[Log] Vax & Dot - My Lady of Cakes - Backdated to May 30th

[st_abby]

Steph asks for cake, she gets cake - and Vax gets to meet one of the Inn's most charming residents in the process.

After having what would be forever known to his mind as the Worst Birthday, Vax'ildan was miserably hungover and then wrung-out for the next day. Coffee, water, meat and eggs and potatoes slathered in hot sauce, showers and meditations all brought him gradually back into focus after all the trouble he'd gone to in wrecking himself.

He was mostly recovered and in altogether better spirits by the time the note showed up on his door - "Fashion show, my room. Bring cake. - Steph" But it did pose a problem, in that he had no cake of his own. (Stolen cake always tasted sweetest, but with treats so generously offered for all comers here, you could hardly steal a pastry if you tried.) And Steph deserved fine cake indeed for having hauled him back to his room, at the very real risk of him being sick all over her. There was only one baker that would do, if only Vax could find her and make a charming enough introduction.

Fortunately, Phryne's right-hand Miss, Dot, had a reputation for busying herself in the bakery of the cafe early in the day.

On this particular day Dot was indeed busying herself in the bakery. She was making bread. You could never really have too much bread she considered as she kneaded the dough for a dark molasses and walnut wheat loaf.

'Thwap.' the dough hit the board, and then gave under her palms. Then, 'Thwap' again.

It was a good way to work out your frustrations, if you had frustrations.

'Thwap'.

The black-armored half-elf was admittedly a bit surprised at the intensity with which the button-cute young lady punished the dough, and he watched her at her work like a shadow for some moments before he finally spoke. "Excuse me... It's Miss Dot, isn't it?"

If he asked he would no doubt get an extensive lesson on building gluten, but since he didn't ask what he got instead was a sunny smile.

"That's me," she patted the dough into a ball and dropped it into a bowl before wiping her hands on her apron. "Can I help you with something Mr?"

"Well, yes, that is I hope so. You see, my name is Vax'ildan. I recently met your employer, the Honorable Miss Fisher, and she served me some really delicious scones." He smiled, tipping his head in the direction of her dough. "It's so kind of you to share your talents with the rest of us."

"Oh it's nothing, it keeps me busy and let's me be useful." Plus she enjoyed it, there was little enough for her to do for Miss Phryne here.

"And really with the refrigeration machine and the gas oven it's really very simple compared to what I'm used to."

"The thing is, Miss Dot, I'm wondering if I could ask you to do a favor for me." He was no match for his sister in the wink-and-persuade department, but did give her a double-dose of hopeful eyes. "I owe a friend of mine a cake to thank her for something, and I wouldn't even know where to begin. Do you take requests?"

"Is that all," that was hardly a favor in Dot's book and she smiled at him warmly.

"Cake is a wonderful thing to owe people, because sometimes they'll share when you pay your debts." She considered what she had on hand, both the raw materials and items already baked and stored for future decoration. She really did enjoy having the ability to refrigerate things, and don't even get her started on the marvel of the freezer.

"What sort of cake would you like?"

"This is an excellent point you make." What a world they found themselves living in, where you could simply ask someone to make you a cake with nothing to pay them for it, and this would seem fine and well. It was a long way from the scraping and sneaking he and his sister had done to keep fed as youths.

"She's fond of strawberries, I think," he gathered from somewhere in the haze of birthday festivities. And if it made anything pink to match the hotel, that was so much more pleasantly absurd. "Sunny and sweet, that's just the thing. Do you have some of that... Whatever it is that makes yellow cake yellow?" Vax'ildan hardly knew from cakes, but he thought it would be fresh and cheerful if it could be.

Honestly Dot probably would have made a cake without considering it much of a favor back in Melbourne too, at least after she'd moved in with Miss Phryne and had the materials. Sugar, and eggs AND butter well, not everyone could afford cake at home.

"Lemon you mean?" She asked considering what made yellow cakes yellow. She thought she had a lemon cake baked already, which meant he wouldn't have to wait as long. "That would be good with strawberries."

With a whipped cream frosting, buttercream would be too heavy and maybe jam in the middle, and some candied lemon peel on top for decoration.

Citrus was still something of a novelty in Tal'Dorei, but Vax did have Kitty's recent 'fruits of the modern bar' demonstration to refer back to. "That does sound good," he tried to imagine the tart together with the sweet. That sounded not unlike Steph herself.

"I feel ridiculous even as I ask this, but... Is there anything I can do to help?" Obviously, the armor-clad fellow begging a cake off of her was no pastry chef in his own right, or he wouldn't be here - but he felt he should offer at least. "Fetch ingredients, re-tie your apron strings...?"

"That's hardly ridiculous," she said even as she retied her own apron strings. In fact it was rather nice, sweet even that he wanted to help.

"How about I have you wash and cut the berries for the filling?" She beckoned that he should follow, and led the way into the small pantry area and from the refrigerating machine unearthed multiple baskets of strawberries, as well as a paper wrapped parcel marked 'lemon'.

"If you take these I'll get everything else we need."

He really could kiss her for being such a dear - but better not to risk sending entirely the wrong sort of message. So he settled for smiling wide at her, following and taking the berries from Dot to where the sinks were.

Vax stopped to peel out of his gloves, tucking them into his belt, which somehow made him look more overdressed rather than less. He started with scrubbing his long hands clean, then set to work on the fruit. "How big do you want these cut berries, chef?"

Being called chef might have made her blush slightly as she found heavy cream, sugar and vanilla and few other things. Not as much as she would have blushed had he actually kissed her but still, it was a blush.

"Call me Dot," she said setting out ingredients and unwrapping the already baked and now chilled cakes. "And I'll need ten nice sliced ones for decoration and the rest should be diced for the jam."

Vax was all too pleased to learn she was as short, sweet, and adorable as her name would suggest. "How did you learn to do all of this, Dot? And how did you end up working for Phryne?"

"Oh well I learned most of this from my mother, and from the cook in the first house I worked in. The fancy bits anyway. We never had much money for cakes and things." She set the electric mixer to beating a mixture of cream and other things to start the frosting. She did like some of these modern inventions.

"My employer before Miss Phryne murdered her husband, and when I was taken for questioning she put me out without a reference." The indignation in her voice was clear. For all that Lydia Andrews had been a murderer, and a drug peddler what Dot found unforgivable was firing her without a reference when she'd KNOWN Dot was innocent having done the deed herself.

"She'd been a friend of Miss Phyrne's and she was looking into the murder unofficially and had given me her card, in case I needed a clever woman. So when I had no where else to go, I went to her and she hired me to be her maid."

"Do you often find yourself near people that happen to have been murdered?" He said it lightly, though with some mock alarm. Dot was clearly about as far from a killer as a person could ever expect to get, and he knew by now that Phryne's business was in getting killers jailed.

Vax's hands remained busied with his job where he was turned away from her the whole while, and he reached for a knife from a butcher's block as they chatted. He judged the blade with a glance, tossing it end over end before catching the handle. In a scant few seconds he had everything cut to order, rinsing off the red juice under the faucet and wiping the blade on a dishtowel with short, quick movements before plunging it deftly back into the block again.

"More often than I ever would have imagined possible," Dot said with a sigh as she added the last few ingredients including a bit of lemon juice and lemon zest to the frosting.

"The diced berries need to go into a saucepan with this lemon juice and sugar," she indicated the items already juiced and measured. "Then heated to 104 degrees and cooled over ice. But you'll have to stir constantly." The saucepans were hanging in an obvious location and the thermometer was sitting next to the sugar.

"Berries, saucepan," Vax narrated, putting the ingredients in. "Juice and sugar. Heat to-" Okay, yes, but how did he...? Even in fancy estates with the most sophisticated of ovens, it was still basically just enclosed flame. He tried twisting one of the knobs and opening the big door experimentally, not knowing immediately if he'd done anything or not. "...I may be in over my head already," he confessed. "I've never seen one of these."

Dot laughed, amused but not meanly.

"I had the same problem." She joined him at the stove and demonstrated using the knobs to start and light the gas burner.

"Much easier than at home, but it did take a bit of time for me to learn how to use all of it."

"This is why you're the queen around here and I am but a lowly kitchen boy," he said by way of thanks. He picked up the thermometer - Percy had some of them for his workshop, so Vax at least knew it gave you a measurement for whatever thing you stuck the bottom bit in, and made to do just that. He reached for a nearby spoon, and set to some slow stirring as the berry sauce heated. "Does that mean your home is also very different from this place?"

"Not so different, but not nearly so modern or with so many conveniences." She watched him stir for a moment before going back to the flat work table to slice lemons.

"What about you?" His clothes didn't exactly scream modern, though what they did scream she wasn't sure.

"It's both, for me and my friend Percival. Magic and gods and the different races, for example. Those are all things my world has always had that are - well, I guess they're here too, but they look a lot different. And from what we can figure, our home is more like this place was centuries ago," he stirred dutifully. "Though the people are more or less the same, believe it or not. Just as greedy or kind, as friendly or grumpy, the way we feel and how we act doesn't seem to have changed so much."

"I think you're right about that, but then people are people. No matter where they come from." She had learned to appreciate this living with Miss Phryne.

She was going to overlook the mention of 'gods', small 'g' she assumed and just make the nice man his cake; and to that end she dumped sugar lemon juice and lemon slices into another saucepan and offered him a second spoon.

"I'll trade you for the jam."

Vax'ildan changed over the strawberry pan for the lemon pan with her, though he impulsively dabbed a finger in the berry jam on its way out to sneak a taste. "That is sweet," he reported back after he'd sucked it clean, sounding optimistic that the cake would meet with approval.

"How's it working out with the mysterious self-stocking sundries? Do you have everything you'd like, or is it similar to the spirit-chef serving all the chicken you've never wanted?"

It was supposed to be sweet, so she merely smiled at him. Any other potential meaning to the word lost on her completely. She retrieved a bowl of ice and set the saucepan in it stirring to cool the jam.

"Well, most of what you need to bake would probably be considered staple items. Flour, sugar, butter. And then I decide what to make based on the other things that have arrived or are in stock." She laughed and dabbed a finger in the cool jam to taste for herself.

"Biscuits, and scones and cakes are always welcome even if you make anzac biscuits over and over."

"...'Anzac?'" He looked up from his lemon-stirring at her. "Is that the name of some beast, or magic user?" Not that a beast or caster would make sweet rolls a priority, but there were all sorts of silly names for foods that had got attached in some obscure way years and years ago.

"It's a biscuit," she said innocently teasing. "Made with oats and golden syrup. No eggs, no refined sugar because they were hard get during the war."

But that wasn't all the word stood for so she continued speaking, lightness in her tone that wasn't quite matched by her eyes as she started frosting the and filling the cake.

"Anzac stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, our boys who fought in the great war. I had an uncle who was an Anzac. He died, at Gallipoli." She'd only been a girl, but she remembered it. Remembered her gran crying. "We made biscuits for the boys, 'soldier's biscuits'... and the name stuck."

Vax had never been in anything so organized as an army. Though he wondered sometimes, what he would've been if he and Vex had stuck it out in Syngorn. He'd never been of much use unless it was skulking about or slitting throats. Maybe he would've drifted into the elven armed forces, a more legitimate version of the rogue he'd ended up as for Vox Machina.

None of that would mean anything to this dear young woman from a world away. All that it meant to him, to see the serious cast to her face talking about soldier's sweeties, was what a comfort it must be for those boys in the war to have their women sending them something of home. "I can't say I know from proper soldiering," Vax admitted, keeping up with his stirring. "But I'm sure they were very glad to have your biscuits, just as I'm sure they were delicious. The little things can make the biggest difference, when they're needed most." She smiled softly over at her. "That's why the people here are so grateful to have you in the cafe now."

"The lemons should be ready, if you'll lay them out on this baking parchment to dry." She smiled and blushed slightly at the compliment, stacking the cakes together with frosting and jam in between.

"Baking is comforting," she said finally. Both for the baker and the person who ate the baked goods. "I think everyone has a favorite sweet and when you're away from home.. well, every little bit helps doesn't it?"

"Absolutely," he lied, but only a little. He wasn't sure he had a favorite sweet from back home. Or if it turned out that he did, it would probably make him more melancholy than comforted to have it again, so far away from everything he'd known. But then, he was that type, and most other people weren't.

Vax carefully laid out the finished lemons as he'd been told, paper not even rustling with the sound of it, his touch was so light. "If you could have anything for that pantry of yours," he asked while his fingers were at work, "anything that you don't find in there already, that is - what would it be?"

"White peaches," Dot said without hesitation. "They're Miss Phryne's favorite and I could make a cobbler."

Thinking of something she personally wants doesn't even occur to her.

"Well then, how about the next time one of those doors to somewhere else opens up in the inn-" If ever it was going to happen again, which he sincerely hoped it would. "I repay your favor today by looking to see if they've got any white peaches in that place?"

"You needn't repay me," Dot protested as she finished coating the stacked cakes with white frosting. "But I wouldn't say no to the peaches if you acquire some."

She started placing the candied lemon on the top of the cake, then the strawberry slices dipped in the remaining jam on top of those.

"There," She smiled up at him. "Will that do?"

Wiping off his hands after a wash, Vax set aside the borrowed kitchen towel and admired her handiwork. Pretty as a picture.

"You're a peach," he decided, impulsively reaching to pull her into a hug. "Really, it's lovely. Thanks for your help."

"Oh," Dot flailed and stiffened for a fraction of a second when he hugged her, unexpected as it was, then returned the friendly gesture. "Just doing my part to keep everyone happy in the inn."

She might have hugged back a little, but nothing outside of propriety.

"Let me put that cake in a box for you."