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Operation Squad Picnic was in potential jeopardy. Adora had been staring the gigantic oven up and down for minutes upon precious minutes, to no avail. She was just about to give up and go find help - without (she had to be careful) bumping into Catra, who unfortunately loved prowling the corridors late at night like some broody stray - when the door to the Bright Moon palace kitchen was suddenly flung open.
Glimmer, tottering at the doorway with a sack of supplies in her arms, quietly shrieked when she saw her. “Adora! Oh, sh- it’s you. You’re here already. I thought you wouldn’t want to start without me.”
Which was a very fair assumption. But first - Adora hushed her quickly and gestured for her to close the door.
“Ah, midnight baking...” There was tender delight in Glimmer’s eyes when she finally found her bearings and took the scene in, at which Adora’s heart couldn’t help but warm. Then Glimmer planted one hand on her hip and sighed. “Right! So, what is it that you’re gonna - what’s… what’s that? ”
Adora didn’t need to follow Glimmer’s gaze to be able to answer her. She hopped back to the shiny marbled counter, wringing her hands, keeping her voice low and hoping Glimmer would remember to follow suit. “They’re going to be, uh, ration bars.”
“Catra wants ration bars?! ”
“Uff, she doesn’t want anything! I’s a surprise, remember - ”
They both hushed themselves almost immediately, and Glimmer sniffed dubiously instead as she eyed the mixing bowl of grey sludge. But it was clear after a moment that she was too preoccupied to unleash the squicked out indignation that Adora had been preparing to weather.
Glimmer rolled up the sleeves of her fluffy pajama robe before spreading the contents of her bag over the counter. The tension Adora felt was clearly reflected in her; her movements quick and alert.
This was their only shot to rustle up some surprise additions to the squad picnic tomorrow. It’s not that it was a particularly special occasion or anything - but Catra was just about to complete her specially-designed meditation course, and Bow had finally returned from a two-week-long ‘boys’ voyage’ on Sea Hawk’s boat. Glimmer had whispered that it would be a nice gesture, after going through Bow’s quick list of their standard picnic fare - summer dumplings, cookie cake, berryade, a few other things that were always somewhere in the pantry - and then all of a sudden they were hooked on the idea, determined to sneak something special in at whatever cost.
Things could be going better. Perfurma’s spa night plans had fallen through after she realised she had forgotten to distill more sugarmint oil to make her face masks. Which meant that Adora and Glimmer could no longer count on that to keep Catra and Bow occupied after dinner.
“Where are the others?” Adora chanced, hoping Glimmer’s agitation was just the general adrenaline and not the result of something she’d seen out there.
“They’re all up in Scorpia’s room playing games. I mean, I’d give it a half hour before someone gets sick of losing to Catra - but I told Scorpia,” Glimmer said, hush-hush, “to try and make sure Bow and Catra don’t come in here. Just, I don’t think they have any snacks up there. And you know Bow… tonight might be one of his midnight snack nights.” She pouted. It was lucky enough that Catra tended to stick to the corridors if she came down at bedtime, but pretty often, a tall glass of milk was just what Bow needed for a good night’s sleep. The best they could hope was that sleep wouldn’t be on his mind anytime soon, and they’d be out of here before he ever came in.
With a bit of luck, they could pull this off. From the time on the fancy oven clock, Adora figured they had an hour tops. She only needed five more for prep, twenty to bake (unless the preheating business was actually more important than it sounded), and another five to slice it all up into the bars and make sure she hadn’t left a trace. Glimmer -
She peered with interest at the supplies Glimmer was quickly fashioning into a dough. “So what are you making? Oh, and could you please turn the oven on?” She shrugged helplessly behind her.
Glimmer did so - with magic - before Adora knew she’d even heard her. The light dinged on behind them, bathing the starkly lit kitchen in a more mellow silver. The bar sludge looked pretty appetising in the light, even among all the shiny Royal Utensils. Glimmer unfolded a neat piece of notepaper from the bottom of the bag, which she scrutinised with determination in her brow before handing it off to Adora.
“So!” She huffed low, as if preparing to debrief a daunting mission, “I got this recipe from George and Lance for these cinnamallow pie bombs but I -” One look at Adora’s completely unenthused expression, and she backtracked seamlessly. “Marshmallows - yeah, you love those, remember - flavoured with cinnamon. Inside a ball of pie dough. You bake them until it’s all melty, and then when you bite into them - boom , it all comes out.”
It was a little disappointing that the ‘bomb’ part didn’t amount to more, but Adora let it slide. It sounded perfectly doable, good.
But Glimmer continued, “I got the recipe from George and Lance because Bow always used to rave about it… But now I’m not sure it’s such a good idea.” The bowl for her cinnamallow clanged as she set it down with undue force. “It’s what he misses about home - it’s probably not going to come out how he remembers it, right?”
The powdered sugar puffed as she halfheartedly poured it into some gleaming metal scales.
Adora mulled it over as she pulled her own bowl of sludge back towards her, giving it a final, pensive swirl. The ache in her arm from working the dense mixture earlier returned swiftly - baking was serious business, huh? She wondered how to be diplomatic with Glimmer here. There was no time for second guessing now, she needed to see that. Yet now that she’d brought it up…
“I have no idea if these bars are gonna be any good either,” she said solemnly, only recognising the admission as she voiced it. “I mean, they didn’t exactly have recipe books in the Fright Zone. Luckily, Scorpia knew this one by heart… said it was Catra’s favourite and all. I hope it’s not a weird thing to bring tomorrow.” She gave Glimmer a puckish smile. “...And I was just going to tell you that you’re way overthinking a little baking.”
“Hey! Baking is serious business! You would know if you ever cared to join me before…”
Adora’s merry laugh at that seemed to entice Glimmer’s own. They continued in companionable silence for a while, Adora pouring the sludge into the first tray she found and evening it out - it had to be admitted, very painstakingly - with a spatula that was both colours of Glimmer’s hair.
Glimmer, on the other hand, worked expertly . She had a deliciously cinnamon-smelling bowl of melted marshmallow mix in minutes. The main elements prepared, she loosened a little; and with the dough back in her hands to channel her tension into, she turned her attention back to Adora, her nose all screwed up.
“So. Ration bars ?”
Adora spared a witherling little glance for her, daring her to protest. “She actually likes them, okay? We’ve been… talking a lot about when we were kids. All the stuff we used to do.”
Although her nose remained upturned, Glimmer’s eyes did soften a little. She still cringed in disbelief, shaking her head as she pulled the dough in two, then four and six. “You’re such weirdos. I thought it was just you , Adora, but ever since Scorpia and Catra moved in, I feel like I should have cut you some more slack.”
Then she stared on expectantly - like she could tell Adora had more to say, even if Adora didn’t know it herself until she saw that look.
“It wasn’t all bad, you know?” She smiled absently as she gently jiggled the tray to get an even finish. “With the Horde, I mean.”
Glimmer replied sagely, with unexpected insight. “It’s where all your memories are. So how could it be?”
“Things are so different now…” Adora kept her eyes on the tray, poking at some of the mealier parts of the sludge. “It’s a crazy thing to miss, right? But… I do feel kind of nostalgic - about some things.”
She returned Glimmer’s understanding smile and slipped her tray into the oven without further ado. Then, once she had watched Glimmer tip a cup’s worth of glittering sugar sprinkles into the cinamallow mix, she dug into the drawer of decorations to assist.
Adora gasped, pulling out a tray of sugary pink daisies. “Bow loves these flowers. You should put these on. He’s going to love them,” she said again, and smirked as she swiped a bit of cinamallow off the rim of the bowl. “...I mean, if he ever gets the chance to get his hands on them.”
Glimmer was surprisingly red. “It’s like… I keep wanting to do all this stuff for him.”
Adora considered the thought, and finding how much it resonated with her, became unsure how to reply. “Well, I don’t think that’s a bad thing in anyone’s book.” She shook her head and laughed, picking and arranging the sugar flowers in a neat, methodical row, mostly for something to do.
The ration bars were going to look woefully underdecorated next to the pie bombs (and the rest of the stuff they’d prepared for tomorrow, which might have been Glimmer’s main grievance with them) - but sprucing them up would have been missing the point.
The rest of the hour passed without incident, apart from one instance where one of the night guards came in to refill their water bottle, and Glimmer and Adora both shot up so fast that they dropped it and it shattered.
-
“Psst, Catra,” Bow peered over Catra’s shoulder. “How’s it coming along?”
He grinned eagerly as Catra, sitting cross-legged on the carpet, held the circlet out before her and considered it, sucking her lip in and narrowing her eyes. She shrugged, raising her brows at him. “Pretty good, huh?”
Bow nodded vigorously. He had been a little concerned that the waxy blossoms were too fat for a flower crown, but following his enthusiastic tutorial, Catra had fixed them into one with considerable skill. She’d taken her time with the new craft, working keenly to figure out where it gave, and she had an amazing result to show for it. He liked that a lot about Catra. The gold wire she chose gleamed neatly where it framed and twisted around the blue petals, accented by Bow’s favourite white bubble roses.
He had been nursing this idea since Sea Hawk’s ship first moored on the Plumerian island that they camped on near the end of the trip last week. Bright wild flowers sprouted in clusters in every direction, and they’d had to do a little bit of gardening before they could lay out their bedrolls. Bow began weaving a crown for Glimmer before they had even turned in for the day, working by the campfire light while Kyle provided terrific renditions of his best stories of the Fright Zone. And then when he woke up the next morning, he saw the bluest flowers the colour of Adora’s eyes, so he couldn’t resist grabbing a bunch of those either.
“She’ll love it!” He lifted his hand to high-five Catra, who deadpanned, “It’ll cover her forehead perfectly,” before tittering along with him. Scorpia glanced up with a twinkle of a smile from where she had planted herself right in front of the door. The half-finished crown held delicately between her pincers was also coming along well, Bow noted with pleasure. She’d probably be asking him for another pointer any minute.
Once it had become clear that Glimmer and Adora weren’t coming to join the games, Bow had pulled out the craft box and asked Scorpia to make sure they didn’t make it through his bedroom door if they came up. “Oh, you got it, bud!” Scorpia had grinned, eyes gleaming with a conspiratorial light.
She was so enamoured of the craft drawer when it came out - Bow was elated to see that - that he made sure to bring her all the spare flowers and some supplies so that she could make her own flower crown while she stood (now sat) guard. Scorpia’s relaxed humming went a good way to soothing his pricked ears as they worked.
Catra brought the pliers and scissors to Adora’s crown again a few times, before she was completely happy with it (Bow had a feeling it would see a couple more adjustments before tomorrow.) Then she placed it next to Glimmer’s, where it lay on the windowsill in all its glory - deep magenta blossoms with shimmering spots of silver on the petals and in the wiring.
He blushed to think of her wearing it, even though he’d probably made over a dozen flower crowns for her before. He couldn’t wait for the picnic tomorrow.