‧̍̊˙· 𓆝.° ｡˚𓆛˚｡ °.𓆞 ·˙‧̍̊
𝐇𝐞𝐫 𝐰𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞, 𝐒𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐚 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐚 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠.
She was decent enough at most of the stuff she tried, but her skills were never outstanding, nor has she ever felt the excitement that is required for someone to try and make up for the lack of talent with ambition.
There was, of course, the cheerleading, but she never thought of that as anything serious. It was just something to do while in high school, and not that groundbreaking to begin with. Her backflips could hardly change the flow of the universe, and she isn't so spectacular that she'll ever completely rewrite the game, or even a single rule. She did what was expected of her, she was good at it, and it never went anywhere further than that.
It isn't like Jonah and his sports, or Lyrica and her art, or even Mena and those revolting chemical equations of hers.
She's not insecure about it, though. Mediocrity never was a thing that Silena was particularly worried about. The world needs its stars, she supposes, but she never had any inclination towards being one of them. Having the attention of the people she knows is tiring most days, and she has no desire to be remembered by people she doesn't care for. Besides, when did living a quiet life become considered a failure? Who ever said you needed to be extraordinary to be important?
In short, Silena has no problems with being average.
She does, however, take some issues with being below average. Especially at easy, dumb tasks that she should most definitely be able to get.
Like baking.
She leans against the counter, flour staining her cheeks like war paint, and frantically flips through the printed out recipe. She feels like some sort of a mad scientist, in a feverish frenzy over their latest failed invention. Except even the maddest of scientists would probably be a little scared upon witnessing whatever it is that she created.
"Good morning!" Mena chirps, still pleasantly oblivious of the horrors that await her in the kitchen. "What's cooking, good looking?"
She's already dressed in her hot pink tracksuit, but the messy curls on her head imply that she got up five minutes ago, at most. She sets the empty coffee mug that Silena had left by her bedside in the sink, and curiously leans in to take a better look at the brownish-yellow mass standing at the counter.
"Woah," she says. "What's that?"
Silena drops her head into her hands.
"A mistake."
Mena chuckles, carefully poking it with her finger.
"What are they supposed to be?"
"Chocolate chip cookies," Silena grumbles.
"Woah," Mena repeats, like a kid who is absolutely mesmerised by some fucked up, disgusting thing they found at the playground. "Can I try it?"
"I wouldn't recommend that. It tastes like rotten eggs."
This, of course, only makes Mena even more excited. With some struggle, she breaks off a piece of the cookie abomination, and plops it into her mouth. Preemptively, Silena pushes her own glass of water in her direction.
She immediately starts coughing, and downs the glass in one go. Then, she looks at Silena with wide, almost amazed, eyes.
"Dude. How did you make scrambled eggs out of cookie batter?"
"I don't know," Silena groans, "This is stupid, anyway. Nobody is going to vote for us just because we gave them some cookies."
"Well, they definitely won't if we give them these cookies."
Silena glares at her.
Mena raises her arms up.
"Sorry, sorry. But you do underestimate the power of baked goods."
Slowly, Silena looks between the cookies, the trash can, and the phone.
"Maybe I should just pull a dad," she finally concludes. "Order some cookies from the bakery. Nobody would have to know."
A gentle hand pats her on the back.
"Not that I don't respect Keeks and his ways, but I feel like we should probably be honest about this."
Reluctantly, Silena huffs out an agreement.
"Besides! You have me now."
"And you know what you're doing?"
"Sure," Mena says, smiling. "Baking's all about chemistry, isn't it?"
"Guess so. It'd explain why I'm so bad at it."
"I'd love to study your cookies, by the way."
"Don't," Silena deadpans. "If we don't throw them away now, they'll probably grow legs, or something."
This makes Mena laugh. Silena still isn't used to the way the sound makes her heart pound. She sits there like a statue, just watching the tiny crinkles that appear beside Mena's eyes. In combination with the soft material of her tracksuit, the kitchen lights make her look far too cute for Silena to pay attention to anything else.
"Alright," Mena allows, once her laughter has finally died down. "You throw it away, then, and I'll get the stuff that we need to make something else."
Nodding, Silena pushes herself away from the table. The sound the cookies make once they hit the bottom of the trash doesn't seem right, but she's way past the point of being surprised by their levels of monstrosity. This way, if a giant, malicious creature appears in the streets of Silverwood, wreaking havoc like in some low budget horror movie, she'll at least have that going for her. Not so average, after all.
God, she thinks, upon realising where her thought process had gone. I really do spend too much time around Mena.
"What about your parents?" She asks, clearing the surface while Mena pokes around the kitchen shelves. "Do they know how to bake?"
"Yeah!" Mena says, always happy to share. She likes talking about her family, and Silena likes to listen. It's all way too sappy. "Well, dad does. Mom's better at savoury stuff, but there are a couple of sweets that she makes really well. Her baklava and kanafeh are so good. You'll have to try them sometime."
The implication makes an overwhelming amount of affection surge to Silena's heart.
And then, before she can stop herself from looking like a smitten fool, her tongue.
"We should make those, then."
Mena looks at her a little funny, like Silena's rare enthusiasm amuses her greatly.
There's something else in her stare, too, but Silena can't quite decipher it.
"Easy there," she laughs, "I feel like we should at least master brownies before we can skip to sugar-soaked filo pastries."
"Right," Silena agrees, nodding dumbly. She isn't even sure that she knows what a filo pastry is. "Let's... do that."
She goes back to wiping the counter with fabricated focus, while Mena continues her rummaging. She climbs up on the counter in order to reach the top shelf, but the surface is still slippery from when Silena went over it with her sponge. She leans forward dangerously, and loses her footing in a second.
Thankfully, Silena is there to catch her.
It's not the most elegant of catches, by any means. Silena wraps her arms firmly around Mena's stomach, while Mena's head bumps uncomfortably against her shoulder. Still, it's definitely a better alternative to the hard tile floor that she had been heading towards.
"Are you mad? Why didn't you just ask me to get it for you?"
"Sorry," is all that Mena manages to say.
She looks up at Silena, brown eyes huge and bewildered.
Silena quirks an eyebrow.
"What, no smart remarks? You're not going to call me your knight in shining armour? Or tell me that you fell for me?"
Mena's cheeks darken noticeably, and she does a quick job of untangling herself from Silena's arms. Patting down her clothes, she tries a little too hard to look natural while avoiding Silena's eyes.
"Right," her laugh doesn't sound quite like the usual. "Nice catch, doll face."
Silena narrows her eyes.
"Yeah... no problem."
Clearing her throat, Mena quickly turns towards the bowl.
"So," she says, her voice still slightly strained. "Brownies! Those should be fun."
They are fun, mostly.
Of course, the process of making them involves a whole lot of flour thrown around the kitchen in an impromptu food fight, and Mena ends up not only doubling on the cocoa powder, but also adding in a whole bar of melted chocolate. It smells promising, though.
Or, at least, it doesn't smell like rotten eggs.
Small victories. Silena will take them.
"Are you sure that the amount of chocolate you added won't mess with the ratios?" Silena asks, looking at the brownie batter that is slowly rising in the oven.
"Oh yeah," Mena assures her, jumping up to sit on the counter. "I know stuff. I've seen all seasons of Sugar Rush."
If anyone else said that, Silena wouldn't pay it half a mind.
But this is Mena, and so concern immediately begins to set.
"What do you mean, you've seen Sugar Rush?"
Mena shrugs, very dedicatedly cleaning the bowl they melted the chocolate in.
"I mean that I watched it. Nailed It, Zumbo's Just Desserts, GBBO... all that junk."
Silena turns to face her, fixing her with a stern glare.
"Mena," she asks, very slowly. "Have you ever actually baked anything?"
For a second, Mena stops working at the bowl, guiltily looking over its edge.
"Um."
"Oh my God," Silena says. "You said that you knew what you were doing!"
"And I do!" Mena counters. "Just, in theory. Not practice."
"Oh my God," Silena repeats, and turns back towards the oven.
Mena rolls her eyes, which Silena doesn't think she's in the position to do.
"Are you just going to watch them for twenty minutes?"
"Yes," Silena says, entirely serious. "And there's only three left, now. So since your judgement of time is so bad, I obviously need to."
A very loud and dramatic sigh comes from somewhere behind her back.
"They'll be fine. Just come up here."
With a bit of hesitation, Silena does eventually follow the advice. She settles between Mena's knees.
"Pass me the spoon," she says.
"What are you doing?" Mena croaks, ignoring her request.
"Standing," Silena says, like it's obvious. "Now, can you pass me the spoon?"
Mena does pass her spoon. Silena licks it. Mena looks even more constipated than before.
"Alright, seriously. Is something wrong?"
"Nope," she immediately says. "Nopity nope. Everything's super chill."
Silena sends her an unimpressed look.
"Well, that's convincing."
Waving her off, Mena raising her legs up on the counter. Silena observes her acrobatics, ready for an intervention.
"I'm fine. Really."
With her lips pursed, Silena examines her a bit more closely. Her eyes catch on the dainty chain around her neck. Without much thought, she reaches forward and pulls the necklace from under Mena's hoodie.
"You're wearing it," she points out.
The necklace was a dumb, impulsive decision. Silena knew what kind of a dance ask Mena wanted: big, and bright, and flashy. She gave her that. But there was just something about seeing that necklace- about knowing that nobody else would know what's inside it, even if they did turn it into a show- that made it an irresistible purchase.
"Yeah," Mena says, voice much softer than usual. "I like it. It's very pretty."
Silena looks up, meeting her eyes. For a brief second, she thinks that she can see the way a breath escapes Mena's lips.
Then, the oven beeps.
Silena immediately jumps away, anxious to see what they've made.
Thankfully, the brownies do look alright. There's a nice cracking on top, just like on the ones her dad buys, and the extra chocolate made them a little fudgier, which she doubts that anyone will complain about.
She turns around, meeting Mena with a big grin.
"We did it! I can't believe we actually made these."
Mena doesn't respond, though. She only keeps looking at her strangely, before eventually getting down from the counter.
"That's great," she makes out. "But I, uh. I just remembered I said I'd call my grandma now, actually."
"Oh," Silena notes. "Okay. Um. Go ahead?"
Mena nods, once, twice. Silena watches as she walks out, confused.
Understanding Mena Skelin. Add that to the list of things Silena is below average at. She looks down at the brownies in her hands, and then at the door Mena went through.
She sighs.
Maybe she was wrong. Maybe she does have a Thing, after all.
And it's called being a fool.
-
silena's pov chapter my beloved <3 i missed writing this dumbass.