Soar, Part 4 - Weekend

Skye had to leave early that evening, because she had promised babysit her little brother when her parents went to the theater that evening. Because this left the girls too little time to celebrate properly, they decided to go to Skye's place to make cookies after their training the next day. They would have a lot of time then, since it was Saturday. So that's what they did, emerging from the changing rooms and heading towards Skye's place together.

"Oooh, it's so chilly today," Annalise said as they came out of the building with the training hall.

"But it's so pretty!" Olivia said, bending down to pick up a colorful maple leaf from the ground. "Look, there's frost on the leaves!"

"Huh, you would've thought the night's frost would've melted away already", Roxie thought out loud. "It is afternoon, already."

"Yeah, but it's only two hours past noon", Skye pointed out. "It's not that warm here. In the sun the frost melts easily by now, but that leaf has been in shade all day."

"The frost is pretty. I like it it hasn't melted yet," Olivia said. Alex laughed.

"Well, you're right at that. It is really pretty," she said, "Just imagine if the whole winter was like this, not any colder, like a long long autumn. You would have the pretty frost on leaves and grass every morning for months."

The others thought about that for a while.

"Yeah, well, I like winter better," Annalise said after a moment, "And besides, there is frost everywhere every morning in winter, you just don't notice it because everything is white with snow any way."

"I like summer best. I don't like the cold," Skye said, frowning, "Do you know how horrible it's to freeze your wings, and how difficult it's to find something to keep them warm? I can't believe no one's developed wing-warmers yet! Or at least I haven't seen any anywhere, and it's not like I know how to make ones myself."

"But if it's never winter, it's never Christmas," Annalise said.

"Or, more importantly, if there's no autumn, it's never Halloween!" Alex said.

"Halloween is kinda great", Skye admitted too. "But can we hurry it up? I really want to get out of the cold."

And so the girls sped up their walk. The walk wasn't long, Skye lived only a kilometer from the training halls, but the girls were already chilly when they got there, sot he first thing they did was make some hot chocolate for everyone.

"Ok," Skye said as everyone was gathered around a table, sipping their chocolates, "What kind of cookies do you want to make? I have the basic dough recipe here, but we can add cocoa powder or chocolate chips or spices or nuts or raisins or dried fruit or really anything to it to make it better."

"Raisin cookies do sound really good," Alex said.

"But chocolate chips are so good!" Olivia objected enthusiastically.

"Would it work if we put both in the cookies? Raisin-chocolate ship cookies?" Roxie asked, uncertain.

"I don't think so..." Annalise said, "It might, but it doesn't sound like a really well working combination. Maybe we could make some chocolate ones and some raisin ones?"

"Split the dough in half? Yeah, that's perfectly doable," Skye said.

"No, I mean make two whole sets of dough so we'll have so much cookies," Annalise smirked.

"Let's make so much cookies!" Olivia agreed.

"So much cookies it is," Alex said, turning to look at Skye, "Assuming you have enough ingredients?"

"I think we do," Skye said, smiling.

And so the girls got to work. A half an hour later the dough was done and the oven was warming up, and the girls were swooping up the dough from the bowls in small (or in some girl's case in a little bigger) balls, pushing them into circles with their thumbs. And not much after that the most amazing smell began to fill the place.

"Ok, here's the first batch!" Skye said to the others "Watch out," she added as she lifted the baking tray out of the oven and onto the table on the other side of the kitchen. Olivia was at her heels, trying to get a taste as soon as Skye put the tray down.

"You can't take any yet," Skye told her as she turned around and saw her friend waiting for the cookies. Olivia's face fell, but Skye explained: "They're still soft coming out of the oven. You'll have to wait for them to cool a little bit, so they'll have time to get hard enough to pick up. And so you don't burn your fingers."

"Okay," Olivia said, and went back to the table with the others as Skye put the second tray into the oven.

"Meanwhile," Alex began, "We could talk about tomorrow. How long do we want to train tomorrow? The halls are open from noon to five. I assume we want to go there right away when it opens, so we're not stuck once again stuck training in one of the small rooms like that one time because all the ones big enough for us are occupied?"

"Yeah, that sounds good," Annalise said, "I think we'll go in then and train for as long as we have the energy. Meaning at least two hours. Sound good?"

The other girls nodded.

"Ok, so what are the things we noticed today that need the most work?" Roxie asked the others.

"That one twist I'm supposed to do," Annalise said.

"Yeah, the same for me," Alex said.

"We need to figure out the timing for that one catching thing with Skye," Olivia said, "I don't want to accidentally fall to the floor from high up there. That's why I've only trained it low so far."

"Ok, this is good," Roxie said. "This is how we get better."

"But there is surprisingly little stuff that we need to pay special attention to," Skye said, "But we do still need practise with the entire choreography, going through it in one take."

This went on for a while, the girls planning the practise for the next day. The next batch of cookies being done distracted them from that, though, and they decided to watch a movie to go with the cookies that were finally cool enough to eat. In the end the girls ended up curled on the couch with a lot of cookies for the entire evening, happy and excited about the following day and the new goals that had suddenly become possible.
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And this is why I don't write normal. Because it's boring. And they're making cookies again. Didn't someone already make cookies in one of our stories? Carol, maybe?

Anyway. Your topic for Monday (it's Friday now, right?) is Duck.

~matu