Cardamom Cookies

chapter three

olive was just finishing up their lunch when they remembered their promise to hawaiian-shirt's friend. to bake them some more cookies. it had now been several days, and olive knew they had to show up with cookies sometime soon.

so, with that thought on their mind, they walked over to their kitchen. it was a gray kitchen, with used looking cabinets, and a fridge with too many scratches and dings to count on it. whoever designed the kitchen seemed to have wanted a timely feel to it, but they countered that aesthetic with a white marble table top and crisp white walls.

it didn't bother olive, though. that their kitchen, and most of their house, couldn't decide what it wanted to be, since they were moving out in a year.

olive was running a mental list of everything they needed, and started getting ingredients out.

sugar, check.

flour, check.

an egg, check.

butter, check.

olive grabbed some other ingredients too and set to work mixing them together in a bowl. it was the same as the one they'd used last time. olive and their mother had yet to finish unpacking, and so olive had unpacked the minimum amount of boxes to bake cookies. which was one box.

it wasn't a bad thing that olive and their mom had yet to unpack most of the boxes that they had. their kitchen had a lot of boxes to unpack, and they both had things they would prefer to do.

while olive worked, they turned on some soft music to listen to. that way, the kitchen wasn't dead silent except for the sounds of the wooden spoon and ceramic bowl hitting each other as they stirred the batter. olive found themself humming along to whatever song was playing at the moment.

they enjoyed throwing ingredients together, and mixing them, then mushing the mixture into little balls to put on a tray that went into the oven. all to make cookies that olive would only eat one of, and that was just to be sure that they were good.

olive used to do this all the time for their friends when they were living in lisbon. it didn't bother the person at all, and they loved watching people enjoy their delicious pastries.

when the cookies were in the oven, olive sat down with their book to pass the time while the cookies baked. it was the same book that they had been working on reading for the past month. olive used to spend a lot of time reading, but read little outside of school anymore. every few minutes, they got up to look through the glass in the oven to check on the cookies.

although the olive was reading, they had a lot less patience waiting for the cookies to cool than bake. so, while the cookies were still a little too hot to eat, they took a healthy bite of one.

it was perfect. it didn't taste like anything had been unknowingly switched, either.

with the cookies deemed safe, olive piled them onto two plates. one was going to hunter's house, right then, and the other was going to hawaiian-shirt and his friend later. unlike when olive was handing the cookies to many houses, they were only going to two, so it didn't bother them to go to their house in between deliveries, and they guessed that this would be a much more enjoyable trip.

olive felt terrible about giving their new neighbors salty cookies, and they knew they couldn't make it up to everyone, but they were going to for the most important people. at least the most important people in olive's mind.

olive picked up a plate and set off down the road to hunter's house.

it was a nice sunny day out, with only a few clouds in the sky. some trees were turning yellow with the onset of cold and the coming of winter.