Adventures In Pastry Cannibalism Who: Shimmer/Arrow. Where: Brasserie Le Breeze. What: Arrow receives a mysterious package.
Brasserie Le Breeze was many things. Boutique hotel, microbrewery, brasserie… Yeah, it was one of those places. That was why it might be many things, but a frequent haunt of Shimmer was not one of them.
Indeed, the main reason she had even gone in there was the same reason she visited a lot of places when not off-hours. Namely, to deliver a package which was, not to put too fine a point on it, but likely to be a tad on the stinky side, when it was opened up. Right now, it was two or three foot long, cylindrical and very, very cold.
The courier headed for the staff entrance, burst into the kitchen with a wide-eyed, “Hi!” Then hefted the delivery from over her shoulder to the table, grunting as it slammed down on the hard surface. Gathering her breath, the delivery girl held a finger up, cleared her throat and fished out a small speaker to play the jaunty little ditty of ‘Turkey In The Straw’.
And, readying her little prepared dance, began to sing, thusly:
“Ohhhh...! If you ever need some cookies, Or a costume of a Wookie, That's when Shimmer will deliver, I will even fly!
“Your package won't go in the crapper, It will keep its shiny wrapper, You can even trust me not to go and eat your pies!
“Books on diction, Erotic fiction, How Frodo cock-teased Sam and learned to take it like a man. I will distribute and circulate, And never would discriminate, And if there's more, I'll just go out and hire a van!
“Ohhhh...! Even if it's clothing, Or a lawn you might need mowing, I can always find some shit that I know you'll need! Just you leave it up to Shimmer, 'Cause with me you'll be a winner! And I hope you liked my song and that your ears don't bleed!”
Big finish!
“Ta-daaa...! Shimmer has delivered!”
Ro wiped flour onto her apron and then clapped. Despite her previous effort, a faint cloud of flour still flew into the air. She appreciated a good show.
"So, that was adorable," Ro offered, leaning onto the countertop between the rows of colorful tarts she was working on to examine the mysterious delivery. "That's not our address, though. Do I still get to keep it? I want to know what's in there."
Shimmer might not require a physical body to exist, but her manifested form still seemed to operate on some sort of biological fundamentals. Or at least, that was the impression which was given, because its owner was standing there, huffing and puffing with effort, before offering a confused, "Wha... What...?"
Eyes squinted and the newest brunette tilt-tilt-tilted head, as if trying to decipher some alien language. The wrong address? How could this be? Shimmer had delivered! It couldn't possibly-
Oh.
"Well, that's... That's just because..."
Dressed in jeans and a hoodie, the diminutive courier left her mouth parted as she tried to improvise a believable reply, now that she, too, had examined the label. Shit, thought Shimmer. Not again...
"It's a free demonstration! At Shimmer's Deliveries, we always aim to impress! Why, if I'd been sent here, I would've turned up a full, oh... Several hours earlier than scheduled! And, might I say, Ma'am? That's a fine clothing ensemble you happen to be wearing! Clearly the choice of a woman who knows what she wants."
Giving her own ad hoc compliment an added thumbs up and not-at-all-serial-killer smile, Shimmer started blinking her attention between Arrow and the package un question. She was sort of... Curious about the contents, herself. After all, it was still intended for a restaurant, just not this one.
"Well... I mean... I'm not saying you... Couldn't check on what's inside," the delivery girl spoke, compromising. "Like... If we can tape it up after? And just sort of... Slide it out, a little?"
What could be so big? And narrow? And cold?
Arrow blinked and then smiled. "Thanks, I picked picked out my clothes, myself." Ro wasn’t entirely sure what was going with this woman. She didn't seem at all like most other people. When she felt for any scrap of attraction the other woman might be feeling, it was unlike anything Arrow had experienced before. If humans, were and vampires were all different sports teams, this woman was playing golf on the moon with pink flamingos for clubs. How fascinating.
"Let's just take a little peek," she said conspiratorially. Ro found a palette knife in a bin on her bench and used that to carefully peel away the tape on one end.
Whatever it was, the contents were quite rigid. It was like a lightweight block of concrete, but the reason for its temperature started to become clear, the moment it was opened. For the interior was more than just ice cold, it was ice. Specifically, something packed in ice.
"Well, no sense in waiting!"
Before Arrow could object, the courier had taken it upon herself to shake at least half of the mysterious object out of its packaging, more curious as to what she had been hauling around than the potential for danger.
"Oh," came Shimmer's one-worded response. "You don't happen to operate an Asian seafood menu on the side, do you?"
Tentacles... They were the tentacles of a huge squid. Not that this would be any barrier to food preparation, but it was a world away from pastry.
"Or maybe a hentai-themed film studio?"
Ro laughed, long and hearty. "I can honestly say that's not one of my kinks. I mean I'll try anything once, but that's a lot." She prodded the tentacle with a finger.
"Chef might have ordered something to do calamari or grilled octopus, but it's still not for us. It's definitely not for my pastries."
Eyes shifted to Ro. To the squid. To Ro. To squid. To Ro. To squid. Sort of a… Squid-shaped Arrow. Shimmer’s mind was darting with possibilities, but none of them ended up anywhere favourably.
“Hold that cephalopod,” she demanded, action heroine-style. “I’m gonna’ shit this thing backwards, man. Hnnng...!”
With that, the delivery girl rammed the packaging back in one silky-smooth movement. It was like watching violent fellatio between frozen mollusc and mostly still-intact packaging.
Success!
“Yes!” Shimmer nodded with celebratory enthusiasm and held a palm up for a potential high-five. “I should’ve gone in for animal husbandry! Woulda’ made a fucking mint!”
Arrow slapped her palm against the other woman's. She wasn't entirely able to keep the inflection of innuendo from her voice. "You handle floppy dangling parts like a pro."
They had packing tape around for when they needed a good seal on cake boxes and Ro helped tape the package back up. "You know this might be my favorite delivery I never received."
“I have my moments,” answered the unexpected squid-deliverer with waggling eyebrows. “One time? I had to rush something like this to a hospital, except it was way smaller. But I’m told it made some guy very relieved to have sewn back on, so… Good times, all around.”
Shimmer was actually very visually engaged by Arrow’s taping. Either it was rare for her to have assistance or it was just an unusual situation. One thing did make her double-take, however and eyes widened as she moved towards something laying on a counter.
“You have salad tongs? You have fucking salad tongs?! Ohhh, my sish kebab! You totally have salad tongs! Do you have a rolling pin, too?!”
Ro snorted. "I bet he was," she muttered.
Her earlier thoughts needed revising. Shimmer wasn't just playing golf on the moon. She was playing moon croquet blindfolded with a beach all for a ball and while riding a sparkly space whale.
"I do!" Arrow set out a rolling pin and then set beside it a second pin. This one was with a scroll design set all around so that when it was rolled, the design would be stamped into the dough.
Shimmer didn’t just loudly gasp. Her hands flailed as she did so, slapping the nearest countertops multiple times as she did so. It was a child who had just been given a sugar-rush washed down with cola and chocolate cake.
“But… But… What are you even still doing here?! The world is your fucking oyster, lady! I-i-it’s not even one of those cool glass ones, it lets you make patterns!”
She had taken ahold of Arrow by the lapels, like one of those scientists in a 1950s science-fiction movie, desperately trying to impart wisdom to those around her.
And Shimmer produced the biggest, most maniacal grin the world had ever seen. Ominously clacking those salad tongs together, as though playing a broken, one-handed fiddle.
Ro wrapped her hands around Shimmer’s wrist and grinned back. When the other let go, she pivoted to turn and face the pastry rack behind her towards the unexpected. "Because I can use all this stuff to make this." There were rows of colorful macrons, tiny petit fours, tarts in an array of tantalizing colors.
Strangely, the courier looked a little crestfallen at that revelation. “But… They’re not even alive,” she said, which probably only added to the mystery of whatever the hell she had expected salad tongs and a patterned rolling pin to be applied to.
Frowning, she moved over, poked one and sniffed her fingers.
“And you’re… Happy making these? You don’t give them the power of speech or have them play little musical instruments? They just… Sit there? And get eaten?” There was a loud ugh of disappointment. “You should at least bake some sex-cakes. I don’t know what they look like, but if they’re used how I think they are? Customers must be burning through whole boxes of those things in one sitting. Oh… Heh! Sitting...”
"They are not used how you think they are but they are baked in a variety of fun shapes." Arrow couldn't keep the pastry Shimmer had touched so she handed it to her. It was a pink rosewater macron. "Eating is the best part. Nothing better than putting something delicious in your mouth. Here you can have this one."
Shimmer had interjected with a confused, “What, the sex-cakes?” Then got the gist of what was being said and, oh… Um… Yeah… Shimmer had issues with what should or should not be imbibed into her bodily system. There was some awkward, “Oh, that’s-that’s alright, it… I mean… And when… Because…”
No! Fuck it!
And she damned well lunged, face-first, at Arrow’s hand like a feisty, brunette shark. Lips clamped over fingers and confectionary crumpled within mouth, releasing the sticky contents.
“Mmmph!” Faked the poor nymph with a mouthful of hand, giving a thumbs up. “It’zh finger-lickinnng gooh!”
Ro had seen a lot in her handful of decades, but nothing that made her expect a perfect stranger would suddenly glimpse onto her fingers. At least not in this context. Arrow had been in situations where a stranger sucking on her fingers was a good time for everyone. But not in a restaurant kitchen (OK, maybe if Brianna wanted to…). There were crumbs stuck to her fingers and she sucked them off one finger at a time. People generally liked to watch her do things like that, but when Arrow searched again for attraction, she got something back she couldn't identify.
"Aren't you a sparkly little crawfish," Ro drawled. She deliberately replaced the sparkly unicorn with something as unexpected as Shimmer seemed to be and well, maybe she had seafood on the brain.
As per usual, Shimmer had impulsively got herself into the kind of situation ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos’ would pay a decent regular income for, such was the frequency of it. She could only give a toothy smile and was attempting to half-chew on the bakery product and hand, combined, like a hooked fish with a crunchy worm.
Anything associated with actual sexuality would be… Colourful, to say the least, for any being attempting to muddle around in the nymph’s aura. She might look human, although was anything but. There wasn’t even a baseline to read, thanks to a certain incident involving explosive magic. It would be like trying to carefully read a Richter scale print-out in the middle of an earthquake. There were powerful energies within her and even being casually projected, though it was more akin to an unending drugs trip than anything approaching relaxed stability.
“Zhould I eak your thingerth, koo?”
But, deciding against it, Shimmer suddenly remembered owning a pair of hands and took ahold of Arrow by the wrist, carefully extracting the young woman’s fingers from her mouth. “Duh...! I keep forgetting they’re not flippers,” the nymph chuckled to herself and swallowed some of what she had been trying to give an impression of munching on like a typical human.
There were reasons she usually stuck to water in the company of others. Reasons which might be rooted in the incident which had caused her to take an extended stay on Earth, but whatever they were… There was a sudden twitch in shoulders, followed by a spinal jerk.
“Ohhh, there was sugar in that, wasn’t there?”
Jerk. Jerk-twitch. Ooh, now she was fluttering on the inside! And Shimmer gave an impulsive bout of laughter, only stopping it by clapping a hand over her mouth.
“That’s… That’s… That’s… Ohhh, that’s gonna’ take some… Eep!”
Arrow blinked. "You're sugar high already. You must be fun at parties."
“Nah, man, I’m-” Jerk. “I-I’m fine. I’m cool. I’m just - chuckanarmadilloatmyhead! I-I-I'm just..." Shimmer couldn't even continue without vigorously shaking her hands at the wrists. "Havin' a little... Trouble... Or-or-or not! Because I am completely human, after all! And, therefore, nothing untoward has occurred!"
"Oh yes," Ro deadpanned. "For I am also a human being and haven't noticed whatever all this is." She waved a hand over at Shimmer.
“Well, that’s good, see! Because, like, nothing is going on and, even if you should notice it is - which it totally isn’t - it’s probably just a hallucination brought on by, like, flour addition and what-have-you.”
Yeah! That would work! She was sure of it. Good save, Shimmer! She bet even this lady had no idea what was going into her products. Even though she was personally involved in making them and… Because, like, who knew? Really? Who knew where her ingredients came from?
She even played off the next few muscular spasms as nothing to pay attention to. Really. It was nothing. Totally fine with sugar-based confectionery. Yep. Issues with internal energy regulation? Her?! Pffft...! As if!
Well, maybe a little.
“Hey, you wouldn’t happen to have something I can gratuitously lick, do you? Or - ooh! A glass of water? Filtered, preferably. Or-or maybe, like, a tub, but… A glass-worth, I can work with.”
It said something about Arrow's read of the situation that she didn't make the obvious joke about licking things. Instead she bent down to the little half fridge under the counter and retrieved a bottle of water. Ro handed it over with a look of fascination, like coming across a TV show in a language you don't speak but you can tell whatever happening is wild.
Without verbalising a gimme-gimme-gimme attitude, Shimmer’s eyes widened cartoonishly and she took the bottle, eagerly, in hands. Rapidly unscrewed, the courier swiftly began emptying the entire contents down her neck. Her swallowing was practically violent.
“Ahhh...!”
Fanning herself with a drunken smile, Shimmer made for her pockets.
“How much do I owe?”
“On the house,” Ro said, then clarified, “no charge.” She wasn’t sure how well Shimer would do with metaphors. “I enjoyed this thoroughly.”
Shimmer’s eyes darted back and forth between the pastry lady and the… “Oh, frozen molluscs? Yeah, I guess they’re… I mean, this one’s dead, but on what world aren’t tentacles fun, right?” Which, in turn, triggered the memory of why she had come in there.
“Oh, my fishcakes,” she exclaimed, waving at the air and dragging the package back over a shoulder. “I gotta’ haul this thing outta’ here!”
Ro leaned over the counter on her elbows. “Feel free to deliver here anytime. Good luck with your dead squid.”
Shimmer gave a thumbs up before grunting her hefty parcel of seafood, ready to exit the door, but stopped short, realising she had no idea who to pester in the near-future with appeals for using her delivery service.
“What’s your name, again? I can remember you as Hair Blades, like a super-villain, because your stylist must secretly want you to decapitate people, but…?”
"Who said it's my stylist? Maybe I want to secretly decapitate people." She expected, after the unusual behavior today, that Shimmer would believe her but a smile was the only hint she was joking.
"I'm Arrow - Ro," she waved across at the other woman.
Shimmer's response came in the form of a smiling gesture of pointing fingers moving between them both, smiling with a little sneering smile as she did so. As though to act out a kind of, 'Oh, yeah, you and me, both!'
The packaged THUNKED against the door and Shimmer waved it off with a, "Always when they're on ice!" Then angled the mighty beast to duck back out into the street.