A Very Special Cake

      Earthwing, a green Ixi, shook her head. "We've got a better idea." Navy raised her eyebrows questioningly.

      "Instead of buying a present for Free, we're going to bake her a cake!" Fire, an aptly named fire Shoyru, said with enthusiasm. "It'll be special, since we made it and all." Earthwing nodded in agreement.

      Navy looked a little skeptical. "Have you guys ever made a cake before?" Her two daughters shook their heads. "Do you guys know how to make one?" Once again, Earthwing and Fire shook their heads with huge smiles on their faces.

      "We're going to learn how! See, we found this recipe for a vanilla cake with white frosting in your cookbook--"

      "What cookbook?" Navy interrupted.

      "The really dusty one on the shelf in the living room that looks like it hasn't been touched since you were a newbie, of course," explained Fire.

      "Oh, yeah, I remember that one perfectly," Navy replied sarcastically.

      "Anyways," said Earthwing, moving on, "we found the recipe, and now we're going to make Freedom a birthday cake. You can go out shopping for your present for Free. We'll be fine here by ourselves."

      Navy still looked a little unsure about this whole idea, but she said, "All right, I'll go shopping. But I want you both to be very careful when you use the Water Faerie Oven. I don't want you guys burning down the house! And try to clean up after you finish. Be good! And remember, Freedom will get back from the M*YNCI concert with Spirit in two hours, so you have to be done by then. But I'll be back before then, so I guess you shouldn't worry." Navy said as she grabbed her bag of neopoints from the table in the kitchen and headed out the door. She had been referring her only son and Earthwing and Fire's big brother Spirit, a blue Eyrie.

      Once she was gone, Fire turned to Earthwing. "You ready to bake the best cake ever for the best oldest sister ever?" Earthwing nodded happily, and the two started looking at their recipe.

     ***

      "Fire, they spelled 'flower' wrong here. And why would we want to put 2 cups of flowers in a cake? Wouldn't that make it taste like dirt and dust from the ground?" Earthwing asked, wrinkling her nose in disgust.

      Fire's face became confused. "I don't know, Earthwing. Maybe the dirt and junk bakes out or something. Why don't you go pick some flowers? Here are two cups to put them in. And hurry! I want to get this in the oven as soon as possible." With that, she handed Earthwing two water cups and sent her out to collect flowers.

      "Now, let's take a look at what else is in this recipe. Hmm… two eggs. What kind of eggs? Well, since this is a cake, I guess they would be sweet eggs." Fire bent down and opened the cupboard where Navy stored the candy. She reached into the back and grabbed a bag of chocolate eggs. Dipping her paw into the bag, she drew out two tiny chocolate eggs.

      "These are so small! Two will definitely not do anything for the cake. Better make it ten." Fire grabbed eight more eggs, unwrapped the foil, and dropped them into the mixing bowl. Then she scanned the page the recipe was on in the cookbook for the next ingredients.

      "Two sticks of butter. I wonder why they want it in sticks. Well, I better follow the recipe." Fire took the tub of butter from the fridge, took off the lid, and grabbed a handful of butter. Then she began rolling it into a stick and dropped it in the bowl. She repeated this with another handful of butter. "Well, there's the butter."

      "I'm back with the flowers," Earthwing said as she walked into the kitchen with two cups full of Boadaisies. She promptly dumped them in the mixing bowl and looked at the recipe for the next ingredient. "Two cups sugar."

      Fire reached up to the cupboard and got down two more water cups. Then she reached into the candy cupboard, grabbed a handful of various sugary candies, and poured them into the two cups. "Do you think it matters what kind of sugar we use?" Fire asked.

      "Naw, as long as it's sugar, it should be fine," replied Earthwing. "Now, it looks like the last thing here is a pinch of salt." The Ixi and Shoyru spent five minutes searching the kitchen for salt. They never used it at dinner and therefore had no idea where their mother kept it.

      After standing on a chair to reach the highest cupboards, Fire sighed and said, "We're never going to find the salt at this rate, Earthwing. Why don't we just substitute something else?"

      "Well, I don't know… What if it messes up the cake?" Earthwing asked, worried.

      "It won't mess up the cake if we choose the right thing to use as a substitute. I think peanut butter will work best. It's pretty much like salt." With that, she grabbed the jar of peanut butter from a cupboard, swiped a finger through it, and shook the peanut butter from her finger and into the bowl. "There. Now all we have to do is mix it, bake it, and frost it."

      "Yay!" cried out Earthwing as she danced around the kitchen happily. "I want to stir it!" She snatched up a wooden spoon and began rapidly moving it in a circle in the bowl. After a few minutes of stirring, Earthwing said, "Done!" She and Fire poured the batter into a cake pan and stuck it in the oven, timing thirty minutes on the clock. Then they sat down to wait.

      "Oh, Freedom's going to be so surprised when she sees how hard we worked on this cake! Not to mention the fact that it'll be delicious," Earthwing said when the cake had been baking for five minutes.

      "Yep, she's going to love it," agreed Fire. After ten more minutes of chatting about Freedom, the cake, and every little thing that Earthwing saw when she was out picking flowers, Fire began to sense a rather unpleasant smell. If she wasn't mistaken, it smelled like the Meridell Rubbish Dump. Except that it had a faint peanut butter smell about it. Suddenly, Fire realized that it was their cake. The cake that was supposed to be a delicious surprise smelled like trash!

      Interrupting her sister Fire said, "Earthwing, why don't you go upstairs and get cleaned up. You've got cake batter all over you." Realizing that this was true, Earthwing skipped happily upstairs to the bathroom. Fire was thinking quickly now. We can't make Freedom eat a cake that tastes like rubbish, but we don't have time to bake another one. Besides, it's obvious that we don't know how to bake a cake, recipe or not. Oh, what am I going to do? Then, it hit her. The Bakery! Navy always kept some neopoints stashed in her drawer for emergencies. Fire would just borrow some of them and go buy a cake from the Bakery. It was a perfect plan.

     Fire quickly turned off the oven and threw the cake in the garbage can behind their Neohome. That's where it belongs! she thought. Then she ran upstairs, grabbed a few thousand neopoints, and flew as fast as she could to the Bakery.

      When she got there, the Breadmaster greeted her, a fake smile plastered to his face. "Yo. Eata loafa breada day."

      "Oh, Mr. Breadmaster, I need your best vanilla cake right now! Please, it's an emergency!" Fire said frantically.

      The Breadmaster ignored her frantic tone and said cheerfully, "Sorry, we are sold out of everything! We get restocked every eight minutes or so, so please come back soon."

      "Weren't you listening to what I said?!" half-screeched Fire. "I don't have eight minutes or so! I need it now! Don't you understand that it's an emergency?!"

      The Blue Kacheek's oblivious grin fell. "You don't have to explain anything to me. It's your sister's birthday, and you baked her a cake. Not understanding the mysteries of pastries like I do, you messed it up. Now, you need to buy a vanilla cake, pretend that you made it, and fool both of your sisters, your older brother, and your owner."

      Fire's desperate face turned to one of confusion. "That's exactly right. But… How did you know?"

      The Breadmaster gave her a mysterious stare. "It's all written in the rye bread, young baker; it's all in the rye."

      Fire's confusion simply grew but she shook it away due to her situation. "Yes, well, seeing as the rye bread has explained my situation to you, you know how desperately I need this cake! Please, I know you're sold out, but don't you have something in that back room of yours that I could buy?"

      The mysterious Breadmaker said, "Well, there is something… I have a double cream vanilla sponge cake that I was saving for a special occasion. This occasion is special enough for it." He disappeared behind the curtain that hid the back room where he did his baking and reappeared with the cake in paw. "For you, I will reduce the price. Two thousand neopoints." Fire quickly forked over the money, grabbed the cake, and, thanking Breadmaster as she went, flew out the front door.

      Behind her, the Breadmaster watched her go and said, "Travel safely, young baker." Then the strange Kacheek returned to studying the rye bread.

     ***

      "Earthwing! Fire! I'm home! How did your cake turn out?" Navy called out as she walked into her Neohome. The Ixi and the Shoyru came rushing into the front hall.

      "It was great, Mom! The cake looks delicious!" Earthwing chirped happily. Fire smiled in agreement, though Navy noticed that her smile was a bit forced. She decided to investigate later.

      "May I see it?" Navy asked. Earthwing nodded and towed her mother off to the kitchen to see the cake. "Fire was the one who decorated it. I was upstairs getting clean. I wish she would've waited for me, but she said that she didn't want to cut our time close." Navy shot Fire a suspicious look. The Shoyru just shrugged.

      "Well, Earthwing, why don't you set the table for dessert? Since it's Freedom's birthday, we'll have dinner after dessert and have the best part first!" Earthwing smiled at the thought of eating the cake and ran to set the silverware and napkins on the table.

      "Fire, would you mind explaining to me why this cake looks exactly like the one I saw advertised in the Bakery today?" Navy asked, looking straight at her daughter. "I thought you guys said that you were going to bake the cake so that it would be a special present."

      Fire froze. "Well, umm, uh…. Okay, I guess there's no use in pretending that I didn't buy it. But I did it for a good reason! We messed up the recipe, I think, and the cake totally bombed, but Earthwing didn't realize it and she was so proud of making it herself, I couldn't bear to tell her, so I borrowed some neopoints from your stash and ran to the Bakery and the Breadmaster read the rye and he gave me this cake for two thousand neopoints."

      "Fire, stop babbling," Navy said, for indeed, in her explanation, Fire had become more than a little incoherent. "I'm not exactly delighted that you guys chose to do something for Freedom that you didn't know how to do, and I wish you would've admitted your mistake." As Fire opened her mouth to protest, Navy held up a hand. "But I understand your reasoning. It's okay. You were just trying to make this day special for Freedom."

      Fire smiled slightly at hearing this. "Yeah, I guess I was. You're really not angry with me?"

      Navy chuckled softly. "I'm really not. You acted pretty mature today. You just have to promise never, ever to try and make a cake unless I'm with you to help you!"

      Fire eyes grew round. "Oh, I promise. It was hard. Besides, this whole being mature thing is really tiring!" Both Navy and her daughter laughed and went into the dining room.

     ***

      "Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday, dear Freedom! Happy Birthday to you!" Freedom's family sang as the Desert Aisha blew out the candles on her delicious looking cake. Spirit cheered when she blew all the candles out at once, Earthwing clapped and screamed "Yay!" while Navy hugged her daughter happily. Through all this, Fire sat back and watched. It was amazing how much her family could appreciate a simple thing such as a birthday or a cake.

      As they were cutting the cake, Earthwing said cheerfully, "The recipe was completely wrong, but we managed to substitute the right ingredients and amounts. If we hadn't known what to do, the cake would've been totally messed up, right, Fire?"

      Her sister smiled and said, "Yep, Earthwing. If we hadn't changed the recipe, the cake probably would've ended up in the garbage."

The End