[For Olive]

[piemakerprince]

Some days, much like the rather nice one the girl named Chuck was enjoying outside in the orchard as she studied various ways to make various cheeses, the pie maker found himself unable to do much of anything at all but bake pies.

Or a pie, in this case

Comments

[abandonedpie]

The plucky neighbour was in fact feeling rather out of pluck at that moment. Her talk with Chuck had not gone the way she'd thought it would. In fact, it was as if it were a train, derailed, and yet unable to stop due to it's momentum, its precious cargo of secrets spilled everywhere after the resulting crash. Olive and Chuck were the survivors of that crash, both wounded in their ways, though Olive's wounds were less severe, she still felt as if she were in a state of shock.

Seeing Ned in the kitchen reminded her of the secret she had been told to her, the one of Ned and his touch. She stopped, looking him over, wondering how it was a person could have such a curse. "Oh my god, Digby died and you brought him back to life? Is that why you never touched Digby? That touchy-touchy thing? One more little scratch under the chin and Bam!"

She went to him, her arms tight around the Piemaker in sympathy, "All that time when you just needed someone to touch you."

[piemakerprince]

Ned had no idea how it happened.

One moment he'd been lost in the past, and the next, he was suddenly being hugged by Olive as she babbled on about-

"What? How - that's, that's silly, nobody can wake the dead, it's impossible - Olive, breathing, I need to breathe -"

[abandonedpie]

"You don't have to lie to me anymore Ned," Olive pulled away from the Piemaker, oblivious to his distress, or at the very list, misunderstanding it. To her his distress was from having his secret known, an understandable ache that came from keeping something so difficult inside of himself for so long.

"Chuck told me all of it."

[piemakerprince]

Ned's mouth opened as though he had something to say, but no words came out. He'd gone so long with his secret being kept secret by himself and only two other people; it felt strange to have Olive finally know.

That didn't mean he liked having it be known. Since he was a boy, his gift had brought nothing but pain.

"It wasn't her secret to tell," said the pie maker, and he went back to scooping fruit into a pie waiting to be made. It was the one thing that had always made sense, a recipe that stayed the same over the years.

He shook his head. "How did it even come up?"