It was Juniper's first birthday in the Rose. 18, today. His child would be born right now, he imagined. He was in the middle of cooking breakfast for the crew when this thought came to him--he'd gotten ahold of some oranges from Mugroba and was squeezing them, and the sudden thought sent some of the juice and one of the seeds spurting into his eye. He winced, plucked out the seed, placed it in his pocket, and backed away from the counter to get a clean rag. As he was scrubbing the orange juice out of his eye, he still couldn't avoid the thought. I'm a father. Gods, what an asshole I am. The juice had stopped troubling him by then, but he kept scrubbing.

The griddle he'd put on the stove was hot and sizzling now. Juni ladled round circles of pancake batter on, watching as the edges bubbled and solidified. The pancakes were mostly a small birthday present for himself, seeing as nobody else was going to give him one. He flipped them effortlessly when they were ready, sending them high off the pan to land again perfectly in the same spot. He didn't know who he was showing off to. A large pile soon amassed on a plate off to the side, still hot for anyone who came in to eat in the next few minutes. He left the eggs out for Grisha's fry-up, got a pot of coffee on, and finished squeezing the oranges, this time with no casualties.

You know, Juni thought, I should bake myself a cake.

There was a small pan in the bottom cupboard, an eight-inch round. Running off an old memorized cake recipe he'd used for all previous cakes he'd had to make himself, he assembled a plain yellow cake batter and poured it in. He'd never remembered batter making such a disgusting slopping noise, but maybe it was the rain outside slopping onto the brick-metal-stone warehouse redistributing the city's coat of filth.

If anyone else came in for breakfast, Juni could be found sitting at the kitchen table (since repainted out of its dingy state to a rather incongruous periwinkle blue--they'd found the cans in a corner of the warehouse, still good) looking down and running his fingers over the hairline brushstrokes evident in the fresh thick paint. He considered eating one of the pancakes, as he was hungry from yesterday's ship work, but wanted to save them for the others.

The girl yawned herself awake, an odd way to wake up she had to admit, and rolled out of her hammock. Most days the green child slept in rather late, enjoying dreams that she remembered for only three seconds after waking up. But today, the whole warehouse smelled like food; a very certain food, a food that Aye had not had in quite a few years. Pancakes. There were pancakes here, and she was going to find them. She stood and stretched her back, reaching her arms over and behind her head and hearing her spine pop a few times, and then put her sleeping hingle in her pocket and walked out the door.

She followed her nose to the kitchen, sniffing with her nose held up in the air as if she were a dog.

"Ah..." she sighed happily, finally seeing what she had been looking for.

The girl noticed the cook there at the table, meaning that the pancakes had not materialized out of thin air, and she thought again how handy this kov was turning out to be. Aye skipped on into the kitchen, sat at the newly painted table, nodded at the chef, and grabbed a couple of pancakes. She folded them in half and took a big bite, a happy smile on her face.

"Benny mornin' teh yeh, oes?"