Prompt: Gingerbread
Summary: Mai always feels a little nostalgic when she smells gingerbread baking. (Sorry if this is weird, I'm very sleepy. Also, once again, Ms. Suji is the name I've made up for the lady at the church in the Silent Christmas episodes.) (Author's Note: The parentheses were copied from the original note on tumblr; I think I've edited out most of the weirdness.)
Mai loved the smell of gingerbread, mostly because of how much it reminded her of her mother. Baking gingerbread was something that she and her mom had done every single year around Christmas. She remembered taking a gingerbread cookie or two to her father's grave on Christmas Eve every year as well. The smell was nostalgic, but also a little sad, though it was long past the days when she would start crying because of it; that first Christmas alone hadn't been easy.
And now it was the Christmas season after Naru had gone to England with Lin, and she was determined to make sure that Christmas went back to being a cheerful holiday. So she'd called John; of everyone in SPR, he usually didn't have plans. She'd ended up joining him at the church, where he was helping make gingerbread (or, in his case, measuring out the ingredients and turning on the oven; he couldn't bake very well.) Christmas Eve at the church again, maybe it would be a new tradition. To her surprise, she wasn't the only one: Ayako, and Masako, were there already when she got there, and Monk, with Yasu in tow, arrived shortly after.
She hadn't been able to make gingerbread last year; she'd been possessed the whole time they'd been working on it, but now she was eager to learn. She hadn't been able to take cookies to her father's, or her mother's, graves since her mother had passed away; since her mom had been about to teach her now to make them that year. She was bad at cooking on her own, and no one else she knew could make them.
She couldn't help but smile the whole time Ms. Suji explained how to make it, especially when (after Mai had told her why she wanted to learn) she said:
"And I'm sure we'll be able to make a few cookies."