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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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.

"It depends on the design. Some ward against specific Others, like vampires or Weres. Home wards stop people from getting into your house or apartment without an invitation." And some are a bit more enterprising; Yolande had wards on her property that would take notes on whoever (or whatever) got within range.

Peeta leans against the counter, quietly processing what Sunshine has told him for a minute or two. After a while, he guesses that his bread should be ready and he steps over to pull it out of the oven.

As he sets the rolls on a cooling rack, he begins to wonder when the kitchen staff will arrive. Maybe a gift of fresh bread will help ease his way into working here.

"Do you know what time it is?" he asks Sunshine. "The kitchen staff should be getting here soon, right?"

"A little after five?" she guesses before checking her watch. "Five-twenty. So yeah, they probably should." And they might want all their muffin pans in working order. Sunshine starts to rummage around for a plate that she can set her muffins on. Once the pans are emptied and washed - and the counters wiped down - she'll have officially cleaned up after herself, and that should go a long way towards offsetting any grumpiness over her borrowing the facilities in the first place.

Glancing over at Peeta, she asks, "Want to take care of the counters while I find something to put our stuff on?"

"Sure." Peeta grabs some cleaning supplies and starts scrubbing down the counters.

It doesn't take her too long to find a platter large enough to hold their combined offerings. The cranberry muffins have had the most time to cool, so she starts removing those, first, arranging them on the tray with more efficiency than artistry. The banana nut muffin pan is still hot to the touch, so she takes the empty pan to the sink and gives it a cursory scrub (she used paper muffin cups, so there really isn't much to scrape off). Leaving the pan in the drying rack, she dries her hands on her apron and checks the second batch again.

Peeta's wiping down one of the far counters; they didn't use it, as far as he can tell, but he might as well be thorough. He wishes the kitchen had windows. One of his favorite things about working in the bakery - and something that carried over into his baking outside it - was starting work in the pre-dawn dark, when all was still and quiet, and watching the sun crawl up the bakery walls as he worked.

Sunshine is unloading her second batch of muffins by the time Peeta gets back around to that part of the kitchen. He eyes the muffins, sniffing the air curiously.

"What kind are those?" he asks.

Don't even get her started on the miserable lack of sunlight down here. Granted, it's still early enough that the sun isn't even up, yet, but there'd be no knowing if it was. Pity, really, because working here would be an easy solution to her employment issues if spending so much time underground wouldn't make her ill.

"These are banana nut," she says, giving one a little waggle of emphasis before setting it on the tray, "and the others are cranberry oatmeal." She gives the spread another critical once-over before relocating the other empty muffin pan to the sink. "Want to split one of each?" She's been puttering around for long enough sans any real breakfast that she's starting to get hungry, and she would like to make sure they turned out all right. You can never be quite certain when you're using someone else's ingredients.

Peeta returns the cleaning supplies to the cabinet below the sink, and lays his rag out to dry over the sink rim.

"Sure. But - what's a banana nut?" he asks, frowning at the muffins.

Sunshine glances back over her shoulder at him, surprised. But maybe she should have expected something like this - if this universe has herbs that are new to him, having different fruit isn't that outlandish. "The nuts are walnuts," she clarifies, "and banana is a kind of fruit." She sets the second pan in the rack, then heads to the fridge to pull out some more butter. "No bananas in your universe, I take it?" If not, he's definitely going to have to try the real deal.

Walnuts he knows, but bananas? "No, we don't have those."

"Well," she says, "then this'll be a treat."

Thanks to all of her earlier rummaging, it only takes her a moment to pull out two plates and two knives. She returns to the tray, then goes about halving one of each muffin. They all look pretty good, but she still goes ahead and picks the two that are the most wonky-shaped to sacrifice for taste-testing.

"What do you think," she asks as she divvies up the muffins, "should we add some of your bread to the mix?"

The familiar smells of baked goods mingle with the scents of unfamiliar ingredients as Sunshine halves the muffins, and Peeta can't help but take a deep breath.

"We probably should," he answers her. "I've never made this bread before, and I definitely haven't made it with the ingredients here."

She nods, appreciating the concern. It's always a bit questionable, working with ingredients someone else has procured. Honestly, she doesn't expect these muffins to be up to her usual standards, but that doesn't mean they won't be better than what the rebel citizenry are used to.

She goes ahead and halves one of Peeta's little mystery loaves, then sets about slapping butter on her muffins. "Is that rosemary?" she asks, peering curiously at his handiwork.

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peeta_mellark - 2014-01-05 17:32 (UTC) - Expand

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rae_of_sun - 2014-01-05 19:45 (UTC) - Expand

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