[Closed Post: Cinnamon Roll]

[timebethine]

A few days' recovery have left Laertes feeling refreshed enough to return to his baking, although not quite ready to dive into anything particularly complicated. Thus, he abandons the more complex direktørsnegl recipe he'd been meaning to try in favor of perfecting the humble cinnamon roll.

The days are getting shorter--even Laertes can feel it, though his sense of time is poor. He can no longer rely on the sunrise to wake him at a decent hour for baking, and so today he's up a little before the sun, kneading the bready dough by hand rather than using the paddle of the stand mixer in the hopes that the physical exertion will wake him up a little. It's not working particularly well; his eyelids keep drooping.

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[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan is up with her internal clock - or, more accurately at this stage of winter, Lancelot's internal clock, since he's servant to his morning drills even more than she is to her own routine - and she finds Laertes in the kitchen shortly after he arrives.

"I see the rest period is over," she says, as she fills the kettle and flips it on, pulling teabags and a mug from the cabinet. A quick glance at Laertes, and she pulls a second mug down, too. "What's today's menu, and how might I help?"

[timebethine]

"Cinnamon rolls," says Laertes, a little startled by her briskness. "I've not yet made the filling or the icing--if thou canst start on either of those, that would be of great help to me." He's already had a cup of coffee, but it's done absolutely nothing for the tiredness; perhaps tea will offer reinforcements where coffee flags. "My thanks."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Milk? Sugar?" with a nod at the tea. "And have you got a recipe you're working from, or shall I freehand the filling?"

[timebethine]

"It's here," he says, pushing his recipe book toward her--it's a thick book with a hard, glossy cover, and it stays open to the page he's chosen, with a recipe for cinnamon rolls neatly divided into sections labeled make the dough, make the filling, make the icing, and assemble. "Milk and sugar both, please. I like sweet things," he says, with a wry laugh. "That was what led me to baking in the first place."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"A man after my own heart," Susan remarks, peering at the recipe for a moment before retrieving sugar and cinnamon from the cabinet, and going to the icebox for butter and milk. The butter she sets next to the oven so it might come to temperature more quickly; the sugar and milk sets to the side whilst she waits for the kettle to boil.

[timebethine]

"What's thy favorite thing to bake?" he asks as he starts rolling the dough out--"I've made a double batch," he warns her, "since it's meant for the café."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I suppose ginger nuts are the recipe I most frequently turn to," Susan says, contemplative. "I don't suppose they're my favorite though. I've not spent much time making anything but biscuits since I got here, since those are easy and store well. And - I came from a London with strict rationing, including of sugar and fat. I reckon I might like making a cake, some day."

[timebethine]

"That must have been hard," says Laertes, with a sympathetic glance her way. "I have a Sachertorte recipe that was well-loved at Galahad's and Magnus's birthday party, if thou wouldst surfeit thy lack with richness. Or we could find another, if there's a cake thou lovest above all others."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I rather fancy a plumcake," Susan says, thoughtfully. "If I could have any that taste like the ones I had in Narnia, I'm sure it would be here."

[timebethine]

"I've had a cake of apricots; we could start there, and perfect it by degrees," Laertes offers. "Nothing sharpens my focus like a problem to solve--and a Narnian plumcake for thee is a fine problem."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I suppose I might remember a recipe," Susan muses. The kettle boils, and she pours the water over the teabags, adding heaping spoonfuls of sugar to each and stirring it in before topping it off with milk. "Now that I've remembered Narnia I'm sure I could dredge the recipes up, too."

[timebethine]

"Wouldst thou speak more of thy forgetting?" he asks as he starts to scrape the butter generously over his dough.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan blends sugar with cinnamon in the proportions recommended, then passes the bowl over to Laertes. "Suppose you put nuts or raisins in, as well?" she suggests, as she does, and then hesitates. "I can. What would you know?"

[timebethine]

Laertes studies the mix a little owlishly, then takes his tea and sips while he tries to puzzle the answer out. "Let's," he decides, and rummages in the pantry until it coughs up some golden raisins and shelled walnuts. "I'll cut the raisins small, if thou wilt do the same for the nuts?"

As he passes the jar of walnuts to her, Laertes considers her other question. "I know nothing of Narnia, except that it has pavenders that taste sweet and melt upon the tongue. I ... I suppose I would ask thee the same kinds of questions I would ask my father of Poland. I would know what it was to thee, and how thou camest to forget, and what madest thee yearn to remember it."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan has been mentally preparing for this conversation ever since the feast, running through potential avenues it might go, sorting through how to present the topic as best she can. That, plus her lingering sleepiness, ease her way as she retrieves a cutting board and knife and says, "Narnia was another world. My siblings and I stumbled across it through a wardrobe. It was... in dire straits. Beset by an evil witch-queen for a hundred years who made it always winter, never Christmas, and who turned all dissenters to stone." She starts chopping the walnuts, smooth and steady but slow, slow. "We worked with the Narnians and Aslan to defeat her and then ruled there for fifteen years."

[timebethine]

"Didst thou not wish to go home?" He asks it with no judgment; he hasn't wanted to go home once since his first day in this new world. His own knife works across the scattered raisins, first one direction and then the other, making them small and fine.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"By the end, we had quite forgotten there was a home to miss," Susan says, matter-of-fact. "Until we stumbled back into England, children again."

[timebethine]

"So thou didst forget twice: once England, and once Narnia," says Laertes thoughtfully--then the second implication hits him, and he says, "thou wert a child when thou didst fight for Narnia?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I was twelve, and I did little fighting, personally," Susan says. She runs her knife over the walnuts once more, but they're all in small pieces and there's little left to cut. "Peter was thirteen. Edmund was barely ten and dear Lucy was still eight."

[timebethine]

"Christ," says Laertes, and dumps his raisins in the filling bowl. "An eight-year-old girl--and they crowned her, and she ruled for fifteen years. God in Heaven, that must have been hard."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan adds her walnuts, too. "Lucy rather enjoyed it," she says, with a there-and-gone smile. Bracing herself, she adds, "There were hard parts, but mostly it was a grand adventure. What was harder was being called back a year later, for us, and finding that over a thousand had passed there, and being told in short order I had grown too old ever to return again."

[timebethine]

"That must have been hard for thee and for Peter," says Laertes as he starts to mix the filling. "Did Lucy and Edmund remain behind, then?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

But Susan shakes her head. "We were all sent back to England," she says. "I suppose Lucy and Edmund returned once more a year or two later with our little cousin. By then I was well on my way to convincing myself it was all just stories we told each other to cope with the war."

[timebethine]

The war in which the atom was split, laying waste to cities. "I might have told myself such stories, in thy place," he says quietly. "Little wonder thou wouldst dream of being a hero."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Halfway through a nod, Susan shakes her head, rueful and a little wry. She blows on her tea, fishes the bag out, and takes a long sip. "What a heavy topic before the sun has even risen!" she observes.