JGoB, Friday afternoon

[stykera]

After superhero class, which was less terrible than he'd feared but perhaps that was only due to it being the first week, Stark took himself to the bakery. Which meant, of course, that he rode his skateboard from the school down to JGoB. At least going down the stairs was easier than going up them on the board? Maybe a little too easy judging by the fresh scrape on his face. Nothing serious, at least. He'd just picked up a bit too much speed heading back down to the town from the school and hadn't stopped properly.

He deserved extra cupcakes for falling, didn't he? He thought so at least. And he needed some to share with his brother. He probably also deserved extra baked goods for having woken up as a flowering plant for 3 mornings in a row now. How he was going to carry a full box of cupcakes back to his apartment while riding a skateboard would be a problem to deal with later. Going up the stairs at MHA without ruining the whole box might be an adventure!

He rolled in to the bakery, of course, rolled up to the counter, and then did several fun little turns while rolling in front of the display case to look at the available options.

"My brother doesn't like chocolate," he explained. "So we need some other flavors. Not just chocolate. The orange one maybe? And vanilla. And the one with the purple frosting." In case he needed to share with someone else, too.

"Since when do you have a brother?" the man behind the counter asked.

"Forever. My whole life," Stark said with a frown. "We're twins."

"You never mentioned him before. But you never showed up in here on a skateboard before either so whatever, man. You do you."

"The skateboard is new," Stark said. "A twin can't be new! Not usually anyway. That was a special circumstance, when we had two Crichtons, that hasn't happened here."

"Right. Whatever, just try not to fall anymore, yeah?"

Stark nodded, accepted his box of cupcakes, and rolled to an open table to eat one before leaving.


[Open, of course, for any bakery or glowy alien needs you may have!]

Comments

[lilac_eyed_lieutenant]

"What do you mean, you don't have Peppermint Mochas yet?"

Tisarwat, who didn't even like coffee, was very distraught by this news, because it was December! It really felt like the thong she should be having right now.

But she sighed as the barista offered an alternative.

"Of course I'll take a peppermint tea instead."

She was Radchaai, after all, and would actually enjoy it more than the mocha, but that wasn't the point!

PSL was clearly overstaying its welcome, if you asked her.

[stykera]

"It's early for peppermint, isn't it?" Stark asked. He'd sat down but kept one foot on the skateboard and was rolling it back and forth next to his chair. "The pumpkin just started."

[lilac_eyed_lieutenant]

"It's December," Tisarwat said, with the utmost conviction, blinking her lilac eyes at Stark for a moment in surprise that he seemed to think otherise. Sure, she wouldn't have expected Stark to have noticed that she was wearing winter, not autumn gloves, but still! It was pretty obvious even without thay detail.

"And has been for several days. I figured they'd be happy to move onto the new flavor."

[stykera]

Stark looked at Tisarwat, then out the window as if he might have missed a few months passing or snow falling or something like that.

"It's September," he said. "Or it was when I went to class just now." He wouldn't have had his first class of the term in December. That would be silly. "How could it be December already?"

[lilac_eyed_lieutenant]

Tisarwat shrugged, nodding a thanks to the barista as she set down the tea, after having gone through a very elaborate personal ordeal over how it should be prepared.

"I dont know," she admitted, with a tentative sip and a wrinkle of her nose, but some tea was better than no tea, just like some peppermint was better than no peppermint. "But that's what my phone has said since Wednesday."

Her phone did not say any such thing.

"Time is kind of weird like that, sometimes, though..."

She barely bothered keeping track half the time, now that it seemed to go strange anytime she went home.

And there was that whole thing with the locker....

...and having thousands of years of memories you never experienced also sort of skewed your perspective a little in general.

[stykera]

Stark looked at her curiously before pulling out his own phone to check. "This still says September."

"But you're right. Time can be weird. Not always as linear as we think it is."