milliways_bar | (no subject)

There had been yelling, that Saturday morning. Rae's mother had come home from an early grocery-shopping trip to find a vegetarian version of Charlie's sausage-hashbrown pie cooking in the oven, and a ten-year old alone in the kitchen, reading while she waited for it to finish. Charlie had gone to open the coffeehouse hours before Rae woke up, leaving Rae alone in the house, as happened often enough. And, it being a cold, dreary, January day, Rae had wanted something heartier and more warming than cereal with milk for breakfast.

Rae had shown her irate mother that everything was all right, that she had been extra-careful and safe while chopping onions and shredding potatoes, chopping up kale and cooking everything (which hadn't phased her mother a bit), and explained that she'd cooked for herself when left home alone loads of times before and had been just fine (which actually made things worse).

It's just as well that the door to Milliways appeared in the door to Rae's room, where she had been sent. The girl was still hungry, and still smarting - from the assumption that she couldn't do it on her own just as much as from being grounded.

And there was a kitchen, easily within reach now. She wasn't technically leaving her room, since her room didn't deign to show up when she had opened her bedroom door. That isn't her fault at all.

So there is a young girl in the Milliways kitchen, this morning, shredding potatoes using a large cheese-grater and generally illustrating her opinion that adult supervision is something that happens to other people.

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"Oh!" the girl says, intrigued. "I hadn't known."

Potatoes are just... everywhere, to her. Like eggs, and butter, and cheeses.

"What about kale?"

"Kale, we have. And onions too - really everything in your pie except potatoes."

"You've had potatoes here, though, right? You can fry them, or bake them, or boil or mash them, they're really good lots of ways."

Stick'em inna stew?

"Here, yes, several times." He smiles. "I can see why they're a staple, they're very good and filling as well."

"Mm-hm," Rae nods. "People sometimes grate them like this, and fry them in oil and make what are called hashbrowns. Or they can make potato pancakes called latkes, too."

The potatoes are properly squeezed, much dryer now than they were. She sets them aside, and moves to set the oven to pre-heat, and to get the eggs and milk out of the fridge.

"There's lots of foods here that are almost impossible to get back home, nowadays," she says, feeling better referring to the war obliquely than outright saying since the wars started. "What new thing have you tried here that you like the most?"

"Chocolate", he says immediately. "It's unlike anything we have at home, the only sweet things to be had there are fruit and honey."

"Oh! Chocolate!" Rae breathes, almost unable to fathom coming from a world completely ignorant of the best taste in existence.

"Good thing you can come here, then! Chocolate's the best."

Athelstan grins.

"It's one of many things I give thanks for, about this place."

"I'm always thankful for chocolate," the girl grins. "Charlie brings me a package of chocolate pinwheel cookies almost every day."

Much later, Sunshine's secret recipe for Killer Zebras will show a close family relationship to its ancestor, the humble chocolate pinwheel.

"And who is Charlie?" he asks with easy curiosity.