"Kanaya? What are you doing in there?"
Kanaya called from the kitchen, "One moment, Rose. I am finishing up these high-calorie nutrition balls and I do not want to make a careless mistake." She took a lump of cookie dough from a container on the counter and meticulously laid it on the baking sheet, taking careful note of its placement relative to the other balls of dough. "Two inches, two inches…" she muttered.
"Those are called chocolate chip cookies. And however mouthwateringly decadent they are, they're not very nutritional."
"Please do not distract me at this time. I need to be very careful or else the chocolate chip cookies will be unfit for consumption." Kanaya nudged the lump a miniscule amount away from the one next to it, holding her face inches away from the pan. She knit her brows together. "Oh dear, that's much too far away. Rose, do you have a measuring instrument?"
Rose walked into the kitchen and stood in the doorway. "Wait, what are you doing? Why are you leaning over the stove like that?"
"I did not realize that this practice required such intense concentration and precision. The wrapper says they are easy to bake but my experience has proved to the contrary." Kanaya blew a piece of hair out of her face, frustrated by her incompetence.
Rose laughed, walking over to stand beside Kanaya. Kanaya stood up straight, turning to look at Rose, and banged her head on a cabinet. Rose stood on her toes to kiss her forehead, then said, "You're overthinking it. Putting cookies on a pan isn't that big of a deal. Just… smack em on there. That degree of precision really isn't necessary."
Kanaya looked puzzled, turning to her pan of cookies and referencing the instructions. "But the instructions clearly state that the balls of dough must be positioned two inches apart from one another for optimal baking conditions."
"Well, I assure you that the instructions aren't absolute. They're more like guidelines. Baking is supposed to be fun! Just go with what you feel is right and I'm sure that whatever you make will turn out perfectly."
"If you say so." Kanaya hesitantly picked up a dough ball and held it, not quite sure what to do.
"Just put the dough balls on there any old way. I'm sure you'll do fine." Rose grabbed a lump of dough and placed it on the pan a reasonable distance from the other lumps. "See? Just like that. Now you try."
Kanaya placed a dough ball a few inches away from the side of the pan. The sides of her mouth turned up and she gave a small laugh. "Ha. I placed a ball on the pan without any solid external metric relative to the pan or other balls."
"Yes. That is… what you did. Congratulations." Rose patted Kanaya on the back.
Kanaya, jaw jutting out with rebellious determination, placed another ball on the sheet. She looked at rose, her smile bursting with pride. "Look, Rose, I did it again."
Rose smiled at Kanaya's cookies like a mother at her kindergartener's terrible artwork. "You sure did. Now just keep doing that until all the balls are finished, then put it in the oven to bake at the settings listed on the instruction sheet. I'll be in the other room if you need me."
However, Kanaya wasn't listening. She was too busy placing the next ball on the baking sheet. She laughed, reveling in what she thought was sheer unruliness. "Oh my goodness. I've neglected to consistently space them!"
As Rose exited, Kanaya smiled, engrossed with her newfound freedom. She placed more balls on the parchment paper, humming a tune. She began spacing them more and more haphazardly as she went along, carelessly plopping lumps of dough down onto the baking sheet.
"Rose was right. Baking really is fun!"
Kanaya's cookie placement was progressively more and more disorderly, until she was missing the baking sheet altogether and getting cookie dough on the side of the pan. But she was caught up in the glory of autonomous baking, and no amount of unreasonable cookie positioning could distract her from the addictive high of free will.
Kanaya slid the cookie pan into the oven. She shut the heavy metal door, then checked the instructions once more. "Set the oven temperature and bake," they read. The instructions had a list of recommended temperatures, but Kanaya refused to look at it.
She covered her eyes with her hands and punched in three random numbers on the oven's temperature input pad. She uncovered her eyes and looked at the blinking screen. "455 degrees. Let's go with… thirty minutes."
Kanaya slumped against the counter, proud of her ability to bake just as well as any of the other kids. She smiled at the thought of herself and Rose eating the cookies she made together, cuddled up by the fireplace with steaming mugs of hot chocolate.
A while later, Rose walked into the kitchen and grabbed a plastic cup from a cabinet. When she turned around to go to the refrigerator, she paused, sniffing the air. Was something… burning? Her eyes widened in realization. Kanaya's cookies!
Rose rushed to get a potholder from a side drawer and opened the oven, pulling out the smoking, black tray of cookies. She set them on top of the oven and sighed, taking in the sad sight. "Kanaya? You might want to come here for a second."
"What's going o- oh no! What happened to the cookies?" Kanaya ran over to the stove, trying to fan the smoke away. "What did I do wrong?"
"Well, you did put them in for quite a while… and the oven temperature was set just a tiny bit too high." Rose tugged the baking sheet off of the pan, gathering the cookies and taking them over to the trash. "No harm done. We just can't eat this batch."
Kanaya moaned and buried her face in her hands. "But I was doing so well! I'm sorry, Rose."
"No, don't be upset. Everyone makes mistakes when they're learning. Besides, I have a better idea." Rose shot Kanaya a mischievous smile. She reached for the leftover cookie dough on the counter and took Kanaya by the hand, leading her to the den.
Rose sat down on the carpet in front of the fireplace, and Kanaya followed her lead. "Rose, if you are suggesting that we bake these over the fire then I urge you to reconsider."
"No, that is definitely not what I'm suggesting. We can eat the cookie dough raw." Rose pulled off a piece from the roll of dough with her fingers. "Open wide."
Kanaya looked suspicious at first, but then opened her mouth. Rose dropped the dough onto her tongue, and she chewed it, her brow furrowed. "Oh my. This is delicious. Why would we bother baking it if it already tastes so good?"
Rose popped a ball of dough into her own mouth and smiled. "You know, I really don't know the answer to that question."