise at that. The opportunity to see magic? He isn't going to pass that up, especially if it's being offered.

"Sure."

There's a little container of toothpicks near the ovens, and Sunshine pulls one out and lets it rest in the palm of one hand. "So, we have a toothpick: lightweight and small enough to fit between my hands." She cups her hands together, hiding the toothpick from view, then looks at Peeta. "So, what else would be lightweight and small?" He might as well pick; then he'll be less likely to think this is just sleight-of-hand.

"How about a match?" Peeta offers, latching on to the first thing that comes to mind.

That's an easy enough switch to make; she might have gone with 'blade of grass' or 'feather.' Then again, she's more familiar with this than Peeta - and she can do those other ones, too. It only takes a comparatively light nudge for her to transmute the toothpick (if she'd been out in full sunlight instead of underground, it would have been easier still), and then she opens her hands to reveal a single, paper matchstick.

"Ta-da," she says with a wry smile.

Peeta's mouth drops open when Sunshine reveals the matchstick. As he gingerly plucks it from her hands, a grin spreads across his face.

"So, the things you" - Peeta searches his memory for the word Sunshine used - "transmute, do they have to be the same size and weight when you change them?"

"It tends to work out that way," she says, smiling at his reaction. "The weight might not be constant, but it's not going to change that much… especially since I've never transmuted anything too large not to fit between my hands." Which makes size sort of irrelevant, though the overall mass probably doesn't fluctuate much.

She motions for the matchstick back, then closes her hands around it again. This time, when she opens her hands, there is a small, yellow aspen leaf on her palm. "Lighter things are easier to shift than dense things. Worked metal is the hardest."

The leaf is even more impressive than the matchstick. Peeta takes it from Sunshine and holds it up, studying the way the light illuminates the veins. It's a real leaf, a real leaf that just appeared in Sunshine's hands, that she made.

"Yeah, there's definitely nothing like this is my world," he says with a huff of laughter.

Handing the leaf back, he heads over to the oven to check his rolls. They're almost done, but not quite, and he shuts the door on them.

Peeta's oven check reminds her that she should be getting her second batch of muffins out. Sunshine turns the leaf back into a toothpick and says the words her grandmother taught her - words to settle, and express gratitude. Then she pops the toothpick back with the rest and goes to pull out the banana nut muffins.

"Well, with transmutation, you're not missing much," she says. It's not useless, but it doesn't often come in handy. "Wards, though… it's a damn shame there aren't any good ones here."

Peeta frowns. "Wards? Are those like protections?"

"Exactly," Sunshine nods as she inspects the second batch of muffins. "Some work better than others, but any ward is better than nothing."

"What do wards do?" he asks, curious.

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