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Nova looked blankly at the papers in front of her, she was trying to write up her weekly report on the engines for Lucius. Lucius never actually asked her to do it, she doubted he even understood half of it but she liked to write up all the notes about everything she had done with the engine of the airship that week. Well she usually liked it, right now her mind was blank.
“Uhhhhhhh…” she placed the end of her brown aarakocra feather quill in her mouth absentmindedly. “Mmmuhhh.” she muttered.
“Hey! Take that out your mouth, you might choke.” a worried voice came from behind her.
“Uh!” she startled and spun around “Sentry?! How long have you been there?”
“About half an hour.”
“Oh, hi.” Nova said sheepishly.
“Hi.” Sentry smiled with her voice, she walked over to gently lean against Nova’s desk, very aware of her huge metal form around Nova’s delicately stacked piles of paper “You missed lunch.”
“But… I’m writing.”
“You still need to eat.”
“I just need to get this report done.” Nova turned back to her desk, “I’m just struggling to focus.”
“If you are struggling to focus you should definitely take a break and then come back to it.”
“No.” Nova huffed
“I am telling you as your morale officer that you need to get some lunch, Nova V’ger.” Sentry said in the closest thing she had to a scolding voice, she didn’t sound very threatening though.
“What’s for lunch?” Nova muttered, looking a little worried that Sentry might be upset with her.
“The others just had sandwiches, you can have whatever you like.”
Nova thought for a moment “Cookies?” she eventually asked
“If it means you will leave the engine room for a moment and eat something, yes you can have cookies for lunch.”
‘Yay!” Nova dropped her quill and hopped down from her desk chair.
Sentry followed Nova out of the engines through the ship and to the kitchen. Howard was humming to himself as he washed up. Quill and Lucius were making hot drinks together in the corner. When Nova and Sentry entered the room Aila looked up from the last half of a huge sandwich full of several sauces and meats.
“Hello stranger.” she nodded towards Nova.
“Hi.” Nova gave an awkward little wave to everyone in the kitchen “Howard, do you mind if I use your kitchen? I want to make cookies!”
“Of course not miss Nova, I was just about to have a nice little after-lunch sit down, the place is all yours.” He finished the washing up and pottered off to his room.
Nova grabbed a chair, pulled it over to the pantry and climbed up, standing on her tiptoes on the chair she could just reach to search the top shelf. Sentry places a hand on Nova’s back, ready to catch her if she falled. Nova pulled down a bag of flour, a bag of sugar and a box of chocolate chips and handed them to Sentry. Nova jumped down from the chair. Sentry caught her and placed her safely on the ground. Nova dashed over to the oven and turned it on. She pulled a big mixing bowl out of a cupboard and fetched butter and eggs from a very nifty enchanted chest that kept things chilled.
Sentry followed closely behind her, depositing her flour, sugar and chocolate chips by where Nova was now already cracking eggs into the bowl. She cracked three eggs and then reached for the biggest knife from the knife block and began slicing the butter with it.
“Be careful! you don't need a knife that sharp!” Sentry said, her voice full of worry.
“I could use Tiangong instead..” Nova paused for a moment as if listening to something in her head. “No actually, they wouldn't enjoy being covered in butter”
“You never heard of a butter knife?” Aila piped up through a mouth full of sandwich.
“This did the job just fine,” Nova said, dumping a lot of butter in the bowl.
Next she began pouring sugar into the bowl.
“Shouldn’t you be measuring that?” Quill asked as he appeared beside her holding a tray with three mugs on it.
“My mom never mesures, this is her recipe” Nova shrugged
“I have hot chocolate for you guys.” Quill put the tray down, handed Nova and Sentry each a mug and took one for himself. “Those ratios are all wrong though.” he said peering into the mixing bowl.
“Thank you for the hot choccy, but please keep your beak out of my baking, I know exactly what I’m doing, I’ve watched my mom make these hundreds of times.”
“If you say so.” Quill walked over to sit by Lucius, who was now at the table with Aila.
“I think you're doing very well.” Sentry reassured Nova, holding her mug close to her, enjoying the warmth.
Nova poured some flour into the mixture, getting a lot on the work surface and her face in the process. Then she dumped all the chocolate chips in. She grabbed a wooden spoon and began mixing. She only mixed for a couple of seconds before her arm got tired.
“Ailaaaaa” Nova whined, “Will you mix for me? It’s really hard!”
“Give it here then.” Aila sighed.
Aila’s huge arm became a blur as she went at the cookie mixture with vigour. Nova sat back and watched, sipping her hot chocolate. After a few minutes Nova took a look at the progress. Somehow it didn’t look like the cookie dough her mom made, it was a completely different consistency, a very sticky, gloopy mixture with a lot of big lumps that refused to mix in.
“Humph.” Nova furrowed her brow.
Aila stuck her hand into the bowl and grabbed one of the chunks from the mixture, tossing it in her mouth.
“Nova, that doesn't taste right at all!” Aila grimaced.
Lucius leaned over the table and also took some mixture, nibbling at it cautiously.
“Wow Nova. This is delicious” Lucius’ face showed visible disgust. He chewed for a while, trying to swallow before ducking his head under the table and spitting the mixture out into his handkerchief. He emerged from under the table looking a little bit green.
“Even I could tell you don’t mean that, Lucius.” Nova sounded a little sad.
“I’m sure we can fix it.” Sentry wrapped her big metal arms around Nova for a comforting hug.
“I don’t understand, I did exactly what my mom does, why didn’t it work?” Nova pouted, leaning into Sentry’s hug.
“I’ll take a look at it, see what I can do.” Sentry let go of Nova and took the bowl. She turned away from everyone and started working on the mixture. Nova sat down at the table with the others.
“It wasn’t the worst thing I have ever eaten.” Lucius patted Novas hand “I once ate a worm.”
“So youre saying that Nova’s cookies are the worst thing you have eaten since you were a toddler?” Aila raised an eyebrow.
“Oh no! The worm was a couple of months ago, when Quill eats them he makes them look so delicious I wanted to try one. Turns out they are absolutely disgusting. My father would never have let me eat worms!”
Aila gave Lucius a disgusted look.
“Right!” Sentry clapped and turned to the room “I think I have sorted them, we should pop them in the oven and see what happens.”
“Nice!” Nova jumped up to help Sentry roll the cookie dough into balls and put it on baking trays and into the oven. The oven was huge, made specially for cooking large meals for the big crew, and the cookies filled every shelf. In fixing the cookie mixture Sentry had needed to add a lot more ingredients, resulting in a lot more cookies.
Sentry wiped down the mess that Nova made on the sides and then attempted to wipe Nova's face but Nova protested and wiggled out of reach.
“I can do it myself” Nova wiped her face on her scarf, moving the flour around her face but not actually getting rid of any.
Sentry got a set of playing cards out of one of the kitchen draws and they all played a simple game until the room started to smell slightly of burning.
Nova ran to the oven, flung open the door but before she could reach inside to get the trays she was pulled back.
“NOVA!” Sentry cried, “Don’t stick your bare hands in the oven!!”
“But the cookies are burning.” Nova whined.
“Your hands are much more precious than the cookies!” Sentry slid on some floral oven gloves and pulled the trays out of the oven.
Sentry held Nova back until the cookies were cool enough for her to prod. They were only slightly burnt around the edges, in the middle they almost resembled cookies. Nova bit into one. They were definitely very sweet, probably too sweet. The texture in the middle was nothing like the soft gooey goodness of her mom’s cookies. Instead they were more cake like.
“Hmmmm, very interesting.” Nova said through a mouthful of cookies.
Aila strolled over, grabbed one and tossed it into her mouth. “Wow, i’m surprised. This is actually pretty good, well done guys!” She reached for another cookie.
“Thank you Aila.” Sentry smiled “Would either of you boys like to try one?” She looked over at Quill and Lucius. Lucius looked nervus.
“They are actually kind of edible this time, promise.” Aila said around what was probably her third or forth cookie.
“I’ll take one” Quill raised his hand. Sentry passed him a cookie, Quill pecked at it. “This is actually pretty delicious, very sweet, but good.” He continued pecking at his cookie.
Lucius gathered the courage to try one. His face went through a journey of fear, confusion, surprise and then finally enjoyment as he chewed. “Well done sentry! You actually fixed that wonderfully, this is almost a cookie.”
It was about then that Howard came pottering back into the kitchen. He was yawning and rubbing his eyes as if he had just woken up from a very good nap.
“Hello there everyone, Captain.” He gave the stormchaser salute and Lucius saluted back. “Are these your cookies, miss Nova?” Howard nodded towards the trays.
“Yeah, they aren’t as good as my mum’s though” Nova pouted
“Of course they aren’t” Howard laughed “Your mum would have had a lot more practice than you, baking is a science, you need to keep experimenting with your little recipe, try out all the different variables and keep a log of what works and what doesn't. Eventually you will be making cookies as good as your mum.”
“Science?!” Nova started bouncing excitedly.
“Don’t tell her that, she is going to make so many cookies now!” Aila groaned
“I'm sorry, but that doesn't seem too bad to me.” Howard chuckled as he put the kettle on the stove.
“We might have too many cookies right now.” Sentry remarked, looking at still mostly full trays covering every work surface in the kitchen.
“Yeah, they aren’t all that good, I’m not going to eat all of these, I might make myself some pasta.” Nova sighed.
“I have an idea, hold on” Lucius jogged out of the room.
“Where the hell did he go.” Aila looked confused.
Nova went about reluctantly making herself some ‘proper’ lunch and Howard made everyone a cup of tea.
After a few minutes Lucius returned, hand in hand with Fayeth, most of the rest of the wolfpack following behind.
“Captain said there were cookies for us” shouted one of the wolfpack men.
“Come get ya cookies!” Aila yelled, picking up the trays and handed them to the small crowd now gathered in the kitchen.
Chatter filled the room as everyone ate. Howard filled the kettle up again to make more tea.