Second Star to the Right (tag: Deimos)
The timer went off and Philotes grabbed the oven mitts to pull the cookie sheet from the oven, the overwhelming sweet smell of cookies hovering heavily in the air. After setting the hot sheet on the range top, she slid the next one in, already set up with drops of raw cookie dough. Baking was like making things by hand, right? They were homemade. And somehow, she managed to not fall all over herself when she was in the kitchen. Most of the time.
As much as she appreciated Frigg’s helpful suggestions, Lottie just couldn’t get any enthusiasm up for sticking a needle into fabric. Especially not after she’d ended up looking a bit like a porcupine after she’d fallen onto Frigg’s sewing basket. That had been extremely unpleasant. It had seemed like a sign that she’d found a little porcelain thimble on the floor in front of the dryer when she’d done her laundry this morning. Must’ve come with the house, she supposed, because she didn’t have any sewing notions, and she’d been really careful about pulling all of Frigg’s needles free from her hip.
It was sitting now on the window sill above her sink, and every now and then, Lottie glanced that direction. There was a niggling thought at the back of her mind that maybe she could give it to Nemesis along with the cookies. It wasn’t the handmade gift that the Norse queen suggested, but it was really pretty. Then again, it did look pretty, sitting there on the sill.
Shaking.
Wait, shaking? Lottie blinked and realized that there’d been a rather loud thunk accompanying the shaking which could only mean one thing. Zed was head butting the side of the house again. He had been rather displeased and disgruntled with her since that morning when she’d forcibly dragged him out of her barn. Lottie wasn’t sure how he’d gotten in anyway, but she wasn’t going to leave him in there to ram into the cars she housed in that building. It had been a bit of a battle, which is what had precipitated doing laundry this morning.
Zed had found a mud puddle. And dragged her through it. And after she’d gone inside, he’d chased the chickens through it twice. Now he was headhunting the side of her house again, instead of playing with the swing set she’d bought him. Ungrateful animal.
Picking up two warm cookies, she went to the screen door to look out across the back porch, and sure enough, there was her silly goat backing up for another run. Lottie quickly stepped outside and waved a cookie to get his attention. “If I feed you, will you behave?”