Christmas With The Shepherds ( a fire emblem awakening fan fiction)

Chapter 4: Unexpected Bake-Off

A bell rang as we entered the small, quaint bakery we expected to find Stahl in. An aroma of flour and sugar drifted through the air, and the small lanterns that were placed on round dining tables were decorated with holly and pine, adding to the cozy, holiday feeling of the shop. I looked around the room in search of my hungry friend. Once I spotted him, I found that he was talking to the woman at the counter. He seemed to be excited about it, whatever it was they were discussing. The women was giving Stahl a warm and gentle smile, almost like she was talking to a small child. She had light brown hair about chin length, hazel eyes, and freckles that dotted around her nose. Her clothes consisted of an overly- worn white apron with flour scattered on the front, a light blue blouse, and a baby pink skirt. Her hair was held back by a small white handkerchief which seemed to give her a "hard- working baker" look. Stahl waved in my direction, bringing me back to reality.

" Hey Megan! Rin! Come over here!" Stahl exclaimed, beaconing us to the counter. As I got closer, I noticed the women looked like she was in her mid twenties.

" Listen to this! Natalie says we can use her kitchen to make Christmas cookies!! Isn't that great?"

"Who's Natalie?" Megan inquired.

"I- I am," the girl at the counter shyly replied. " I don't really get that much business, s-so I'd be honored if my stoves c-could be put to use." Natalie seemed like she wasn't used to being around people.

"Really? That's very generous of you!" I exclaimed, smiling.

Natalie nervously played with her hair and turned slightly red. " I-it's no problem really..."

"Way to hook us up Natalie!!! I'm so excited!" Stahl said happily. He looked like he was almost ready to hug her. I glanced over at Stahl and slightly shook my head, knowing that hugging her would make her extremely uncomfortable. He blushed in embarrassment as he realized I read his thoughts, and started to run his hand through his messy green hair. I internally laughed at his reaction.

"Mind if we get started? We have to head back to camp soon." I asked, turning back to Natalie.

"O-of course!" She cried back. She hurriedly ran over to the back door, pulled out a key from her apron pocket, and unlocked it. She waved her hand and gestured us inside. As I walked past her into the kitchen, I smiled and gave her a grateful nod, which made her blush in embarrassment. Once we were in the room, she gave us brief instructions on how to use the coal stoves and then left us to start our baking.

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The room quickly got unbearably hot as we started heating up the stoves for our cookies. We had already prepared the dough, trying to follow one of the recipes in the ancient recipe book Natalie had given us. It hadn't been easy, and our struggling caused us to become covered in flour. I hoped we could wash our clothes after all this baking, or it would be way too obvious to the other Shepherds what we had been up to while we were out "training." Now, after all our efforts, we started to shape the dough. I had tried to originally make snowmen, but after frustrated moans and tons of extra flour, I settled with making simple bell shaped cookies. They weren't that impressive, but for someone that always has someone else cooking their meals, it wasn't terrible. After I was done with shaping my portion of dough, I walked over to the disheveled Stahl to see what cookies he was making. As I got closer to his tray, I saw he had made some... interesting looking cookies.

"Ummm... Stahl? What are those?" I asked him curiously. He turned to look at me and smiled proudly.

" Guess! " he replied.

" Are they....risen cookies?" I guessed, seriously trying my hardest to decipher what creatures he created. In the corner of my eye, I could see Megan holding back a laugh that was trying to escape her lips.

"No! They're Santa cookies! Why would I make risen cookies?!" He exclaimed, clearly disappointed and angry at my horrible guess. Was it really that obvious and I was just a terrible guesser?

"Oh...err... I can see it now! They look good Stahl!" I replied desperately, trying to cheer him up and recover from my earlier blunder. Apparently, not being able to hold it in any longer, Megan started laughing, obviously finding my situation amusing. I scurried over to Megan, hoping to escape an angry Stahl. She was still laughing, but as I approached she started working again. Curious, I looked over her shoulder to see what she had created. Stars and crescent moons laid on the tray, obviously made with care.

"These are so cute! You did a great job!" I exclaimed, impressed by her handiwork.

"It was a lot of work, but it was worth it," Megan replied, a proud smile on her face.

I smiled back, headed back to my station, grabbed my tray, and placed it in one of the hot coal stoves. The others followed, and after the cookies were set for baking, helped me look for decorations to adorn the finished product. We discovered glittering pearls and shiny sprinkles in as many colors as you could think of. After an hour of baking and cooling, we started to decorate the cookies with our findings. As I started to sprinkle on scarlet and emerald sprinkles onto my bells, I noticed Stahl enthusiastically throwing pearls onto his ris--I mean Santa cookies. He was really getting into it, I thought to myself.

"I am not!" Stahl screamed defiantly. Only then did I notice that I had been thinking out loud again.

"I just meant that you're enjoying yourself! It's not a bad thing!" I replied to his cry of protest. That seemed to settle him down, because he went back to decorating his cookies, acting a little more subdued this time. After a while, Natalie came in with a stack of decorative boxes. I graciously took them, and started to pack my finished cookies into them. After a while, Megan and Stahl followed suit, taking a box from the pile and putting their own creations inside. As they were packing them, I noticed Megan had decorated the stars and moons with shiny golden sprinkles and white pearls. I sighed, thinking how happy Chrom would be if I had created something as pretty as those. When we had packed up all our cookies, we took off the aprons we had been wearing, cleaned the flour off our clothes, and started to leave. As I was heading out the door of the bakery, I nearly bumped into a familiar-looking ginger with a lollipop sticking out of his mouth.
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Special thanks to Megamagicalmegan for the adorable fan-art!