a/n [Ooops, I made a birthday themed chapter. Happy birthday my wonderful little chipmunk /huggles/]
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"What are you doing?"
Lils' head popped over the back of the couch, startling Johanna into dropping her laptop. She picked it up quickly, careful to hide the screen, before glaring at her friend.
"Nothing."
"You're writing me a birthday chapter, aren't you?"
"No," Johanna replied, typing away like mad on the small keyboard.
"You're writing this exact conversation, aren't you?"
"Nope."
A group of pelicans waddled in through the door of the moonfort, making a mess of the carpet as the went. One circled around Lils, prodding her with his beak.
Grinning, Lils sat down on the other end of the couch. "You added in pelicans to make the story different, didn't you?"
With a few more clicks of the keys, the pelicans disappeared in a puff of smoke, causing Johanna to cough. A single feather floated down, landing on top of her head, the last remnant of what really never was. She brushed it away.
"Of course not. How silly do you think I am?"
.
It was a daunting process of making a cake while finding someone to blame if the cake ended up horrible. The pattern went something like: melt the butter, search under the cabinets, crack an egg, check behind the couch, sift the flour, search through the pillows, pour the batter into the pan, peek outside the door, etc. The end result was a lopsided cake—which was the best kind because you knew it was homemade—and a pelican that had gotten loose in the bathtub.
See, the cake had to be perfect and nothing less because the day was too perfect. If the cake was any less than perfect, well, you can't give a less than perfect cake to a perfect girl. That's not the way the world worked. But pelicans had different rules, and they weren't in love with perfect girls, so the cake rule didn't apply to them anyway. So, it was kind of a perfect plan, Johanna thought, which made everything that much more perfect.
Together, Johanna and the pelican made the frosting. She mixed while he supervised. All in all, they made a pretty good team.
Lils was somewhere high above them, knocking on various doors, avoiding the doors with caution tape, and reapplying the tape where Johanna had ripped it off. The well was an endless maze of corridors and rooms, and if she hadn't been the co-founder of the world's most complicated well, she'd have gotten herself lost in seconds.
Instead, she found herself more and more entertained as she added to the map in her memory. Some places sparked storied Johanna had told her when the girl's had gone searching separately for strange rooms. Somehow, Johanna had ended up in the Johanna-themed wing. Lils laughed to herself at the thought.
Sure enough, she passed the various rooms labeled 'Cheerios' 'Ducks' and 'Spam Queen Crowns'. At the end of the hall, when it split off into two more new wings of different topics, there was one door with a Post-It note reading: 'For Lils'.
Lils heard a ping from her bag, and peeked at her iPad long enough to know that Johanna was done, quote-on-quote, cleaning up—of course Lils knew she was baking a cake—and that she could come back. For a second, she almost considered walking back without opening the door, but her curiosity got the better of her.
The second the handle turned, the door burst open as if it had been filled to the brim, ready to burst, which in fact, it had been. Pounds of confetti flew out of the room and formed a pile in the hallway, trapping Lils.
When she finally climbed out, hair and clothes covered in the thin paper strips, she couldn't decide whether to be mad or to laugh. She imagined walking into the moonfort covered in rainbow confetti with a glare on her face. She cold could already imagine Johanna laughing at the sight of her, and it made Lils smile.
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"Happy birthday to you… Happy birthday to you…!" Johanna sang while the pelican croaked along with her.
She held the cake in her hands, half of the candles lit—matches were DANGEROUS—while she balanced the pelican on her head. There was confetti sprinkled all over her, too, since the first thing Lils had done when coming home was tackle her friend in a hug.
They ate the cake whole afterwards—what, knives were dangerous, too. The pelican had been kicked out the second Lils complimented Johanna on the cake, and the latter took all the credit for it. The two of them, working together, managed to eat half the cake in an hour before they both rolled over, full to the brim.
They ended up lying next to each other on the pillow pile, still covered in confetti, chocolate smeared on their faces. Johanna was half asleep when Lils turned to give her an awkward lying down hug.
"Thanks," she said.
"Too much chocolate," Johanna whined.
"Ugh, you're such a dwark."
Johanna smiled. "Love you, too."