[OOC: Just to let everyone know, Cassie is backdated to the thirteenth. Everyone else is on the current date. :)]
On the thirteenth, it is Cassie Riddle’s twenty-third birthday. In the early morning, she is up on the roof of Kashtta, playing guitar. She’s singing a
pretty little folk song she was fond of from back home to the skies of the
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She's brought her own ingredients, just in case Cassie needs them, though when she walks in and sees Cassie's flour-covered form she laughs and says, "Well, I can see I didn't need to bring any extra." She sets her bag down on one of the counters, and begins to fish out a few things anyway.
"Do you have enough decorations? Chocolate sprinkles? Small sparkly things? Large sparkly things? Things that sort of tingle in your mouth and make your head feel fuzzy?" She holds up something that looks a little like a large konpeito. It's clear that not everything Iris has brought with her today is of entirely... natural origin.
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She pauses for a moment and looks down at what she’s bought herself, “Erm, I’ve got hundreds and thousands and I’ve gotten lots of food colouring to make different coloured icing with,” She holds up the tiny bottles holding red, green, blue and yellow liquids in them. She’ll be able to mix them together to make more colours too! “But I could do with more,”
Cassie watches as Iris fetches out the items with curiosity and frowns at the last thing she brings out. She’s never seen anything like that before. “What on earth is that?”
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She snaps off another hunk of the candied ball and pops it in her own mouth. It's like being hit by a brief, intense sugar rush, and she can't help giggling again. "Feels like you're floating off the ground," she laughs, almost tripping over her own shoes as she stumbles towards Cassie to peer at the little bottles.
"Oh, wow. Those are so pretty! Just like paints. I bet you could make the loveliest colours, like sunsets, or peacocks.... What do you think you're gonna put on it?" she asks, curiosity flooding in to replace the head rush. "The cake, I mean." She imagines it's going to be so amazingly vivid when they're done.
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"Woah, now that's something," she utters with a slightly tipsy grin. "It's like a sugar bomb!" She giggles and nods her head, "Yeah! Sugar bomb! Maybe that's what you should call it!"
She laughs again at her friend's stumble, and nods her head again as she looks at the bottles in her hands. "I think if we put it in the mixture right, we could even make rainbow cake," That sounds like a good idea actually, "Like, you separate the mixture and add colouring to it, then pour it in the backing dish in layers - it'll be like a rainbow!"
At her question, she pauses for a moment in thought, "Well, on top - icing and then we could make some patterns on top with all the sweets and stuff you've brought!"
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No, that isn't Iris on a sugar rush, Cassie. This is just Iris' normal level of babble. Don't mind it.
"Huuuh... rainbow cake!" She smiles and nods again, glancing over the bottles one more time. "Yeah, that'd definitely work. With these, we could definitely make orange, and purple.... It's a brilliant idea!" She claps her hands together in excitement. "Let's start it! This is gonna be the best cake ever!"
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"But I don't know when exactly it'll get warm again - I don't know what American weather is like," She hopes it's soon. She really does want to go soon! When Saul's better - they would definitely be able to have a fun day out.
"It'll look really, really pretty when it's done," Cassie confirms with a nod, "Right, this mixture still needs.. eggs!" she tells her. "Then, once it's all mixed up - we can put it in separate bowls and add colour," And then she remembers, "Also, the buns I put in the oven should be nearly done too - we can decorate them once they're cool!"
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Not that she won't get to, soon enough. When she has her own wings, she'll be able to crash-land into snowdrifts as often as she wants. The thought is exciting. Still, maybe a kite would help her get off the ground. It sounds slightly easier than jumping from the top of a building, though she'll do whatever it takes.
"Eggs, right!" She rummages through her bag and holds out a couple. They're a creamy colour, and patterned with dark brown swirls: clearly not of the chicken variety. If Iris notices this, she doesn't say anything. "How many? I've got about six."
The narration apologises, Cassie. Making a cake with Iris was never going to be straightforward.
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It's what she thought about her powers when she first got them. An unwanted gift that has only caused her more grief than thought possible. It's been a slow process of trying to accept them now, but she's getting there.
Cassie can't help but frown at the eggs, "Are those duck eggs..?" They're definitely not chicken. Definitely not. They've got swirls on them! "I've never seen those before,"
Confused Cassie is confused.
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She doesn't respond, though, instead addressing the girl's other question. "Oh, no, these?" she says, tossing one in the air and catching it backhanded, then giggling a little at her trick. "Cockatrice eggs. I found a nest that had been abandoned, out in the woods in Grant Park. They're really yummy. At least if you know how to prepare them properly." She grabs a bowl, screws her eyes tightly shut, and holds the egg against the rim, poised to crack it. "Cover your eyes."
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She hovers for a moment, she can't help but feel a little uncertainty about this. This certainly isn't the kind of baking she's ever done before. She needs to keep telling herself that this is no longer Chicago. There probably isn't such a thing as 'normal baking' any more.
She notices Iris' eyes tightly shut and she quickly closes her eyes and presses her hands against her face - which will probably leave massive hand prints across her eyes. "Erm, right," she utters, "Okay, I've got them covered!"
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"Whew! There," she says, only now trusting herself to open her eyes all the way. "You can uncover your eyes now, it's safe. Just, that stuff can turn you to stone, if you look at it. Only for a little while though. I had it happen once, it's kind of weird. You feel all... granite-y."
She grins, not seeming fazed by this revelation in the slightest. "It's really worth it, though. This cake will taste amazing. So how many did you say again?"
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She peers at the bowl curiously, "Huh.. it wouldn't turn you to stone when you eat it, will it?" she asks with a nervous chuckle - a small smile at her lips. Weird baking is rather weird.
"Erm, two should be fine," she tells her - her hands ready to cover her eyes again.
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She nods as her friend poises herself to shield her eyes, waiting until she's done so before cracking a second egg. "There we go," she says after a moment, handing the bowl to Cassie. The yolk mixture in it is somewhat pearlescent, though otherwise a fairly normal yellow. "--Whoops, eggshell." She notices a fragment of it in the mixture, and deftly plucks it out. "There. Now you can mix these in, just like any other eggs."
As she sorts through the decorations wondering which ones would be best to make patterns with, she remembers Cassie had a question. "Cockatrice... they're also known as basilisks. Half bird, half dragon. The adult ones are more dangerous than these eggs. If they look at you, they'll turn you to stone forever." She smiles a little sadly. "But they're also not very good parents. So you can hunt for eggs in the forest without being much at risk."
She's taken it upon herself to know all the good ingredient-gathering places in Chicago. And with a lot of Rift activity there, the forests of Grant Park have proven to be a particularly rich source of strange and wonderful natural phenomena, of the type most people would think twice before touching. And the type alchemists find particularly prized. There are good reasons, she occasionally thinks, why most of the villagers back home were wary of her work. It's just that handled properly, it's all perfectly safe.
...Well, mostly safe. The scars on her hands, already building up again even after the Polyjuice Potion healed her, are testimony to that. But the wonders of alchemy are worth the risk to the self, and indeed, facing the danger's part of how it helps one grow. That's the part the people back home really didn't understand.
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She looks into the bowl again, bloody weird eggs these are. But if Iris reckons they'll be alright - she'll just go along with it. She laughs and begins to stir the mix in, listening as Iris talks.
"Baskilisk? Isn't that the snake-thing off Harry Potter?" she asks with a frown. The film had come out years ago and she'd went to see it with her friends. She's not the biggest fan of it - she's not big on the fantasy and science fiction, but everyone seems to like Harry Potter. Even Cassie.
"There was this big snake like thing called a Baskilisk and it turned everyone to stone. Well, it petrified them and stuff if you looked at it," It was something like that, anyway.
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"Yeah, that's pretty much a basilisk, but... what does that have to do with Harry?" she asks. "Do you know him? He's a friend of mine too. I guess our worlds are pretty similar, so he'd probably know what they are. I was pretty pleased to find them here. Makes converting some of my recipes into Chicago-style a lot easier." Though when she says recipes, she's talking about alchemical ones. And when she says Chicago-style, she means what you do when you're suddenly thrown into a world without Dunkelhites and Pendelooks.
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"Um.. Harry Potter is a fictional character," she says carefully, still utterly bemused, "Back in my world, this woman wrote a book series about this Wizard called Harry Potter who goes to a school for Wizards and Witches called Hogwarts. And they even made a film series from the books,"
She ruffles the hair on the side of head almost awkwardly, leaving flour as she does, "He's... he's like... a world-wide famous fictional character. The book series about him is the most popular in this generation,"
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