The Bar at the End of the Universe

Anyone out in the vicinity of the lake and forest may hear the sounds of a fight coming from a nearby clearing. Sunshine is out in the cleared circle where she tends to practice, dodging and blocking the concentrated attacks of two vaguely-humanoid figures constructed of mud and stone, animated by magic. Their size and construction belies their speed, for they are very fast, and Rae is grimed with dirt, her cut-short hair mussed and wet with sweat, breathing hard with the effort it takes to stay beyond their reach until she can strike.

Even though she usually prefers the warmth of summer, the lack of breeze in the forest is making the heat nearly intolerable. But she isn't letting herself stop for water until she takes them both down. The whole point was to make that difficult, after all. It doesn't do her any good to go easy on herself.

Something of the tension Sunshine carries, though nowhere near all of it, lessens as she realizes the door opened where she needed it to go. She comes in quickly, smelling of lilly-of-the-valley soap and heading for the kitchen. She had put her hair up wet after her too-hot shower, and already it has dampened the back of her dark purple tanktop all the way down to the waistband of her shorts. The skin of her face, neck, shoulders, arms, legs and bare feet are still pink of the hot water and perhaps too-thorough scrubbing, at least where bruises aren't purpling the skin to match the her tanktop.

Distracted or seeking distraction, she takes down mixing bowls and measuring cups from the kitchen cabinets. They come down on the counter with a clatter perhaps louder than it should be, and it upsets some of the rats. She mutters her apologies, trying to focus, trying not to focus, trying to think of what to make. She has to make something. Anything, really, to get the smell of blood and death out of her lungs. Something strongly scented. Strongly flavored. Comfort. Chocolate.

Catching on that point but having no plan beyond it, the distressed baker starts in on melting dark chocolate chips in a double-boiler on the stove, and pouring whipping cream into a mixing bowl to start some manner of attempted salvation of a wretched night.

So what if it'll be four a.m. soon? She couldn't sleep if she tried.

(ooc: However, it is nearly 1am for the mun, and she really must try and sleep. Tags will be gotten tomorrow! Mun is here! Mun is asleep again! <3333)

There's a lovely little nook in the Milliways' library that Sunshine is quite fond of. A couple of high-backed chairs sit to either side of a low table, and a tall window lets in all the afternoon sunlight you might want. It is a rather wet spring afternoon out there right now, which may explain some of why Sunshine herself is indoors.

She is curled up in one of the chairs, a stack of language textbooks in a pile on the table, waiting for her attention. Her current book of interest actually had an interactive CD with it, which she is listening to, headphone on as she sounds out words and phrases, rewinding and trying again when the pronunciation is difficult for her to manage.

While she knows how to use magic to translate languages she doesn't speak, such a shortcut doesn't give the same depth of understanding as actually knowing the language. There is never the same satisfaction with a chocolate cake you bought as there is with a chocolate cake you made.

Here is a smell that has not graced Milliways in far too long.

The scent of freshly-baked cinnamon rolls is wafting temptingly through the kitchen door, spreading the comforting smells of hot, soft yeast dough still steaming from the oven, the sweet warmth of cinnamon-sugar and freshly-made vanilla icing spreading across each soft spiral and dribbling into doughy crevasses.

Sunshine's hair has been cropped short at chin-length, and her hands and neck still show signs of the burns that kept her from her baking - kept her from most things, really - for a couple of weeks, but they are usable again. This morning and early afternoon has shown that to be true. She has enjoyed getting to bake again, immersing herself in the task at hand, feeling the springy dough beneath her palms instead of pain in every movement, catching up on the latest news around the bar from Holly and the other kitchen staff.

Now Rae is settling into the process of separating out rolls from the baking sheet, settling them on serving plates to be delivered to people in thanks for their help and care while things were so fraught.

(Things are still a little fraught, but not nearly as much. That's not nothing.)