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“I have a surprise for you, my heart,” Halsin said, perching on the arm of Linda’s chair.
Linda looked up from her book, one of the few personal indulgences she allowed herself. He knew without looking around that she’d already swept and completed any number of other self-appointed cleaning tasks this morning, ever vigilant of dust and dirt, her mortal enemy.
“What is it?” she asked, leaning into his touch.
“Close your eyes and hold out your hand.”
She gave him an amused look and obeyed, and into her outstretched palm he dropped a small brown bottle, tightly sealed so as not to lose the precious liquid contained within. She opened her eyes and raised her eyebrows in curiosity.
“Another of your ‘experiments?’” she teased, referring to his workshop filled with dried herbs and tinctures.
“Not quite,” he replied. “Smell it.”
Her lips curled into a smile as she carefully pulled the cork and brought the opened bottle under her nose. She lit up in delight when she took a whiff.
“Halsin! You got vanilla extract?! Where did you even find it?”
A pleased flush crept across his cheeks as he trailed his fingers along the back of her neck and through the silver briar-cloud of her hair. “I made it for you. I found a suitable location for the orchids and helped them to grow and harvested the beans when they were ready.”
Linda corked the bottle and set it aside before reaching up to draw him in for a kiss. “My big strong bear has a sneaky side. I can’t believe you managed to keep that hidden from me!”
“I wanted to surprise you,” he replied, and pulled back to look into her eyes. “You’re pleased, then?”
“Pleased? Halsin, it’s amazing! We can finally have proper French toast! And–” she cast a glance toward the window and the slate-grey sky beyond– “I can bake real cookies with the kids! I’ve been wanting to bake with them for ages, you know, but–”
She waved a hand with a dismissive sigh, and he knew she was thinking about all they’d endured since leaving Baldur’s Gate and settling in New Reithwin, the wild and wonderful lives they’d built with their bare hands and considerable determination. She had never complained; she’d simply picked up the raggedy old broom Wyll had found in the wilderness for her and used it to beat back the dust and gloom until their new home met her exacting standards. He was certain she did not realize how much hope she gave the refugees simply by being herself.
She untangled herself from his grasp and stood. “I’ll go find them now. Care to join?”
“I’ll be along soon. I just have a few things to finish up first.”
Raised childish voices floated out of the kitchen in greeting as Halsin approached, followed by Linda’s lilting, soothing voice, wrapped in kindness and patience in the way it always was when she spoke to the children. He lingered outside the doorway, knowing his presence would only add to the chaos, and suppressed a smile at the memory of the last time he’d joined Linda and the children in the kitchen, which had ended with her strict admonishment that he was never to take his bear form inside her kitchen again.
And it was her kitchen, she’d made certain of that, though he knew it sorely lacked the comforts from her world that she was accustomed to. He peeked around the corner to see her holding court, commanding the children’s attention in that brisk, efficient way of hers. His heart did a flip at the sight of her, the lines around her silver eyes creased in mirth, cheeks pinkened in the warm room, and a streak of flour across her forehead that he suspected she did not know was there.
She was beautiful and radiant… and a little frazzled-looking, if he was honest. The children were more wound-up than usual, perhaps a combination of being cooped up against the cold outside and the excitement of finally making sweet treats with Linda, but she was taking it in stride, currently mediating a dispute over who should be allowed to crack the eggs.
“Umi gathered them, so Umi should get to crack them,” she said, and raised an eyebrow at the resulting groan. “Ide can scramble. Silfy, you can pour the milk, and Mattis, I’ll need your muscles to form the dough.”
Yenna bounced up and down, her fiery hair flopping in her eyes. “What about me? What about me?”
Linda gave her a conspiratorial smile. “You are in charge of helping me with the secret ingredient.”
The girl’s eyes went wide as Linda produced the small bottle of vanilla extract and solemnly placed it in her hand. “What is it?” she asked reverently.
“It’s called vanilla extract,” Linda explained, “And Halsin went to great effort to make it for me. There is no other bottle like it in all of New Reithwin, and maybe not even in Baldur’s Gate, either. So you have to be extra careful with it.”
Yenna studied the bottle and looked up at Linda. “Daddy Halsin made this for you?”
When Linda nodded, a bright smile crept across the girl’s face. “We’re so lucky to have him, aren’t we?”
“Yeah,” Linda agreed, her eyes flicking briefly to his location in the hallway, “We really are.”
Halsin grinned, both filled with pride at the interaction and unsurprised that his little songbird knew he was watching. But she did not beckon him in, and he stayed put in the shadows, watching her carefully constructed control turn itself into a chaotic dance of hands and ingredients and voices which resulted in a decently-sized ball of dough surrounded by a mess that was considerably larger than it ought to have been.
“Okay,” Linda sighed, swiping at her forehead with the back of her hand and wiping even more flour across it in the process. “The dough needs to rest for a while before we can cut it into shapes.”
“Rest?” Ide asked. “What does that mean?”
“It means that it needs to sit here in the quiet for a while,” Linda replied. “And so do I. Go on, go see if you can find Mama K and get an arm wrestling match going or something.”
The children thundered off, their feet and voices echoing down the far hallway as they raced to find Karlach and her boundless energy. Linda sank down onto a stool with a sigh as Halsin crossed to her and wrapped her in his arms. Her arms came around him in turn, and in the moment of quiet that followed, he was once again overcome with awe and gratitude that she’d appeared in his life, and chosen to remain in it.
She nuzzled against him, humming contentedly, and he breathed in her meadow-fresh scent, now with the undercurrent of vanilla, honey, and flour. She let out a deep breath and let herself sag completely into him, as if suddenly overcome with exhaustion.
“Is something troubling you, my heart?”
“Oh,” she said, and indeed, her voice carried a heaviness that had not been there moments ago, “It’s just difficult to make the recipe by memory. And I’ve just realized that the dough needs to be refrigerated before we can roll and cut it, and, well…”
“Refrigerated?” he asked, unable to keep the amusement from curling in his voice.
She looked up at him, and the bashful smile on her face signaled her quiet embarrassment at making yet another reference to the strange and decidedly not magical things from her world, though Halsin thought it was rather a fine line.
“Chilled? I guess is a better way of saying it. It needs to get cold, but not frozen, otherwise the butter will melt and the cookies won’t hold their shape. We have a machine called a refrigerator that would do this for us.”
“I see,” he replied, casting his eyes about the room. “And the root cellar is insufficient?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think it’s cold enough. It needs to be like thirty-five degrees."
He let out a confused hum, pressing his eyebrows together.
“Fahrenheit?” she asked, and when his brow furrowed even more, she added, “Oh, don’t tell me you people use Celsius here.”
“Is… ‘Celsius’ another one of your machines?”
She gave a short laugh and shook her head slightly. “Never mind. It just needs to be colder than the root cellar but not so cold it freezes… Right now it’ll just make a mess, and all of this will have been a waste,” she sighed.
“Fear not, my heart. I may have a solution.”
He gently untangled himself from her and grabbed a clean rag. He wrapped the ball of dough in it, turning it around and around in his hands as he called upon a sliver of his magic, carefully diluting an ice spell to achieve the desired result.
He held it out to her. “Is this cold enough?”
“Perfect,” she said, giving the dough a squeeze. She looked up at him with a sparkle in her eyes. “You know you don’t have to show off to get me to like you.”
He laughed and popped the dough into a covered basket for safekeeping until the children returned. “I hardly think a simple ice spell counts as showing off.”
“Mmmhmm,” she hummed playfully as she stood and wrapped her arms around his neck. “And the vanilla?”
“Oh, that was certainly showing off,” he grinned, sliding his arms around her waist. “Did it work?”
“Silly bear,” she laughed, and pulled him in for a kiss.