G is for Gingerbread
"I don't know how we had enough candy left to make this, the way you keep eating it all," Sheena said to Faith, rolling her eyes, even as she punctuated her statement by popping a piece into her own mouth.
Faith slapped her hand good-naturedly, grinning as she spoke through the licorice stick still dangling from her lips, and gestured towards their nearly completed masterpiece.
"As long as we leave like five pieces, we're done now…can have as much as I want, Rationer. Few more…let me do it."
Carefully shaping a few more strands of licorice, even as she continued to chew on her own, Faith placed them with gentle precision yet firmness as she wanted, shoved Sheena's hovering hand away, and gave her a mock scowl when Sheen grabbed the last two M& Ms, setting them in place and crossing her eyes at her. In spite of herself, Faith grinned as she turned to regard their work.
"Looks pretty damn sweet," she approved, and Sheena nodded, her eyes bright.
"Literally…you were right, this is way better than the usual blueprint for these things. Go get Diana, show her the finished product."
Rather than personally fetching her Watcher, as Sheena had assumed she would, Faith went to the doorway of the kitchen, stuck her head out, and called out loud, "Diana! You can come in the kitchen now! Come see our gingerbread work of art!"
As Diana came into the kitchen doorway, she first paused to fix Faith with a stern look and raised eyebrow.
"Faith, we have spoken before about you yelling through the house rather than walking to get the person you wish to speak to."
"Sorry, Diana," Faith said, but she was too pleased with herself to keep back a smile as she took her arm, pulling Diana along into the kitchen and gesturing proudly toward the table. Sheena too looked over to Diana with an expectant but happy smile, obviously hoping for her approval of their finished product as Faith spoke.
"Here it is, our Christmas gingerbread cemetery! Isn't is freakin' wicked?"
Diana's eyes roved over the scene with more than a little surprise, taking in its careful details…the gingerbread tombstones, smeared with black and white icing mixed together to form a questionable grey, the fence formed of black licorice and held together with icing, the cobblestone walkway formed of brown M&Ms, and the small gingerbread men who were, based on the dabs of red icing on the faces, apparently supposed to be vampires. The gingerbread vampires were pretty silly, but other than that, Faith and Sheena's work, if strange, was fairly impressive, and Diana laughed, shaking her head.
"You girls certainly don't go with tradition, do you? This is very creative."
"And that's not all," Sheena smiled back, her eyes glowing as she picked up three more gingerbread men, using a toothpick to dipped in icing to write on their chests. When she had finished, placing them carefully in the scene, Diana saw that she had written their names, one across each chest. On the Faith and Sheena cookies, she had used black icing for the pants and shirt area; on the Diana cookie, she had used the gray mix of black and white, and she smiled over at Diana as she gestured towards the cookies.
"There…NOW it's done."
Diana looked at the gloppy partially gray icing, the cookie versions of herself and her daughters, and thought with as much pride as amusement that one thing was certain with those girls…her girls were originals. Her girls were never going to blend in with any crowd.
