take-out treats

What’s the baker’s equivalent of a gardener’s green thumb?

Whatever it is, Breakfast was certainly lacking such a thing on her hooved paws, and the bun whose laugh and good-natured grin was filling her bunPhone’s speakers and screen, respectively, had the gall to be born with both. If Quince weren’t so damn charming, Breakfast might have blamed her personally for the smoke filling her oven and dead houseplants on her windowsill. Instead, she flipped the phone’s camera to show the destruction in her kitchen. Flour everywhere, smoke (and not the fun kind, to be clear) filling the air, and a couple of vividly hued impups examining the scene with wagging tails, blissfully unaware of how much cleaning their owner had ahead of her.

Quince’s laughter grew exponentially as Breakfast’s mood reached lower and lower depths. At this rate, her temper might break a hole in the Burrowgatory and dip straight into hell.

“Can you tell me how to fix this?” she whined, taking a cloth to pick up the tray of what was supposed to be the cake portion of an ube roll. Tilting the phone and tray, she displayed it for the camera. “Please!” The pleasant purple color of the batter had turned a sticky, tarred black in the oven.

“You know, I think this can still be saved,” Quince said as Breakfast flipped her phone’s camera back to herself. “You said it was supposed to be a treat for the babies, right?” Breakfast nodded tearfully, looking down at Strawbaby and Raspbaby, whose ears perked at the mention but clearly had no understanding of why the apartment smelled like sin (and, again, not the fun kind).

Hold on, little impups, they could still sort this out. Evidently.

“Right,” Breakfast replied with a decisive nod.

“I certainly can’t leave the imps out in the cold like that,” Quince added with another stifled snort, covering her mouth as if Breakfast didn’t know she was laughing at the cloud of smoke the video call displayed around her. “I’m– pft– I’m on my way.”

To her credit, Quince made it there in record time, though not quite with the arsenal in hand that Breakfast had expected. She carried with her a bag bearing the logo of– Dan’s Dango shop? 

“I thought you said that you could fix the ube roll,” Breakfast said, staring the bag down just as intently as the imps trotting over to her ankles to also investigate.

“Oh,” Quince replied, looking from Breakfast to the bag in her hand. “No, I meant that we could save snack time, not the ube roll. That’s beyond us now.” A small huff of air came from the bun, but Quince’s next words won her over. “I picked you up some, too.”

Maybe… snack time could be saved, after all. “Alright, come on in,” Breakfast sighed, allowing Quince to come inside. “Sorry if it’s still a little smoky. I tried to air it out.” Raspbaby and Strawbaby sniffed at Quince’s boots as she set the bag down to take them off, but the bag in question quickly became their prime motivation, the two impups pawing at the paper impatiently.

“It’s not so bad,” Quince replied. She fortunately plucked the bag back up before either of the pair could actually misbehave too badly. “When I first picked up cooking, you should have seen some of the messes I came up with. Hutch would–”

Breakfast visibly leaned in, but Quince was quick to catch herself and change the subject. “Anyway. Who’s hungry?” She set the bag down on one of the only spaces left on Breakfast’s kitchen counter not occupied with some mess or another.

Strawbaby made a small yip of a sound in reply, followed in short order by Raspbaby. “Thanks for bringing them treats, really,” Breakfast said, taking one of the boxes from the bag to find a watermelon and raspberry flavored dango for the respective pair. “Care to do the honors?”

“Always,” Quince hummed, taking a stick in each hand to offer to the excited impups while Breakfast took a dango from the bag for herself. Baking failures worked up quite the appetite, as it were. One bite was enough to make the whole lousy afternoon float away, even as she was sitting on a stool at her kitchen counter surrounded by evidence of said afternoon. She grinned regardless as she chewed it over.

“Their faces are so cute as they chow down,” Quince added. “I love their little smiles.”

Breakfast looked up from the dumpling, wondering to herself if impups really displayed the range of emotion that Quince was talking about? They sure seemed to be enjoying their dango, the pair practically inhaling the dumplings they were offered, but it was hard to tell if they were smiling.

Ah, well.

“Next time I make an ube roll, I’m calling you up first.”

“Yeah… that’s for the best.”

Quince took the two completely cleaned off dango sticks with her to the trash bin, ignoring the little paws of the two impups at her legs, already begging for more. “Almost done, Breakfast? We have a mess on our hands to clean up.”

Breakfast spun around so fast that she nearly choked on her last dumpling. “You’re going to help?”

Quince placed her hands on her hips and beamed. “Of course! Then we’ll raid your pantry to see what else we can whip up for the babies. Look at the poor things. They’re starving.”

The two imps turned their attention to their owner, each with dramatic impuppy eyes. They were certainly not starving, but the afternoon was looking too bright now for Breakfast to correct her on it.