Flash challenge 3: Brownies Ficlet
I feel sure there's a better, cookie-dough metaphor type title for this, but after mulling for a bit I can't quite grasp it.
Characters: Buffy, Dawn
Rating: G
A/N Written for flash challenge #3 at Phantasmagoria. Pre-series.
Buffy waved goodbye to Kristy’s mom and cautiously opened her front door. These days the Summers house held unpredictable things. Furious rows. Or worse, furious politenesses, when her parents tried to cover up the unravelling of their family.
Today though, there were hints of good things: chocolate and vanilla scents filled the hallway air, together with a distinct hint of charring which suggested inexpert hands at work.
Buffy wandered towards the kitchen, where she found her mom and Dawn doing some serious cleanup. On the side sat two pans of fat, slightly blackened and lopsided, brownies. Dawn had something ooky in her hair, and definite chocolate remains on one cheek and around the mouth. But she and Joyce were looking cheerful even as they wiped and scrubbed.
“We just felt like it was a brownie kind of day,” explained their mom, relaxed for the first time in a week. “Dawnie did a great job, don’t you think? You’re just in time to help us break into the first pan.”
Buffy considered explaining how inappropriate the consumption of fat-filled high-cal snackage was to a potential cheer captain. Not to mention the, totally temporary, thigh issue which was troubling her while planning her autumn wardrobe.
But her sister was grinning expectantly, and sometimes family demands sacrifices, even of a chocolatey nature.
They demolished the first brownies before Hank got home, but he was in time to join them in a serious dessert raid on the second batch. All agreed the burnt patches added a subtly smoky note of distinction, which high-end bakeries would do well to emulate. The Summers house was high on sugar, and entirely happy to wallow in it.
It was a good day. One of their last good days as a family, before divorce and Slayer destiny drove stake after stake into the heart of the Summers clan. One of those days which lives in the memory as a talisman of how things should be.
But of course none of this ever really happened.
Characters: Buffy, Dawn
Rating: G
A/N Written for flash challenge #3 at Phantasmagoria. Pre-series.
Buffy waved goodbye to Kristy’s mom and cautiously opened her front door. These days the Summers house held unpredictable things. Furious rows. Or worse, furious politenesses, when her parents tried to cover up the unravelling of their family.
Today though, there were hints of good things: chocolate and vanilla scents filled the hallway air, together with a distinct hint of charring which suggested inexpert hands at work.
Buffy wandered towards the kitchen, where she found her mom and Dawn doing some serious cleanup. On the side sat two pans of fat, slightly blackened and lopsided, brownies. Dawn had something ooky in her hair, and definite chocolate remains on one cheek and around the mouth. But she and Joyce were looking cheerful even as they wiped and scrubbed.
“We just felt like it was a brownie kind of day,” explained their mom, relaxed for the first time in a week. “Dawnie did a great job, don’t you think? You’re just in time to help us break into the first pan.”
Buffy considered explaining how inappropriate the consumption of fat-filled high-cal snackage was to a potential cheer captain. Not to mention the, totally temporary, thigh issue which was troubling her while planning her autumn wardrobe.
But her sister was grinning expectantly, and sometimes family demands sacrifices, even of a chocolatey nature.
They demolished the first brownies before Hank got home, but he was in time to join them in a serious dessert raid on the second batch. All agreed the burnt patches added a subtly smoky note of distinction, which high-end bakeries would do well to emulate. The Summers house was high on sugar, and entirely happy to wallow in it.
It was a good day. One of their last good days as a family, before divorce and Slayer destiny drove stake after stake into the heart of the Summers clan. One of those days which lives in the memory as a talisman of how things should be.
But of course none of this ever really happened.