Through Your Eyes | ONC 2024

Chapter 18: Reese

Valarie brought me to a grocery store, and short flashbacks of what I did after our fight came back to me. I hoped that wasn't her intention, but after glancing over at her I could tell she hadn't even considered that. She was still all smiles, which made me unintentionally smile back.

As we entered the store with a small basket to carry groceries, she explained why we were really here. "So I thought another fun thing we could do today is cook one of your favorite meals and maybe even bake some dessert too. You seem to enjoy cooking, and eating good food is always a great way to improve a day. Do any dishes come to mind?"

I placed a finger to my chin and thought for a moment. Back home I had plenty of go-to dishes that I loved making for my parents, but none would be possible to make on Earth without specific ingredients from hell. Even if I couldn't make any of my childhood meals with her, there were still quite a few human foods I liked too. I didn't want to choose anything too complicated since those could end up taking hours to make, so I decided on something simple.

"Why don't we just make a salad of some sort?"

"That's it?" She seemed shocked by my simple answer, but headed towards that section of the store regardless.

I casually placed my hands behind my back and sauntered along behind her. Once I was close enough I explained, "Well a simple dinner will give us enough time for a fun dessert."

She looked over at me with a smile creeping across her face, excitement dancing across her eyes. "Now you're talking! What kind of dessert were you thinking?"

"Hmmm, maybe an ice cream cake?" I raised an eyebrow.

Two of the desserts I loved the most were ice cream and cake. I knew that humans often combined them into one, and I had been dying to try it. This would be a perfect opportunity to, and it sounded like fun!

Valarie's face lit up too. "Yes! This is PERFECT!"

She picked up the pace, almost speed walking again. But this time it was from excitement, and not anger. We rushed through the store, grabbing all sorts of fun ingredients and toppings to add to our ice cream cake, stopping halfway through to not forget some vegetables for the salad neither of us put much thought into anymore.

Before we reached the register, she suddenly grabbed my arm and pulled me towards a small corner of the store near the front. For a moment I thought she'd suddenly decided to try my style of shopping, but instead of leaving she stopped in front of a small display of little succulents.

I stood still for a moment, trying to understand what she was doing until she asked, "Do you want one?"

"Hm?" I turned my head to look directly at her. "Want what?"

"A house plant! I know you mentioned a garden back home, and it really could help liven up the place."

I looked back at the little green plants lined along the shelves. There were even a few prickly cacti in the group, and I felt more drawn to them as they reminded me of the plants I raised back home. Demonic plants all had their own personalities and were very diverse.

Some were spiky, like cacti, and others were aggressive carnivorous plants, like venus fly traps. Each had unique diets and other random needs such as needing constant attention. I had a collection of vines that would forcibly wrap themselves around my arms or tail if I didn't spend enough time with them. I chuckled at the memory, but turned back to Valarie.

"Are you sure you don't mind bringing a whole plant into the house just for me?" I asked cautiously.

"I don't mind at all!" She gestured back to the plants and explained, "I've been meaning to add more things to the apartment to make it feel less empty anyway. Plus these are all quite cute. Just pick whichever one you want and we can both care for it. They're barely any work."

In comparison with all the plants I had back home, succulents and cacti really were no work at all. As long as they were near a window and were watered every now and then they were fine. Humans really did have it easy when it came to the plants and animals they cared for; none of them tried to kill their caretakers.

Finally feeling assured it was alright to bring a plant home with us, I grabbed a round little cactus and carefully carried it over to check out. Valarie paid for everything, thanked the cashier, and we walked back to the apartment. I carried the cactus like a baby the entire way to make sure nothing happened to it, only placing it down on the kitchen counter when we returned.

We organized the groceries based on what we'd need for dinner versus the ice cream cake, then began preparing our salad. I took the lead for this, since Valarie didn't seem to have much experience at all with cooking, which was surprising given she'd lived on her own so far. But I'd never seen her cook a meal before, always ordering food out and bringing it home.

I taught her a few things about chopping vegetables, but the real test would be seeing if we could make an ice cream cake together. We set the salad aside for a bit to start on the cake batter and bake that as we ate. We bought a cake mix since neither of us really knew how to make a cake from scratch, and followed all of the instructions on the box before throwing it in the oven. As it baked, we took a break to eat dinner.

Our cake finished after about half an hour passed, so we took it out of the oven and started putting everything together. We placed alternating layers of cookie dough ice cream and the vanilla cake until it was tall enough, then iced the entire thing so we could add cute decorations on top.

When we were finally finished, Valarie took out her phone to take a picture of it. "This looks amazing!"

I placed an arm around her shoulders and agreed wholeheartedly, "Yeah, making it was fun too."

She looked up at me and our eyes locked. We smiled at each other for a moment, before I pulled away to cut the cake. I offered her the first slice, then we sat down on the couch to watch some TV while we ate. The cake turned out amazing despite neither of us knowing exactly what we were doing throughout the whole process.

We watched TV late into the night, even after putting the cake in the freezer and cleaning up the rest of the kitchen. Valarie brought a blanket over too, so she snuggled up next to me so we could share it. When she first got close to me, I stiffened since I wasn't used to such affection. But as hours passed, I eventually relaxed and let myself fully enjoy her company.

When I noticed her head gently bobbing up and down, I leaned over to whisper in her ear before she fell asleep, "Thanks for today... I really did have a lot of fun with you."

A small smile spread across her lips and she leaned her head against my shoulder. Her eyes opened and closed a couple times before she managed to mumble, "I'm... glad..." and fell asleep beside me.