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Post by Malcolm on Feb 21, 2022 22:37:39 GMT -6
Admittedly, Malcolm had expected to be making cookies with the famed Alura, and not merely in the bakery section of her shop. Perhaps that had been presumptuous of him. She was a well established businesswoman and apothecary in the city, after all; in retrospect maybe it had been a bit much to expect her to muck in alongside her hired help. It did make him wonder how many of her famous cookies were baked by Alura herself, and how many were instead shaped by other hands... But how she ran her business was none of his concern, and indeed if her cookies were produced by other people, he had to commend her on the strength of her branding. And it was still her recipe, of course. Still, it was not nearly as bad a job as some of the others he'd had in recent memory. They were indoors, for one, and warm. 1
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Post by Malcolm on Feb 21, 2022 22:40:21 GMT -6
And Alura hadn't, after all, objected to his choice of companion, even if she did look a little taken aback at the sight of Fretful at first. But that was to be expected. Most people were at least a little taken aback when they first laid eyes on Fretful. She had made one of the most dramatic changes he had ever seen in a creature's growth trajectory, but instead of coming out as a beautiful jeweled beast like the illustrations in the encyclopedia entry for her species, she had turned out into this ghastly looking thing, with milky-colored eyes and a hunched, emaciated look. He had tried feeding her up, but she refused to eat more than she felt like, and her own appetite kept her trim, to say the least.
She had wanted to come along, funnily enough. Perhaps being left at home too often was making her sulky.
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Post by Malcolm on Feb 21, 2022 22:43:50 GMT -6
Of course, sulking looked different on Fretful than it would have on, say, Yoru. But some air may as well do her some good, and Malcolm thought he might even manage to delegate some simple tasks to her. She was certainly clever enough for it.
Doing it without the ribbon was a little more difficult, since she didn't exactly have a terribly strong grasp of Common. But pantomine existed, and he was sure he could muddle through.
"Now, if you'll just stir... Hold this... No, not like that. Like this. Grip the handle here," Malcolm was saying. She had thumbs, he could see them, but he supposed she hadn't had fingers at all for terribly long, and she had definitely never used tools before. Not that he knew of, anyway. He hoped she wasn't getting into too much mischief with his things while he wasn't home, but the house was always still standing.
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Post by Malcolm on Feb 21, 2022 22:56:38 GMT -6
Now he was beginning to think he might have appreciated it if she had taken it upon herself to learn a little more... but then, no, he thought about what she might have done in the kitchen alone, and supposed this was the lesser of two evils.
Fretful was making an attempt, but she seemed more nervous than enthusiastic, and when he finally got her to grip the mixing spoon correctly, she did so too gingerly to actually accomplish any stirring. Malcolm, who felt at this point that he had demonstrated the patience of a saint, finally gave up and took it over from her.
"See, you do it like this," he said, mixing the contents of the bowl in a few brisk movements. "Now you try." He handed the spoon back, and when she simply stared at it, he sighed and left her to it, busying himself with preparing the racks.
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Post by Malcolm on Feb 21, 2022 22:58:51 GMT -6
She would figure it out eventually. Or if she didn't, then at least it wasn't the kind of task you could disastrously mess up. She could knock the bowl over, and lose them this batch of dough, which wouldn't exactly be ideal, but it wasn't as if he was trusting her with the oven -- in which case they really might burn the whole place down, if she couldn't even work out this stirring business.
Weren't these creatures supposed to make people's lives easier? Malcolm hadn't seen a lick of that in all the time he'd spent with them. He had a horse he didn't know how to ride, a student who was too small to do anything, a dragon who seemed to have no interests beyond spouting unpleasant what-ifs, and whatever the heck Cashew was supposed to be.
Suffice to say he would most likely be baking all these cookies by himself.
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Post by NPC on Feb 23, 2022 21:36:25 GMT -6
Congratulations, you have successfully completed the quest! Your QP will be added to the bank and your prize will be sent out shortly.
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