2022-05-12 - Rage-Baking

It was a long night, for Una. First that text, and if that wasn't enough to send her scrambling home-- but home had no answers, to offer, just closed doors, and despite her obvious anxiety, she's smart enough to know not to go bursting into people's rooms; that's housemates 101, surely.

Did she sleep? More than likely not, or not more than snatches, here and there. Instead, she's been in the kitchen since the early hours, baking and cooking up a storm: the only way she has to get rid of some of her excess energy and concern. Every noise the house makes-- and it's old, there have been a few-- has caught her attention. Every movement of one of her housemates (or others).

But this time, they can come to her. It's got to be difficult to miss her, down here. Where else would Una be, with the door to her room wide open.

Bursting in? That's for when there's actual fire. (Fire.)

There have been footsteps; the upstairs toilet has flushed more than once; the shower has gone into action, even.

When Della finally comes downstairs, at a not-unreasonable hour of the morning, she's nothing like the woman who ran down to the kitchen just yesterday. Her hair's satiny smooth, clipped up on the short side; her makeup's on point; and her manicure's fresh and flawless (a lighter, slightly glossy shade of her blouse's rich ruddy purple).

"It's nice to see you." And it is: Una herself, the baking mere accessories. "I didn't sleep well. What about you?"

"Is it?" Una sounds tired-- tired, and more than a little brittle in her response, as if she's still trying to work out how she feels, how she should feel. She's still in what pass for pyjamas: loose pants and an over-sized t-shirt, her feet bare on the cold, tired floor.

"No, I didn't sleep."

Della exhales: audible only if one is listening, or sensitized.

She scans the kitchen. Is the blender in use? The coffee pot? It takes her all the way back to Una. "What can I tell you?"

The coffee pot shows signs of having been in use, but it's empty now (that's probably not a great sign). The blender is unused. The sink is full of dishes, and the redhead returns to them now. Sure, there's a dishwasher. Sure, she could just put them in there instead. But...

Without looking up: "You could fill me in. I know nothing more than what your text said."

Mostly, now, she just sounds tired. Tired--- and sad.

"No word from Jules?" Della looks... genuinely surprised. She'd given a thumbs-up to Jules' text this morning, whatever that means.

Now she resumes motion. She collects the blender. She opens the freezer door and stands in front of it. Fruit. Berries. Acai, even though it's grainy. Extra blueberries, because. Water. Ice. Chopped greens, a smaller percentage than usual. The door shuts. Almonds, a couple handfuls.

As she forages: "I don't know much more." But she'll start out with, "So far as I know, they're fine. Now."

"Ariadne came here looking for Ravn. I'm sorry; I don't remember what all I texted you." She could look, but her phone is staying in her pocket, for once. "The house shook," or so it felt. She doesn't make any effort to make it dramatic, or exciting, or anything other than what they went through. It's flat. "It was so loud. I came down and Jules and Mikaere and Ravn were in the kitchen. Ravn had his violin out. It was quiet by then and Jules picked something up and then started talking in a language I didn't recognize and she opened a door into Dream and she walked through and Ravn walked through and then it shut."

"There were huckleberries. I remember that."

"What came before, I learned from Mikaere." It seems important to make sure Una knows the provenance, that it's secondhand or more.

Una's, "No," is back to being brittle, all tangled up in a night's worth of emotions-- and a lifetime's worth of insecurities.

That's as far as she gets before Della's explaining, and it... she stops, and she swallows, hard and fast and like she's about to cry, though she doesn't. "What."

That's a lot to take in, right now.

Maybe it's not just coincidence, then, that Della chooses this time to get the blender whirring. That buys them some time.

She checks; adds more water; whirrs it again, and while it does, gets out two tall glasses. Once filled, she hands one to Una, waiting for the other woman to take it before she continues. Even then, it's only, "He, by the way, showed up when Jules did." For starters.

Una rolls off her rubber gloves as Della pours into the glasses, ensuring her hand is bare-- clammy, but not damp the way it could be-- when it is passed her way. She nods an acknowledgement, a silent thanks.

"Ravn did? So he's safe too?"

There's relief in that, dulled though it is. Another nod, too.

Della drinks illustratively: it's her cue for Una to drink, too.

"It seems that way." The dark-haired woman doesn't speculate on anything psychological. "Apparently his asthma was bad, but he's fine -- this from Ariadne, who'd come here looking for him and then intercepted him when they showed up -- and my understanding is that he'll come by for his violin and laptop later." Which had hot pads on them for grabbing with, or at least they did when she left them. "Asthma on top of the neuropathy -- apparently there are different kinds? -- can't be fun, especially this time of year, pollen central."

Una follows the cues she's given, and takes a careful sip. She smiles, even: it's good, both in taste and in nutrition, which is probably an important thing given the amount of cookies (and other things) the kitchen contains now.

She leans up against the counter and listens, her brows knitting carefully in. "No," she agrees. "That can't have been fun. You said... in your text. You said 'dry now'."

About that. Della makes a face. "Apparently they'd fallen in a river. The Chehalis, of all things. Dripping and wet, but Ariadne got him in a shower at his place," the front door, or where the front door would be if Della could see through walls, gets a wry look, "and I got Jules taken care of here." She adds, expecting Una to want details there, "Into a long hot shower. Dry clothes. Mikaere," his name is only a very little bit singsong, "heated a casserole." She watches Una for clues: had the two of them cleaned up after themselves?

(Mostly, Della might hope they had, if only for Una's sake. A little part, though... evidence.)

A slow nod from Una, this time. Another careful sip-and-swallow. She inhales; exhales.

"So that's why the casserole was in the fridge this morning," is some kind of a clue, commented on more as a verbalised thought than as something she deliberately wishes to share. "I don't think they ate much of it. I got home and everything was dark and quiet and I didn't know."

"I'm sure it helped Jules, if she did eat it." More perfunctorily, "Them."

Also: "I'm sorry, Una. I wanted to make sure you had the important information, at least."

"The rest... even now there's more. Not that I know most of it." Bitter as burnt coffee.

"I know," she says, after a thick swallow. "I know, and I'm grateful you told me as much as you did. I don't think I could have stood..." The alternative. The implications of the alternative.

"Are you angry with her too?"

"That's a direct question." Della licks her lips, just a small little flicker. But that's not a complaint. She leans one hip against the counter, has herself a sip. "With both of them, really. Though I'm trying not to be. But -- "

"Oh. Both her and Mikaere, that is."

"Which I'd prefer to not go beyond you." Her tone doesn't imply Una's a tattletale, it's just straightforward, the way Una herself had been. Particularly given, "It's awkward, and I realize I was... emotional."

Am.

Una's quick nod is evidently intended as reassurance that she won't be passing anything on; it would be out of character for her to do so, but the reassurance is genuine and firm nonetheless. "It sounds like it was an emotional day," she says, carefully. "I'm not surprised."

It doesn't demand further explanation. Indeed, her gaze has dropped towards her bare toes. "She promised me, not even two weeks ago, that she'd be careful. That she wouldn't do anything stupid. And then..." Her sweeping hand encompasses everything, all of it. "I'm so angry I could spit."

Everything. All of it. "Not in the food," Della half-assumes under her breath; it's a joke, her tone says it's partly a joke, but also that the larger situation ain't funny.

"It's a good thing Ravn was there, to bring her back."

She doesn't try to hide this from Una, either: "It gets better. According to Mikaere -- the little thing, the figurine from Jules' family, tried to possess him first. And still it got her." Her shoulders tilt, counterbalance to her hipshot lean, as she wraps one arm around herself. "If he hadn't shown up, if I hadn't, Jules and Ravn would have been gone, together, and we'd never have known."

"Until they got back, of course."

Probably not in the food. That would be a step too far for Una-- as close to sacrilegious as these things get.

"The fuck," is low and guttural and probably as angry as Della has ever seen Una. Una, who so often goes for 'sad' and 'upset' but rarely outright anger.

"How could they be so stupid?"

It widens Della's eyes, if only for a moment. If anyone in the redhead's past has told Una to calm down, that anger's not ladylike... Della doesn't do it now.

Instead, "I don't know."

"Jules didn't want to explain, when she got home."

"Though I don't imagine the figurine came with a manual."

"I wish I knew. What happened. How much of it was a surprise."

There could be more, there almost is, but she's said so much already.

Una doesn't want explanations, right now, it seems: she wants to be angry, to express her frustration and hurt at this whole situation. She's not really the wronged party in all of this, except in the ways that she is, but that doesn't matter.

She sets down her glass, stalking over to one of the racks where her lemon cookies are cooling. (Lemon cookies, shortbread, actual bread, scones; it was a long, long night.) Anger calls for sugar, not nutrition, though she probably doesn't even taste the cookie as she bites into it, chews, swallows.

"Ravn was warning about how dangerous it was to go to the Other Side literally this week. Yes-- day before yesterday. And then to do this? Jules doesn't have the sense she was born with, but Ravn..."

"I got the sense," Della says deliberatively, "that he went to get her back. To have her back. Not because he wanted to."

"It's not just the going," says Una. "It's what led to it."

She eats another cookie, too, just for good measure.

Della watches her and her cookies. And she doesn't argue. All she does is set down her glass, and walk back over to where she'd stashed the laptop and violin case out of the way, and -- without hot pads, this time, though it would be easy enough to retrieve them from all the baking -- very carefully pick up each in turn. She does it oddly, first the touch and only then the lift and move, more slowly than strictly necessary. But then, they aren't hers.

(They also aren't the jacket with those associations, it seems.)

(They also aren't helpful.)

She moves them to the table, where they'll be easy to locate whenever Ravn or Ariadne comes by; evidently she doesn't plan to take up that space herself with her laptop, with her everything.

She has a blender to clean, and a dishwasher to stuff, if Una will let her.