Stress Cookies! (Hermitcraft mini story)

Chapter 9 ♥︎

It had been a few days since X had asked her about bringing cookies and Alex to the holiday festival, and Stress was knee deep in cookie dough. She had most of the cookies done, but the last of them proved to be the hardest.

The white chocolate in False's kept burning in the oven and everytime she remade the dough the lemon zester seemed to get harder to use, and the same thing happened with Cleo's orange cookies. Joe's had oatmeal cookies which were simple enough- .....except for the fact she didn't have any oats left and needed to go to the shopping district to get them.

Another thing on her list. She scribbled it down in her notebook to make sure she remembered next time she was in the shopping district.

xB had also just wanted dark chocolate chip cookies thankfully, but she wasn't quite sure where his base was. She could ask him for the coords easy enough, but if it was far away -which she assumed it was- then she'd either have to fly and risk dropping them, or travel in the nether. Both were bad options, but with her broken elytra and no quick way of fixing it yet, she was afraid it was going to have to be the latter.

"Alright, I'll deliver 'em after I make them all, so I don't haf to make multiple trips." She decided, rolling up her sleeves to get down to business.

It was a few hours of measuring, mixing, folding, and finally rolling out the dough into balls onto silicone sheets before sticking them in the oven, and Stress was really feeling the stress build up.

Her mental timer was even better than the real one, telling her when the cookies were done seconds before the actual timer went off. It didn't make sense how her brain could keep track of the time when she felt it all blur together herself, but it wasn't like she was complaining. It helped her make each batch to perfection!

She had 3 cooling racks out and plenty of baskets to put the finished ones in to clear space.

"Roll, place- shoot, those ones need to be taken out!" The timer went off and she rushed to them with an oven mitts, sliding them out and poking the top to watch them rise back up.

"Perfect!" She slid the tray on to the final bit of clear table she had left, and went back to the tray she was rolling out, finishing it up before sliding them in the oven too.

All of the dough of the last batch was finished up, the tables wiped down, and the majority of the cookies in their respective baskets. There were two more trays in the oven, but she had just put them in so she had a bit of waiting time. She sighed contently, and leaned her body against the wall to take a break, letting herself breathe.

The baker gave a half hearted smile to herself and all of her work laid out in front of her as she felt the tiredness wash over her as she rested. Who knew so many batches at once were so hard!?

Ding!

The oven went off and Stress stood back up, grabbing her oven mitts from the counter and slipping them on.

The batch was perfect, and the smell was enough to melt her stress away and leave the pure exhaustion.

"Alright, let's get these geezers to the other hermits." She said to herself. She grabbed the baskets and looped as many as she could over her arms.

Only Joe's batch and the cookies for the festival needed to be made, and she could stop by the shopping district on her way home to get the oats for his, and some extra chocolate too since she had already run out. Thankfully, she only had a few more to deliver, and then Joe's would officially be the last hermit she would need to bake a batch for!

She had to set the cookies down to get back into her warmer clothes for outside and finally take off her messy apron. Her frost walker boots glimmered even without a light as she slipped them on, and she snuggled up into her scarf after wrapping it a few times over.

"I swore I had another color too?" Her exhausted mind thought, but couldn't quite figure it out before she shrugged it off and focused her mind back on the task at hand: delivering the cookies, buying oats, and making the hermits happy.

Stress took a deep breath with cookie baskets looped over her arms again and set out into the snow. The cold quickly woke her up a lot, which was actually really helpful even if it sent a shiver up her neck and over her arms.

"Wait-" She realized with growing dread. "The hermits left are too far to walk..."

She turned around and looked at the purple swirls in front of her. There wasn't really another choice...

Stress sighed and equipped a sword, a shield, fire res, and anything else that could keep her safe in the dangerous nether. Without letting herself think about it more, she stepped through and tried to keep her balance as the world around her spinned away.

Pop!

And she was whisked away to another dimension!

The heat was sweltering, but bearable. They had reset the nether so the safety of the roof wasn't an option anymore, and it was into the tunnels and portals of the mini hubs people had set up now.

"Alright alright I'm doing fine!" She assured herself.

"Just need to find Cleo's portal?" Stress looked around, trying to make sense of the direction she needed to head. She was in the tunnel her and Iskall were working on, and had made it to the end, where the mini hub that False constructed stood.

"This mob proof, this is mob proof, this is mob proof-" She told herself, gripping the sword in both of her hands tighter.

And yes, the hub was mob proof in one way or another- buttons, pressure plates, slabs, glowstone, the list went on- but the outside wasn't. And being suspended in the air kept most mobs from wandering in, but flying mobs were another concern all together.

Stress heard a shriek from behind her.

"Oh my stars..."

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Hey maybe I'll actually get this done before Christmas this year! Funny how I planned this to be a story story- and it is- but it's still taken me like a year to make it. Eh well, I'm still having fun writing it. Have a great day or night!