Spice

by Godslittleprincess


Chapter 4: The Good Times and the Bad

On the Sunday before Christmas Eve, 1967, Lionheart sat in his dining room table facing both his parents and Birdie’s father. All three adults were looking at him intently, which was making his palms sweat and his throat tighten. He discreetly wiped his hands on his pants and swallowed his nerves.

“So,” he began, “I’m sure you’re all wondering what I wanted to talk to the three of you about.”

“Does it involve my daughter?” Mr. Finch deadpanned.

“Uh, yes, sir.” Lion gripped his hands around his knees just to keep them from shaking. “Now, I know there’s a lot to consider with what I’m about to ask. I know Birdie and I are still too young, but our birthdays are coming up, and what I’m about to ask is going to take time to plan anyway. On top of that, I’m going to be away for a while, but I think now is the best time for me to ask.”

“Son, stop rambling and just ask us what you want to ask,” Ram Horn butt in.

“I,” he started, pausing with a gulp, “I want to ask Birdie to marry me.”

All the adults in the room could only gape at him in shock.

“Āiyā!” Magnolia exclaimed. “Now?! Érzi, you and Birdie too young! An you are leaving for ahmy in few months. If you engage now, you might not marry for years.”

“Mā, I know, but I’ve thought about it, and I know she wants a future with me more than anything, and I want to give it to her. I know I might not be able to, but I want to try. If I don’t, I might as well break things off with her now and let some other man have her and make her happy.”

Ms. Magnolia let out a long, worried sigh and turned to her husband, “Lǎogōng, he is your son. What you think?”

Ram kept silent but turned and locked eyes with Mr. Finch, both men seeming to have the same thought.

“Lionheart,” Ram stated as he turned towards his son, “if you ask her now, you might be keeping her waiting for a while. Do you really want to put her through that?”

“I’m going to be keeping her waiting even if I don’t ask,” Lion pointed out gloomily.

Ram Horn’s face remained expressionless as he nodded gravely. Then, he, Magnolia, and Crimson turned to each other in a silent conversation. The silence seemed unbearably long to Lionheart, and he was so nervous that his hands were shaking on his knees.

“Son, do you have anything to propose with?” Ram asked, breaking the silence and quite a few of his son’s nerves.

“Uh, y-you mean like a ring?” Lion stammered. “W-well, no, but I have been saving up. I’m still $2 short. If I take on a few more odd jobs, I might be able to get one by Christmas.”

Ram shared another look with the rest of the adults, remaining totally stone-faced all the while. Then, he took out his wallet, pulled out a $5 bill, and slid it over to Lionheart.

“What’s this for?” Lion asked, hesitantly accepting the money.

“That,” Ram declared emphatically, “is my blessing for you to propose to your girlfriend.”

“Are you serious?!”

“I am. Of course, I can’t speak for your mother and Mr. Finch, and you will need their blessings also before you can do anything.”

Lionheart took a deep breath and tried to restrain his excitement.

“I know that there’s a lot to think about and that a lot of what you need to think about is going to be completely out of my hands,” Lion gushed, trying not to sound like he was begging, “but if you let me ask Birdie to marry me, then I will give you my word that I will do my darnedest to come home and make it happen. Please.”

Ms. Magnolia turned to her husband with an uncertain expression on her face. Ram just smiled and nodded, placing his hand over hers. Slowly, Magnolia began to smile back.

She turned and said to Crimson Finch, “Mr. Feech, we teruss our son to take care of Birdie, but Birdie is your daughter. It is only right that you have last word.”

Another long, uncomfortable silence hung over the four of them as Mr. Finch stared Lionheart down. Lion could feel his insides churn as Mr. Finch’s eyes bore into his very soul.

“Dear God, please let him say yes,” Lionheart internally prayed.

Mr. Finch got up from the table and slowly approached his daughter’s boyfriend. Despite Lionheart’s best efforts to hide his fear, the poor boy was so scared that the shaking in his hands had spread all the way up his elbows.

“Lionheart,” Mr. Finch said sternly, causing Lion to flinch involuntarily, “it would give me great pleasure to shake your hand.”

Mr. Finch extended his hand out to Lionheart. For enough time to make Lion feel very embarrassed, all the boy could do was stare at Mr. Finch’s hand with his mouth agape. Then, he hesitantly raised his head to look Mr. Finch in the eye.

“Come on. Don’t tell me your old man didn’t teach you how to shake hands,” Mr. Finch teased.

When Lionheart’s mind finally processed what exactly was going on, he took Mr. Finch’s hand and shook it heartily as a wide smile grew on his face.

“Oh, thank you so much, Mr. Finch!” Lionheart exclaimed, practically jumping out of his seat. “I promise you I will love and care for Birdie with all my heart! You won’t regret this!”


One week later...

“Achoo!” Birdie sneezed as she lay on the couch in her living room, wrapped tightly under two layers of blankets. Her head pounded as she struggled to breathe through her nose.

“Ugh! Of all nights to get sick, it had to be Christmas Eve,” she thought dismally to herself, feeling both too hot and too cold at the same time. “Why couldn’t I have gotten sick on a school day?”

“Birdie?” called Ms. Magnolia as she walked in from the kitchen, carrying a tray with a bowl of hot chicken and rice porridge and a spoon. “You hung-guh-ry?”

Birdie nodded and sat up, allowing Ms. Magnolia to sit next to her and place the tray on her lap. She was about to reach for the spoon when Ms. Magnolia grabbed it first and scooped up some of the porridge. Ms. Magnolia gently blew on the steaming mound at the end of the spoon and carefully brought it up to Birdie’s lips. Despite her relative lack of appetite, Birdie let Ms. Magnolia feed her the porridge.

After about five spoonfuls, Birdie smiled and said, “Thanks for feeding me, Ms. Magnolia, but I think I can take it from here.”

“Hǎo a,” her caretaker replied, setting the spoon down next to the bowl. “Need anything else?”[1]

“Yeah, can you turn on the radio?” Birdie requested.

Ms. Magnolia got up from the couch and switched on the radio. Out of the radio, Bing Cherries began to sing “Christmas in Killarney.” His voice filled the room, carrying a bit of Christmas cheer along with it. The music, the porridge, and Ms. Magnolia’s presence lulled Birdie into a state of calm, comfortable contentment, helping her forget her earlier misery.

As soon as she finished her porridge, Ms. Magnolia carried the tray with the empty bowl back to the kitchen before returning to keep Birdie company.

“Thanks for staying to take care of me, Ms. Magnolia,” said Birdie. “I’m sorry that you’re missing the Christmas program though.”

“Ah, méi guānxì,” Ms. Magnolia replied. “Besides, perogeram no good without you singing.”[2]

Birdie and Ms. Magnolia shared a laugh at that. Then, Birdie became very quiet as she frowned in deep thought.

“Hey, Ms. Magnolia, I was just wondering,” she began. “You know about Lionheart wanting to join the army after graduation, right?”

“Dāngrán a,” Ms. Magnolia replied. Birdie still couldn’t speak or understand a word of Chinese, but she could tell by the tone in Ms. Magnolia’s voice that the older woman was expressing some form of agreement.[3]

“Are you really okay with him doing that?”

Ms. Magnolia paused, her eyes going wide while her lips pressed together into a thin line. In all the time Birdie had known the woman, she had noticed that Ms. Magnolia would often pause in the middle of conversations with certain look on her face, which usually meant she was struggling to find the best way to express her thoughts in English. Ms. Magnolia was wearing that look right now.

“Yes, I am,” Ms. Magnolia replied, clearly wanting to say more on the matter but unable to properly translate what she wanted to say.

“Aren’t you worried about him coming home,” Birdie asked, “or not coming home?”

“Āiyā, of coss I worry. I am his mother, but Lion not a child anymore. Lǎogōng and I have to teruss him with choices, or he wir not know how to become man.”

Birdie went quiet again, letting what Ms. Magnolia had said sink in while further pondering what she really wanted to talk about.

“Ms. Magnolia,” Birdie began timidly, “I’ve been thinking about what I should do after I graduate, and I think I’m going to go to college and become a teacher.”

“Hǎo a, that’s good,” Ms. Magnolia affirmed.

“But,” Birdie continued, “I keep thinking that my reason for doing that instead of going to New York to act in Broadway might be stupid.”

“Oh.”

“You see. I don't know how long Lionheart will be gone, and I think I might have a harder time waiting for him in New York. I know you’re probably the worst person to be asking this, but am I dumb for wanting to wait for him?”

“Ah, I see. You might be waiting for my son for long time. Might be sumarter to fine other man.”

“But I don’t want another man. If you were me, would you wait?”

For a while, Ms. Magnolia just sat on the couch with Birdie staring at the top of the Christmas tree pensively.

“Wǒ zhēnde, zhēnde bù zhīdào,” she replied. Then, she looked Birdie in the eye and continued with a smile, “But I know that my son love you very, very much.”[4]

Their conversation was cut short by the sound of Crimson Finch opening the front door and entering the living room.

“Birdie, I’m home,” Mr. Finch called. “How are you feeling?”

“A lot better now, but I’m still pretty sick,” Birdie replied. “How was the Christmas program?”

“Fine, I guess. Crystal Bell’s performance was technically flawless as usual.”

“And just as soulless as usual, I bet,” Birdie quipped.

“Birdie!” Crimson scolded his daughter.

“What?” Birdie cried defensively. “You keep telling her to put more feeling in when she sings, but she never listens to you because she’s too busy trying to make every note perfect. As if that wasn’t bad enough, she looks down on everyone else in the choir just for not singing the way she does.”

“Darling, I know you and Crystal don’t get along, but that still wasn’t a very nice thing to say.”

“Well, I’m sure she tried her best,” Birdie grudgingly acknowledged.

Mr. Finch shook his head before turning to Ms. Magnolia.

“Thank you so much for looking after her, Jade. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t offered,” Crimson thanked her profusely.

“Āiyā, méi guānxì a. No terubber at all,” Ms. Magnolia replied getting up from the couch.

“By the way, Birdie, Lionheart came to see me after the program, and he gave me this,” Mr. Finch said to his daughter, pulling out a small wrapped box from his coat pocket. “He wants it to be the first thing you open tomorrow morning.”

“What is it?” Birdie asked, reaching for it.

“Ah, not until tomorrow,” her father scolded, pulling it away from her and setting it on the coffee table. “It’ll be staying right here until then.”

“Fine,” Birdie conceded grudgingly as she lay back on the couch and rewrapped herself in blankets. “Bye, Ms. Magnolia, and thank you.”

“Bye-bye,” Ms. Magnolia replied as she put on her coat and left.


When Birdie got up the following morning, her nose and sinuses were still congested, but her fever had broken, and she was feeling much less miserable than she was the night before. The first thing that she did after she threw off her blankets was to grab the little box from coffee table and tear the wrapping paper off. When she opened the box, inside was a ring decorated with a single, sparkling diamond and a slip of paper that read, “Look outside.”

Birdie got up from the couch and looked out the nearest forward-facing window. She gasped when she saw what was outside. Standing in the middle of her front yard was her boyfriend. He was wearing so many layers the all she could see of him were his eyes, but she knew it was him. Who else could it be? He was holding up a sign that read, “Birdie, will you marry me?”

“Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!” Birdie thought to herself as she struggled to open the window. When she finally pushed the window open, she stuck her head out and screamed, “Are you kidding me?! YES!”

Lionheart seems to stare at her for a bit before pulling his scarf away from his mouth and yelling back, “What did you say?”

“I said yes! Yes, I’ll marry you! And if I wasn’t sick right now, I’d go over there and give you a kiss!”

Lionheart just stood there with his eyes wide and his mouth open before stammering, “Uh, okay then! Could you, uh, turn around and shut the window for a bit?”

Birdie frowned slightly in confusion but nevertheless, did as Lion requested.

“Oh my gosh! YES! She said yes! WAHOO!” Lionheart screamed as he jumped around and pumped his arms excitedly. He needn’t have bothered asking Birdie to shut the window. She could hear him cheering through the glass.


It was another Baking Club day in April 2017, and Flash had his nose in a desktop-published recipe book. His lips were pressed together in concentration as he nodded determinedly. The ingredients on the countertop in front of him suggested that he was going to be working on a pastry, which he admittedly still had trouble with. However, this particular recipe appeared simple enough and did not seem to require much contact with his hands. Of course, he still kept a bowl of ice and a kitchen towel nearby just in case.

Flash put the book down and prepared to measure out the ingredients. However, after he grabbed hold of the measuring cup, he paused and stared at the ingredients. He didn’t know how long he had just been standing and staring for, but eventually, Pinkie Pie came along and snapped him out of his daze.

“Hiya, Flash,” Pinkie Pie greeted cheerfully, “whatcha makin’?”

“Oh,” Flash replied, flinching a little in surprise, “hi, Pinkie. I’m just, uh, making my great-grandma's recipe for egg tarts. Apparently, they were my aunt’s favorite treats growing up.”

“Ooooh, are they for her birthday tomorrow?”

Flash suddenly frowned and slumped over sadly. “Yes, Pinkie. They’re for her birthday tomorrow.”

“Oh, oops, I forgot.”

“No, it’s okay. I did too, you know, up until I went downstairs for breakfast this morning.”

“Are you okay to bake today? I mean, it’s okay if you’re feeling too sad to bake. I can always do it for you if you’d like.”

“No, no, that’s really kind of you, Pinks, but I think my aunt’s birthday present will mean a lot more if I made it myself,” Flash insisted. “Besides, I’m not too sad to bake. It’s just—ugh—I don’t know. I mean, do you know what it’s like to share a birthday with someone you love for your whole life and then suddenly, that person you share a birthday with isn’t around to share your birthday anymore? I mean, technically, my aunt and my mom will always share a birthday, but before, my mom and my aunt have always had each other to celebrate with, and now, my family and I can’t tell if we’re sad that Mom’s gone or happy that Aunt Flare’s still here.”

“Umm, I do know what it’s like to share a birthday if that answers your question,” Pinkie replied, frowning slightly in confusion. “Gee, I can’t even imagine Marble not being around to celebrate our birthday with.”

“Who’s Marble?”

“Oh, she’s my baby sister,” Pinkie answered brightly. “She’s only five minutes younger than me, but she’ll always be a baby to me.”

Flash sputtered a bit, unsure what he found more confusing about Pinkie’s answer, before finally finding his words, “I didn’t even know you had a twin sister. How come I’ve never seen or met her before?”

“Oh, my parents and my older sister Limestone homeschool her,” Pinkie explained. “There was an incident during middle school that I’m not really supposed to talk about, and my parents were going to have both of us homeschooled, but I begged them to let me keep going to public school because I like meeting new people and making new friends.”

“Oh,” Flash simply stated, “so, as a twin yourself, you can kinda understand what my family and I are feeling right now?”

“Yeah, you guys are all bummed out about your mom not being around, but you don’t want to be bummed out because tomorrow’s supposed to be a happy day and you guys still have someone to celebrate, but you don’t know how to celebrate your aunt and her life without feeling like you’re trying to forget about your mom and everything she meant to you guys.”

“Y-yeah,” Flash stuttered, utterly confused by how accurately the pink girl was able to assess the situation. “That pretty much sums it up.”

Flash sighed and returned to slumping over the countertop and wallowing in his sadness. Pinkie Pie turned away from him and stared off into the distance with a curious expression on her face. She hated how bummed out Flash was feeling right now, but she couldn’t figure how to cheer him up. Maybe someone else might be able to.

Pinkie went over to where the other Baking Club members were working and declared, “Guys, smile emergency at six o’clock.”

“Uh, Pinkie, it’s only 2:30,” Sandalwood replied as he continued to knead his dough.

“No, I mean,” she subtly gestured with her head towards Flash, who slowly began to measure out the flour. The gloomy look on his face remained unchanged.

“Oh,” Derpy said in understanding as she poured her batter into a loaf pan, “right. It’s his mom and his aunt’s birthday tomorrow. He’s probably trying not to be down about his mom.”

“Trying and failing from the looks of it,” noted Velvet Sky, who was rolling out her cookies. “So, what are you going to do to cheer him up, Pinkie?”

“I have no idea. I was hoping you guys can help me come up with something,” answered Pinkie.

“You have no idea how to cheer him up?” Sky exclaimed in shock. “Oh my gosh, this is bad.”

“I’ve got some essential oils in my locker if that’ll help,” Sandal offered.

“Sandal, I think how Flash is feeling goes a lot deeper than anything essential oils can fix,” Derpy pointed out as she put her pan into the oven. “I don’t know what to do either, except let him know that we’re here for him and that everything’s going to be okay, but how are we supposed to do that?”

Pinkie’s eyes darted around the room before falling on Flash’s recipe book. Eyes wide and mouth open, she reached into her hair and pulled out a lightbulb which inexplicably lit itself.

“I have an idea!” she screamed, getting weird looks from everyone including Flash, unaware of what the rest of the club had been talking about. She giggled sheepishly and backpedaled, “For what I want to make for today. Hey, Flash, can I borrow your book?”

Flash blinked twice and then shrugged. “Sure, I guess, but I’ll need it back in a little bit.”

“Great. Thanks,” Pinkie chattered, grabbing Flash’s book and zipping off it with it.

“Psst, okay, guys, here’s the plan,” Pinkie whispered to Derpy, Sky, and Sandal as she flipped to a certain recipe.


Despite moving slower than molasses, Flash managed to assemble his egg tarts and get them into the oven. As soon as he put his tarts into the oven, however, he suddenly noticed a familiar scent filling the classroom from the station farthest from him. In fact, everybody in the Baking Club except him was huddled around that station.

“What are you guys doing?” Flash asked them.

Everyone jumped away from the oven with a yelp, startled by Flash’s greeting.

“Uh, nothing,” Derpy replied far too quickly, hiding her hands behind her back.

“Yeah, absolutely nothing,” Pinkie agreed with an unnaturally wide and obviously forced grin.

Flash raised an eyebrow in suspicion and retorted, “Right, and I’m guessing that whatever you guys are doing has nothing to do with why the room suddenly smells like my great-grandma's almond cookies.”

“What? You can make a lot of things with butter and almonds,” Sandalwood scoffed. “Just because Pinkie borrowed your recipe book earlier, it doesn’t mean that we actually made something out of it.”

Flash just eyed everyone with the most guilt-inducing look he could muster, one that he often used on his younger brother, and said, “Did you make something out of it?”

Pinkie was the first one to crack, “Yes!” Soon, everybody else followed.

“Oh, you were just so sad about your mom and your aunt’s birthday, and we just had to do something to cheer you up. We just had to!” Pinkie wailed.

“Actually, SHE just had to,” Velvet Sky clarified. “The rest of us just went along with it because we wanted to help.”

“So, you decided to make my mom’s favorite cookies for me?” Flash noted, slightly confused.

“It was the only idea Pinkie had.”

“We did change it up a little,” Sandal explained.

As if on cue, the timer for the almond cookies rang, and Pinkie quickly pulled the cookie sheet out of the oven. The cookies on the sheet looked exactly the way Flash’s looked the last few times he made them except that instead of a single almond embedded at the center, his friends had arranged almond slivers into the shape of a butterfly. Three cookies in the back row were also completely purple for some reason.

Derpy noticed Flash looking at the purple ones and explained, “We were trying to paint just the butterflies with food color but...” She trailed off and slowly raised her hands, which were purple from her fingertips to just past her wrist. “I just don’t know what went wrong.”

“Why were you trying to paint the butterflies purple?” Flash asked, suppressing the urge to giggle at the sheepish grin on Derpy's face.

“Well, every year, I celebrate mine and Marble’s birthday by looking up random facts on the internet about twins and putting them up all over our bedroom, and one time, I learned that sometimes when people have twins, one of them doesn’t make it, which is SOOOOO sad,” Pinkie explained in the rapid, chattering way that only she could pull off, “so at this one hospital in I-forget-where, they put purple butterflies on the surviving twin’s bed to let people know that he or she was born a twin. I thought that if we made your mom’s favorite cookies into purple butterflies, then you and your family will feel like she’s still around celebrating with you guys, but when we tried putting together our test cookies, the food color kept running, and the purple cookies honestly look really weird and ugly, but I didn’t want to waste food, so we baked them anyway instead of throwing them out.”

Flash had a lot of trouble following Pinkie’s thought process and the insanely fast way that she just infodumped everything on him. Thankfully, her intentions weren’t nearly as hard to understand.

“You guys,” Flash began before the timer for his oven interrupted him, “uh, hold that thought.” He went over to his oven, decreased the temperature, and reset the timer for another 15 minutes. Flash quickly returned and said, “Okay, where was I?”

“I believe you were starting with ‘you guys,’” Sky quipped.

“Right, thanks. You guys, this is all very nice of you, but you really didn’t have to do this.”

“Oh, we know,” Derpy replied. “We just wanted to do something to show you that we cared about you, and all we could come up with was either this or essential oils.”

“What?” Sandal cried defensively. “Essential oils are a great mood booster. Science says so.”

“You got any reliable sources?” Sky retorted.

“Well, no,” Sandal admitted, “but they definitely work on me.”

Flash couldn’t help but smile and chuckle a bit. He was still a bit down about tomorrow, but having such good friends supporting him made staying sad extremely difficult.

“Oh my gosh!” Pinkie shrieked. “You smiled! You smiled!”

“Yeah, I did,” Flash replied, “and I’m feeling a lot better now. Thanks, guys.”

“Oooh, group hug!” Pinkie exclaimed, opening her arms invitingly. “Come on, everybody. Bring it in.”

Before anyone could decide whether to comply or protest, Pinkie Pie had somehow managed to stretch her arms around everybody in the room and pull them into a hug. Although confused by how Pinkie was doing what she was doing and aching from how tightly Pinkie Pie was hugging them all, Flash and the rest of the Baking Club found themselves laughing together as their pink friend’s infectious joy chased away any remaining negativity out of the room.