Two Lines on the Same Page

I woke before the station bell and decided that, for once, I could contribute something without anyone needing to fill out a form about it.

Brindlehook’s kitchen was dark except for the pale window and the coals Mallow Quoin had left banked overnight. I found oats, dried apples, a kettle, and a wooden spoon almost as long as my foreleg. Cooking, I reasoned, was just a series of small tasks performed in the right order. I had spent years running roleplaying games. I could handle a recipe.

The recipe did not account for being a unicorn.

I levitated the kettle. It rose cleanly. That part went well enough to make me overconfident, which is how most disasters get their first level in the door. I tried to hold the spoon in one field and lift the oats in another. The spoon drifted sideways, tapped the pot, and scattered a pale little arc of oats across the counter.

I stared at the mess. “The party has encountered a hostile breakfast.”

Mallow stood in the doorway, mane mussed from sleep, and surveyed the scene. She took in my levitating spoon, the oats, and my expression.

“Does it have a weakness?” she asked, setting a bowl beside the pot.

“An adventurer with a broom, probably.”

She fetched one from the corner and handed it over. I swept up the oats with my hooves, then set the spoon down and returned to the pot with just one bit of magic at a time. The lesson from Fennel’s bindery had not been about cooking, but it had been about force. I tried to hold the pot steady rather than grip it as if it planned to escape.

When the horn-warmth began, I let the pot rest on the stove and waited. Mallow stirred the oats while I cut the dried apples with a small kitchen knife. My balance still needed watching whenever I bent down, but the counter was solid beneath my forelegs and there was no need to hurry. By the time the others came in, the oats were thick, the apples were uneven, and nothing had caught fire.

Shining Shield took one spoonful and considered it with the grave attention of a guard examining a suspect’s credentials.

“Edible,” he concluded, drawing the bowl closer.

“I’ll take it. My first official rating.”

Twilight came in with her notes tucked under one foreleg. She paused at the stove, then looked at the bowls already set out.

“You made breakfast?”

“I made a negotiation with breakfast. Mallow provided most of the diplomacy.”

Mallow placed another bowl on the table. “He did the sweeping.”