Sweet Cake

A Harvest Moon: Animal Parade fanfiction short story

Sequel to "Sweet Things"

By,Vivat Musa

Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to any of the Harvest Moon games or its characters.

Part 1: Silver Linings

At first glance clouds look like permanent fixtures, as steadfast as the mountains they shadow. But be patient and subtle changes take place while the seconds tick by. The puffs of white transforms when we glance away, like rising bread or a blooming flower. Clouds change and change again, retelling the stories that had fallen out of time and yet are preserved in the heavens; a place where we can still catch glimpses of mythical creatures and gallant knights, pressed between pages of hues that the finest paintbrush struggles to convey.

We spend every breath of our lives under the same sky our ancestors had lived and died under since time began. It would only make sense for us to take the time to look up, and watch as legends unfold with the clouds; but just like pictures hanging on a wall, even the vast skies eventually fade from attention. Only a handful of us still remember there is no need to travel across the world to see a natural wonder, because one lies right above our heads.

The island of Castanet is fortunate enough to have some of those who still go by the title, 'Cloud Watcher'.

*HM*

The afternoon was hot at Flute Fields, but the heat was subdued by the breeze blowing from the nearby windmill and the shade of passing clouds. Luke was lying on his back, legs bent and one crossed over the other, and his hands knotted under his neck so the grass wouldn't tickle. Maya was lying next to him with her legs flat and her hands resting on her stomach, fair hair spilled around her head like gold yarn. A picnic basket that Yolanda had prepared for their outing sat between them.

"I spy a unicorn," whispered Maya.

Luke's yellow eyes squinted like a cat's. "You mean the one next to the tiger in a tutu?"

"No, the one above that."

He moved his hand from behind his neck and pointed up. "That one?"

"Close."

There was a shuffle, and Maya's profile shifted into his view. The sunlight silhouetted her features, but made her hair shine like a halo. Her fingers brushed his wrist and repositioned his hand slightly to the left. "Now look." She let go of his hand, and fell back into the grass.

His gaze followed the new direction his finger was pointed to, until his eyes landed on a scraggly cloud. He squinted.

"Eh, I dunno. It looks more like a dinosaur to me."

Her nose scrunched up. "Of course a boy would say it's a dinosaur."

"Of course a girl would say it's a unicorn."

"That's because it is. See the horn?"

"That's not a horn, it's a tail."

"On its head?"

"Its butt. The tail's on its butt. No dinosaur would have a tail on its head, silly."

At this point Maya was too confused to make a comeback besides retorting, "It's a unicorn."

"Dinosaur."

"Unicorn!"

"WOOF!"

Chief, who had been chasing some poor chipmunk around the fields, bounded over as if wanting his opinion to be included. He charged at them, and Maya couldn't move fast enough before she was tackled by the beast. She was all but swallowed up by the mountain of fur.

"Chief!" she half-laughed, half-squealed.

"Whoa, now, big boy!" Luke lurched and tried to get his arms around the squirming beast. It took all of his strength to yank the dog off Maya and restrain him in his arms. Captured by his master, Chief looked up at him with his thoughts printed in his doleful brown eyes. "Aww, whatcha do that for? I was just being friendly, that's all."

Luke patted him on the head, but his hold didn't loosen. "Sorry 'bout that. He can get a bit…excited."

Maya sat up. Her clothes and hair were disheveled and caked with grass and fur. Slobber shone on her face. Any other girl would be furious, and yet when Maya wiped away the drool with a sleeve just as dirty, a smile was left behind.

"Don't worry about it. That was just his way of saying hi." Maya turned to Chief and rubbed his chest. "Isn't it, doggie? You're just the cutest lil—er, big—boy, aren't you?"

Apparently Chief liked this, for he lurched forward, breaking out of his restraints before Luke could react. This time the dog had a new goal. Instead of going after Maya, he slid his entire head into the opening of the picnic basket beside her.

"Hey, that's not yours!" Maya squealed, her smile gone.

She seized the handle of the basket and tugged, but at that same second Chief pulled back. Maya fell backwards, the picnic basket landing on top of her face, two apples tumbling out.

Chief was jumping, his prize hanging from his jaws. It was a plastic bag with something tossing inside. Before Luke could try to grab it back, Chief plopped the bag right in his lap. The dog sat down in front of him, tail wagging with pride, as if he'd just delivered a plump rat (which was the equivalent of a pirate's chest, in a dog's mind).

"You did all of that for this?" Luke jiggled the bag, holding it up to eyelevel. Inside was a hard black lump about the size of a fist. The dog just thumped his tail in response. Luke was about to open it when Maya bolted upright. She tossed the picnic basket aside, and snatched the bag from his hand.

"Maya, what—"

"It's mine!" she blurted out. Her face burned as she stashed the item behind her back, like a child trying to hide a stolen toy.

"What is?"

When Luke leaned forward to peek around her, Maya responded by leaning back. That only made him want to find out what she was hiding even more. It must be good, if she was getting so worked up over it.

"Come on, Maya. You can trust good ol' Luke with your secret. Especially if it involves pancakes."

Her eyes became too round to be innocent. "Secret? What secret? I got no secret. Stop talking crazy!"

His smile widened. "Fine. If you won't show me whatcha hiding, I'll just have to guess." He leaned back on his heels and tilted his head. "Is it a lump of coal?"

Maya blanched. "That's the first thing you come up with? Coal? Do people really carry that around?"

"They do for only two reasons." Luke counted the first reason on his finger. "One: if they're doing Santa Claus' dirty work, and I know you're not since you're under contract."

"What contract?" said Maya, thinking she had never signed anything more important than a receipt.

"Don't you remember? When we were five we promised that if one of us ever caught the big man in action, we would tell the other. We sealed the deal in blood." Luke wiggled his thumb where he had insisted Maya to prick him.

"So that leads us to option number two." Luke raised his index and middle finger. "Are you gonna prank someone? Please tell me it's Gill. If it's Gill, I have some extreme ideas I've been dyin' to try."

Maya squirmed. "I'm not doing a prank."

"Darn. I was looking forward for some fun." His disappointment was fleeting when another idea came to mind. He snapped his fingers. "It's a cow pie, isn't it?"

Maya gasped. "Is it—is it really that…ugly?"

Only when her eyes had welled up with tears, the blue shimmering more than ever, did Luke realize that his enthusiasm was doing more harm than good.

That was one downside to being as lighthearted as Luke; it was easy to think that because you're having fun, everyone else must be, too, and then you appear insensitive to someone else's problem without even knowing it.

Oops. I'm in trouble, Luke thought. "No, I just didn't have enough time to get a good look at it. Maybe if I got another peek…"

Maya sniffed. "You just said it looks like a cow pie!"

Luke was about to add that the coal theory was more likely, but his overworked brain cells took pity on him, and realized that was probably not the best thing to say. Luke was at a loss of words. He had to do something to make up for his mistake, but how could he when he didn't even know what Maya was being so sensitive about in the first place?

The clueless boy might have been stuck there all day if it wasn't for his guardian angel. Chief had been lying on the ground, watching the catastrophe unfold like a play—though whether it was a comedy or a tragedy was still undecided. Finally the dog decided to be merciful and lend his master a paw. It was clear he was struggling with matters far more delicate and awkward than his range of male experience could handle. Honestly, humans…

Chief butted his head against his master's knees. When his master looked down, the dog nipped at the collar circling his neck. In the center of the once green material, now faded, was Chief's name inked in a child's scrawl.

Some summers back, when Bo was a small child and Chief a clumsy puppy, a windstorm had swept over the island and locked everyone in their houses for days. The residents of the carpentry had looked everywhere for Chief, but he was nowhere to be found. Bo had been horrified at the possibility that his puppy could have been stolen by the storm. His banshee-like wails had merged with the howls of the wind. No one had ever guessed that the boy who would sit quietly while his cousin zipped around could bawl for so long and so loud. That had been the first time Bo had ever had a tantrum. No matter what Dale had tried, he could not pacify the child. He had eventually given up, and had locked himself in his office to silence the ringing in his ears.

About an hour later Dale realized the wind had lost its howling partner. When he had crept out of his office, he had heard not wails, but murmurs and laughter muffled by the bashing gales. He had thought his eyes were playing tricks on him when he saw what had happened to the crying child. Bo had been laughing, smiling for the first time since the storm had started. And who had been making him laugh?

Luke.

Despite the boys' age difference, Bo always served as the calm to Luke's crazy, the mature to the immature, the reliable to the undependable. And yet it was Luke who had taken the responsibility to comfort his cousin. The teenage that could never hold still for a minute had sat on the floor, his little cousin bundled in his lap. Luke's usually restless gaze had been steady and focused, while still sparkling with that energy he was known for. Gone were his dramatic gestures as he wiped tears from Bo's cheeks with his sleeve. He whispered something, and Bo nodded with a giggle, for once acting like the little boy he should have been.

The scene had softened the hard lines etched on Dale's face. The man had snuck back into his office as quietly as the creaking floors would allow. A rare smile, buried beneath his mustache, had been on his face as he closed the office door behind him.

Once the storm was over, Chief had crawled out of his hiding spot under Dale's bed, and pranced into the boys' bedroom as if nothing had happened. When the excitement of the missing pup was over, Bo demanded in a rare act of assertiveness that Chief should have a collar if he ever got lost again. When Dale took the pup with him to recount the tale to Ramsey, where Chief had overheard all of this, Dale admitted he was happy about the decision to get the collar, because then he would have a memento to remember when Luke had become the big brother that both he and Bo needed.

Chief hoped that the collar would remind Luke, too, of that time long ago.

The dog waited eagerly as Luke fingered the worn collar, wrinkled in so many places where it had to be loosened to fit the growing pup over the years. Then Luke's eyes sparked with recognition, before softening. The message had come through. Sensing that his job was done, and reasoning that if his master was still clueless then he always would be, Chief got up and pranced back to his chipmunk chasing.

Luke scooted closer to Maya so their knees brushed together. His voice, usually filled with energy and cheer, dipped to a murmur he hardly used. "You don't have to show me if you don't want to, May-May. I'll keep quiet if you want. But whatever you're embarrassed about, I'm sure it's much more extreme than you're giving it credit for," he said.

Maya's expression was surprised. Her mouth opened like she was about to say something, but before the words came, she bit her lip. Luke smiled to convey his understanding. He flopped back into the grass and turned his eyes up at the skies, making good on his promise. There was a long silence in which Luke did not once take his attention off the rolling clouds. Then finally the silence was broken with a grunt when something hit him on the stomach.

He sat up, grabbing the plastic bag that had been thrown at him. He still didn't look at Maya when he fingered the lump inside. For a moment he thought his guess of coal was correct, for the lump was just as black and hard through the plastic, but when he took out it of the bag and broke off a piece, the center was a dark brown.

"It's a pancake—or at least it was meant to be." Her voice trembled. "I wanted to cook something nice for Chase, but when I gave it to him, he refused to take even a bite. He said that he never thought it was possible for anyone to have as many cooking lessons as I've had, and still make such a disaster from a recipe that a toddler could manage. He said that I shouldn't burden him and Grandma anymore by asking them for cooking lessons, since it's just a waste of time."

When Maya finished, Luke noticed that his hands had balled up into shaking fists in his lap. He slowly unclenched his fingers, although it did nothing to relax the muscles in his back and shoulders. He never cared much for the cook and his condescending manner, but hearing how he had hurt Maya made Luke want to sic Chief on him—although the only danger he would be in was a licking bath.

Luke realized that anger would not help Maya, so instead he did the one thing he knew would: put on the biggest grin he could and just be a friend.

He bumped Maya's shoe with his own. "Don't worry about Chase. Those hairpins of his are just on a little too tight. If it helps, I could always chase him 'round with my axe, give him something real to complain about. The exercise may even do him some good, 'cause all those meals are adding up."

Luke was rewarded with a shadow of Maya's smile, but even that was short-lived. She plucked at some blades of grass and sighed. "But what if he's right, Luke? I mean, after all this time, I should've made at least one good meal. And to know that I haven't—maybe it's a sign that I should stop trying to cook. Then I wouldn't be such a burden on Chase and Grandma. You should see their faces whenever I ruin something. It's not just frustration, but something like—like they've resigned themselves to disappointment. No matter how many times they go over the steps, I keep messing up. All I do is waste time and ingredients that could be used to make meals for others—meals that won't send them to the clinic."

Luke winced inside. Although her words were blunt, they did ring with truth. There had been times when someone had wound up in the clinic because they were unfortunate enough to be sacrificed as Maya's taste-tester. While Luke had caught only glimpses of the looks on Chase's and Yolanda's faces after Maya's cooking attempts (mainly because he and everyone else on Castanet knew better than to be in close proximity during a lesson), he saw the same expression that Dale wore so often reflected in theirs. He could relate too well of how looks of silent disappointment could cut deeper than words of anger ever could. It made him sympathize with Maya even more.

It was that sympathy, mixed with compassion and years of friendship, which drove him to do something that no one who valued their lives would attempt. What did that say about the carpenter?

"Look, I'll prove to you that you've got potential," Luke said.

Before Maya could stop him, Luke shoved the whole burnt cake in his mouth. His cheeks puffed out to make room for the intrusion. Black flashed across his vision. Somewhere in the dark oblivion he had thrust himself into, he heard Maya gasp.

When Owen and Luke had been ten years old, they had stashed a jar filled with creepy-crawlies in Luke's desk at school for experimentation. When Gill had spotted them, he ran to the teacher without giving the boys a chance to defend themselves (not that they would have said anything besides, 'But bugs are so extreme!). The next day a particularly crunchy beetle had, by some miracle, been dropped into Gill's mouth while he nodded off in art class.

With his mouth filled with Maya's disaster, Luke wondered if this was what Gill had undergone. It felt like his teeth were grinding against gravel, gritty and hard, before they broke the outer shell of the pancake to reveal a thick layer of sludge that stuck to his gums. And the taste—if it even could be called that—was a cross between burnt rubber, rotten yams, and crusted bubblegum scraped off the sidewalk. For a terrible moment Luke thought he would spit out the disgrace to food. It took all of his throat muscles to swallow. The lump scraped down his throat with a spiteful aftertaste. Luke shuddered at what it would do to his innards in a few hours.

When he saw that Maya was looking at him with expectant, almost fearful eyes, he tried to smile. Usually it was effortless, but this time the smile ended up more like a jack o' lantern's grimace. Even Luke with all of his sanguinity was but a man, and a man could only handle so much culinary torture before he breaks.

"It's good." Those two words made up the biggest lie he had ever told. And Maya knew it, too.

Horror was carved into her face. "You didn't—that was—I'm so sorry!"

Maya grabbed fistfuls of her braids, yanking them as hard as if they were ropes tied to a bell. Although pain contorted her face and tears leaked out her squeezed-shut eyelids, she didn't stop her torment. "A baby can make a pancake, and I can't even do that! To think that I could make someone happy with my food—so stupid! Stupid, stupid,stupid!" She followed each word with a yank.

"Don't do that!"

Luke grabbed her hands and pried her fingers apart, releasing the fistfuls of hair. The blue beads holding the braids together had become loose and clattered to the dirt. The plaits unraveled around Maya's face in golden waves. Luke realized with a start this was the first time he had seen Maya without her braids; ever since Yolanda had plopped the toddler on her lap years ago, and insisted her granddaughter wore plaits like herself.

Maya's nose and cheeks were tinged pink. When she turned her gaze up at Luke, her tear-brimmed eyes shimmered like a clear sky reflected on a lake. Luke knew that it wouldn't take much for that surface to frost over.

Luke brought her hands down so they were hanging between them. Her hands felt so tiny in his, almost like a child's.

"You are not Maya."

Maya-but-not-Maya blinked. Her mouth popped open, but before she could say anything, Luke spoke. "The Maya I know wouldn't give up just because some obnoxious jerk says that she can't cook. Nope, Maya would step on his toes for trashing her food, and keep cooking until she makes something that'll knock his stupid pins off."

When Maya's lip twitched in what Luke hoped was amusement, he took that as a sign to continue.

"Chase may know how to whip up a good meal, but what he doesn't know is the motive behind it is more important than the ingredients used. And I'm not just saying that because it sounds like something your grandma would say. Heck, why do you think Yolanda has never given up on you? She doesn't care what your food tastes like. The time you're spending together makes up for it. And then not only are you two having fun, but so are Jake and Colleen when you tell them all the crazy stuff that happened in the kitchen. Then they tell the same story to whoever comes by the inn, and they get to laugh, too. How did you think everyone in town knew that you added vinegar instead of vanilla when you were trying to make ice cream? It wasn't because we tried it ourselves, that's for sure."

Maya gasped. "That's how? But Kathy said a little bird told her!"

"That's a child's joke, May-May. Everyone knows that only a blue jay can pass around secrets. Or was it a magpie?" Luke waved his hand dismissively. "Whatever. My point is that your fault becomes your gift—not only for you, but for others. That's why you started to cook in the first place, right? To make people happy. Well, as long as you remember that, then you always will. No matter how your dishes turn out. And the Maya I know would know to know that." Luke paused. "Crap. I think I just ruined my brainy mojo."

Maya couldn't help but laugh. It was weak but genuine. She wiped away the last of her tears. "Thanks, Luke. I think…I think I needed to hear that."

Luke raised his hand in a salute. "That's what I'm here for. Chopping big sticks, showing a rare moment of brain power, avoiding the bathtub…and farting. Lots of farting."

"Fart now and I'll stuff your head in my picnic basket."

Luke slapped his thigh and pointed at her. "Ha! Now there's the Maya I know and annoy! Glad to see ya back. That moody girl was getting boring."

Maya tilted her head, the sparkle in her eyes returning. "Really? That's funny, because she said to me the brainy boy was a nice change of pace from the regular goof."

"Nah, she must be talking about someone else. Nobody can get bored from my extremeness." His yellow eyes glinted. "But that brainy boy did leave a message to pass along to Maya. The question is: am I talking to the real Maya?"

Maya pushed back a lock of hair and nodded, smiling. "Yes, and it's all thanks to a good friend."

Luke returned the smile. He gestured with his finger for her to come closer. When she did, Luke leaned forward and cupped a side of his hand against his mouth, pressing the other side against Maya's ear. His breath tickled her skin. Maya's eyes widened at his whispered words, but she didn't say anything. Finally Luke pulled back and said, "Agreed?"

Maya nodded. "Agreed."

And that marked the birth of a plan that Luke and Maya would never forget.