How Green Becomes Wood

"Finally!" Daizi huffed, putting her hands on her hips to pretend like she was really very disappointed in him. "If you want to have any of this cake, you need to actually work for it. Come on, help me make the whipped cream."
 
"Right-ho!" Alec agreed. He did as Daizi asked, telling her happily about the cat he was drawing in his sketchbook.

Xander watched long enough to see that Alec wasn't going to immediately drop the heavy whipping cream and then went to the living room for a break.
 
"You should show it to Cooger when you're finished, I'll bet he'd be thrilled to see it." Daizi told Alec as she walked him through the steps, "Was there anything that made you interested in drawing a cat?"
 
Alec considered his answer a moment. "I like cats," he decided on, "and I remembered a cat I saw outside a few days ago. I wanted to see if I could draw it from memory."
 
"I don't know if it was a stray. Some people let their cats roam, and it looked in good condition from what I could see," Alec mused. "It might have been a stray, but I didn't think of it at first. I'll keep Cooger in mind if I see it again. But so far I think it's going well! I can't remember the face detail well, but I think I got the whiskers right!"
 
"I bet it looks wonderful. I wish I could see it, when it's finished." Daizi lifted the stand mixer, and with a clean spoon, scooped a tiny bit of the whipped cream to test it. "It's good, I think that's really all it needs."
 
"Excellent!" Alec said brightly. "And I'll clean this up."

The timer went off for the cake, and he volunteered to get it out of the oven. He wasn't sure how to put it upside down, but Xander wandered in, summoned by the sound of the timer and started helping Daizi set it up.
 
It wasn't difficult to flip, Daizi just set out a cooling rack and set it upside-down onto it, the cake hadn't risen over the rim of the pan, so no harm was done.

"There," She said with a little sigh, "All done. Now we just need to wait for it to cool."
 
"How long does that take?" Alec asked, reaching out to poke it.

Xander caught his brother's hand and pulled it back. "More than five minutes, that's for sure. Just relax and chill a bit. Cake will be here."

"Unless you eat it all," Alec said, making a face.
 
"A good hour or two, at least," Daizi replied with a stretch, "Angel food cake isn't good hot anyway, nobody wants warm food cake. Just give it some time."

As she said this, Dark entered the kitchen with a fussing baby, "I hate to interrupt, but I believe she is hungry."

"It feels like she must be. The cake is cooling, so you aren't interrupting anything. Give her here," Daizi said, sitting down at the island counter and reaching out for Ivy.
 
Alec gave the cake a stern look. "Cool faster! In the meantime, I'm going to go finish my drawing."

"I need to check my email for any orders," Xander said, following Alec. "We'll be back later."
 
"I'll call you when it's ready," Daizi said, waiting until their voices were gone before bringing Ivy to her breast. Dark sat down across from her, propping one foot up on the stool's crossbar so he could rest his arm against his knee. The scent of cake wafted through the entire house, mingling subtly with the scent of flowers in the garden. If he looked, he could just barely see through the archway into the dining room and out the window at the flowers. Then he looked back again at his wife, feeding their baby, and then down at the back of his hands.

He sighed and then looked up at his wife again, "How did we get here?"

"What do you mean?" Daizi asked, stroking Ivy's hair.

"I look at you and see my wife of almost ten years, nursing our baby, in our home we built and decorated," He replied, drumming his fingers on his knee, "but I also see you at fifteen with clip-in pink hair extensions and black eyeshadow you applied with your fingertips. How did that happen?"
 
Upstairs, Xander sat cross-legged on his bed as he went through his emails carefully. He got a lot more spam now than he ever had before, and while he was doing his best to sort it out, there was still a lot to go through, and he was always afraid he'd accidentally delete a necessary email or send it to the spam folder. Sadly, it didn't look like he had any orders today, but he did get a coupon to a pizza place and another to a sandwich shop. Maybe he'd use those.

Alec sat on the floor with his new pencil sketch of the cat, and he was going over and over the outline with a dull pencil, indenting the lines. He did it multiple times in multiple places until he had it just how he wanted it. Then he tried feeling it on the front and on the back before deciding the back had it best. He nodded in satisfaction. Now Daizi could "see" the cat, too. He'd wait until he was sure she was done feeding her before taking the picture down to her.
 
Daizi raised her head with a bemused grin, "Well, I don't know. I guess--" She tried to think of how they had... made it... there, but nothing really came to mind. They just... were. And now that he said it, she heard in him the underweight boy with scars on his arms frying his hair with a straightener. "I don't know. We just stuck with it... It's weird to be an adult."

He chuckled, shaking his head, "It is really weird."

"Do you think they know? I mean, really know?" Daizi nodded her head towards the stairs.

"Know what?"

"That we were kids once too?"

Sucking in air through his teeth, Dark turned to look at the stairs, considering it, "No, I do not. If we asked them, they'd say they would. I think they look at the photographs of us from that time and hear our stories and imagine us still more or less as we are now. Do you think of your father as being young?"

Now it was Daizi's turn to consider it, "I suppose not. But I had no idea we'd be adults. Proper adults."

"We have three children."

"We do have three kids," Daizi laughed, tipping her head back for a moment, "I'm glad we got the twins as teenagers. I love Ivy, I love what it's like to care for a baby, but could you imagine how chaotic it'd be if they were five? Or younger?"

"Yes... I do not think I would have enjoyed that."

"I would have liked to know them then, I really would have, but..." She laughed, rubbing Ivy's back as she gently removed her, "I don't think we're old enough to handle that."

Dark leaned in to take Ivy so Daizi could neaten herself back up, "Anyway, if we had them that early, they probably would be different than who they are now. And I love who they are now."

"I do too... I really do."
 
Several minutes later, Alec came trotting down the stairs with a piece of paper in his hands. "Mama, I have something to show you!" he called as he went, partly to make sure she knew he was coming and could cover if needed and partly to secure for himself where she was and if she was still in the kitchen where he'd left her.
 
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