strangetrip | [GP] SNOW DAY

Thor and Loki got an early start, because there was a lot to do. Almost two weeks to the day since their first small-but-successful experiment with snow, Loki was confident that he'd improved enough for a bigger experiment. Still snow, because Thor wanted it and it did seem like a decent way to try something big-ish without causing Loki unnecessary grief with the other residents. (It was an arrival day, so there would perhaps be some grief with any new arrivals, but that was entirely acceptable.)

It was before dawn when they went out into the grounds. Thor called up clouds and loaded them with water so they hung low and heavy, covering the sky so that the sun, when it rose, wouldn't ruin the event. Loki took his frost giant shape and staff (now very familiar to his hand) and concentrated on dropping the temperature. Just around the Inn and grounds, but that was enough to be serious effort.

When the snow first started, the flakes were big and wet, and melted as soon as they hit the ground, which was still on the warm side. As they melted, they cooled the ground. After an hour or so, the flakes were smaller and more powdery - real snow, not glorified slush - and they were starting to stick to the ground.

By mid-morning, the Inn and grounds were covered with a thick layer of snow, and it continued to fall.

***

Meanwhile, indoors and inspired by the snow, Hurley and Xavin decided to try and make cookies. Cooking together was fun, since neither of them exactly knew what they were doing apart from 'follow the recipe', but since the point was 'try to make cookies' they ended up with a lot of cookies. Sugar cookies, gingerbread, all kinds.

There was no way they'd be able to eat all of them.

Instead, they loaded them onto trays and hauled them to the cafe, then brought out various frostings and candies for decorating. This had been completely intentional. Completely.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I'd love some." She smiled as she stopped in front of Emma. "This used to be one of my favourites at fairs. You'd think I'd try to learn how to make them since taking over the bakery, but my sons are so partial to pies I spend a lot of time trying to perfect those."

"Plain, chocolate, or spiced?" Might as well ask that first, so it could be frying while they talked. Not that funnel cakes took all that long once they hit the oil.

"Funnel cakes are pretty easy, once you work out a good batter." Most pancake batters were close enough, but Emma always used the recipe Keelan had always used at the carnival. "If you watch your oil temp, but that's true no matter what you're frying.

"Pies can take a lot more perfecting."

"I've never had a spiced one before, so I'll go for that." Mary was sure she'd see Dean around at some point with his own cake so she'd steal some from him too at some point. "I'll have to try it sometime. Cooking wasn't really my thing back home except for a few baked goods so I've decided here I might as well learn."

"I can bake. It's the closest I came to studying chemistry." But she'd always preferred cooking; it was more forgiving.

"I've been cooking as long as I can remember, though. My grandmother taught me. Then I got a crash course in deep frying anything and everything when I was with the carnival. Believe it or not, it is possible to become immune to the aroma of funnel cake."

"That's truly a super power." She joked with a smile. "I used to date a boy who worked with fast food. I just remember how the smell used to permeate everything. If he didn't take a shower I would nearly gag." It hadn't been a long relationship, but not just for that reason.

Ew.

"Now, of course, the smell of funnel cakes makes me nostalgic. And hungry for one. But back then, my tent was usually one row over from the funnel cakes, so luckily I didn't have many people coming in for a reading while eating them, but the smell was just always there, until I couldn't even notice it anymore."

She nodded, understanding, though she felt a tug on Emma's previous job. "You did readings?"

"That's what I do," Emma answered, not hiding who or what she was. "I'm a mutant, with precognition, and it's tied to the tarot... or seems to be. I've been seeing the future in the cards since I was five. Inherited it from my grandmother." Along with her name, and many of her favorite recipes.

"And there aren't many jobs for thirteen year olds on their own. Joining the carnival probably saved my life."

"I knew a few psychics back home. They used to help my parents out a lot with hunting." She smiled. "Hopefully you see more good than bad. It's a hard life sometimes, or so I've always thought."

"I haven't gone mad yet." It probably sounded flippant. That was what Emma was going for. She didn't know Mary well enough to admit that was her biggest fear, or to explain some of the terrible things she'd seen.

"I used it to help my cousin too. Ghosts would come to her for help, and sometimes we needed my visions to get a better idea how to do that, where to find them, or what they needed in order to move on. That kind of thing."

"Sounds like home." She nodded. "We used to as psychics for help with ghosts that were giving us particular issues. Especially poltergeists they were still lingering after we burned their bones." It was still strange for Mary to be so open about what she did, but in the inn, it didn't make much sense to hide it.

Emma couldn't help making a face. She'd never liked the jobs that involved digging up graves, especially because it usually felt like failing the ghosts they were trying to help.

"Burning the bones was always a last resort for us. Sabine always saw her calling as helping and speaking for the dead. Finding the right way to help them cross over was part of that."

Mary could understand that. "From what we know of the ghosts who turn violent in my world, there's no going back. They missed their chance and are stuck. Never met a nice ghost before. They're usually trying to kill people for whatever revenge they need for what happened to them in life."

Emma didn't know any of the Winchesters very well, other than what she'd picked up just by being in the same small community with them for up to a year. But the memory of her first meeting with one of the family stuck out.

"Sam's really good with the ghosts here." Which really said something, if he was only used to ghosts who were violent and beyond help. "I'd only been here a few days when Lucy dragged him to the café to meet me, mostly because we were both nice to them." Like many men, Sam made Emma vaguely uneasy in ways she knew probably weren't fair, but that Lucy and other ghosts here seemed to like him helped.

She nodded. "He seems to get the supernatural a lot easier than a lot of people." It actually worried Mary and it might have shown vaguely in the corners of her mouth. She still was old school where all supernatural beings were bad, but she had learned here that that wasn't necessarily the case - she just had a hard time changing her biases.

It didn't take Addy's lessons in cold reading to see Mary considered that a bad thing, which was the opposite of what Emma had been trying to say.

"It's not that hard," she began, checking her batters and toppings for what was getting low. "They're people, or they were. You treat them the same as you would any other person doing and going through what they are.

"My timing's really rude, making some sweeping pronouncement and then leaving, and I'm sorry about that, but I need to go to the kitchen if people are going to want more funnel cakes. My batter consistency's off."

Mary was more concerned about how the attachment would make it harder for him to do his job when they went back home where calm ghosts like this were few and far between.

"Of course. Don't let me get in the way of serving delicious food." Mary took a step back, smiling.

[GP] SNOW DAY

Emma and Mary

Re: Emma and Mary

Re: Emma and Mary

Re: Emma and Mary

Re: Emma and Mary

Re: Emma and Mary

Re: Emma and Mary

Re: Emma and Mary

Re: Emma and Mary

Re: Emma and Mary

Re: Emma and Mary

Re: Emma and Mary

Re: Emma and Mary

Re: Emma and Mary

Re: Emma and Mary

Re: Emma and Mary

Re: Emma and Mary