A book was slammed onto the kitchen's Island.
"Cooking!" Starlight dementedly and exasperatedly yelled.
Chrysalis glanced over it, still tired from being violently woken from her sleep by her roommate moments prior. Pictures of dishes were printed over the thick bindings, and she curiously shook it to see that it wasn't a secret book-shaped compartment designed to hide something.
"You think... cooking will help us get along better."
"Of course! Cooking is, it's... It's what binds our species, right? We both eat fo- No, we both... would appreciate each other's company." Starlight fell over herself explaining, awkwardly scratching the back of her head and avoiding contact with the taller changeling.
"What's the real reason for this?" Chrysalis muttered.
Starlight sighed, head ducking low. "I'm tired of you eating my love at night. I don't like waking up and hating everyone for no reason."
"I don't think that's me."
"Plus, it'll be fun!" Starlight tossed the cover aside, perusing the dirty pages inside. "And educational! And Twilight says we're two incidents from being handcuffed together!"
Chrysalis stuck out a forked tongue. "I don't think this was the best idea of hers, but I'm not a pony, so maybe it's completely normal for you to enslave two people who hate each other together in a castle so small they're forced to interact."
Starlight's muzzle was practically buried in it as she tried to avoid looking at Chrysalis. "Well, she's getting suspicious of all the plastic water bottles filled with red mist she keeps finding in my fridge, so let's just play along, shall we?"
"You know I eat those right? It's like drinking hot sauce."
"Meatloaf!" Starlight cut her off by shoving the book into her face, open to a page that seemed to contain samples of the meal stapled to it for proof of concept. "Two large eggs, let's start!"
Chrysalis gave a grin, small but containing so much unrestrained wickedness.
"Chicken eggs, Chicken eggs, get off the table."
"One and a half teaspoon of Italian season."
"What's a Talia?"
"I'm pretty sure it's one of the muses." Starlight answered without looking up from the bowl.
"Ah, so we're putting ambrosia into this meatloaf. Always a good sign. Should you be stirring yet?" Chrysalis asked as she finally hoofed over a tiny jar of brown flakings.
"This is the sauce we're gonna put on it; I need, just, bring over every powder you possibly can. Just to be sure." Starlight lowered the blanket of floating ingredients in the air above her, which Chrysalis plucked several bottles from. "Bring Ketchup, too."
"We're putting ketchup in a sauce?" Chrysalis blanched.
"Ketchup is a sauce. It's like putting ice cream in a cake."
"It's like putting a rib in a woman. Oh, right, I almost forgot you have bones." Chrysalis smiled gleefully, clearly very proud of herself for that one.
"That's such a weird thing to be superior about." Starlight muttered, squeezing the entire tube into the bowl. "Where's the whisk? No, not the whisk the... The, like, the thing you stir with... It's flat..."
Chrysalis opened her jaws, giving a hoarse cough to poke the barely visible edge of a wooden spoon up from the entrance of her throat.
Starlight glared, reaching in and retrieving it as quickly as she could, wiping it off of the changeling jelly on the edge of the island. "You need a hobby."
"I had a hobby, but then the government got involved." Chrysalis boredly reminded, wiping her lips.
"You're welcome to leave any time you want."
"I literally can't. Twilight's put enchantments over the castle to prevent me from leaving, remember?"
Starlight lit her horn with disinterest.
"Anti-Blink procedures deactivated. Changeling Throne maneframe disabled. Dome brought down. Scrying spells frozen to a still image of any room they try to see." She droned.
Chrysalis glared in cautious contempt. This was a test. She wanted to see her reaction. There was no way they couldn't bring her back.
She teleported away in a split second.
Starlight blinked, looking at the now empty space. "I'll be damned. She... actually left."
For a moment, she continued to stare at nothing, twinges of sadness biting her. They were just as quickly suppressed as Chrysalis zipped back in in a green burst of thaums.
She slid a jingling sack across the table. "This is for that bet I lost last week. I couldn't really pay you back until now. I counted them out, don't worry."
Starlight looked down at it, vaguely recalling a botched hoof wrestling tournament that had ended in Chrysalis legless for two days until she grew it back. "Where did you get this money from?"
"Don't ask questions you don't want to know the answers to. What's next, paprika? Here we go, sure."
"I probably should've asked before we started, but you can eat food right?"
"Of course I can. I just can't get nutrients from it."
Starlight considered that. "If love is your main diet, why do you have a mouth?"
"Why do you have a mouth? It seems to me you have a lot of needlessly complicated things inside you. You have an entire organ you don't need anymore and explodes randomly. Your lungs bleed when you run too fast. You have bone fragments from past skeletal structures you've evolved past the need for just floating inside you." Chrysalis beat together the ingredients in a bowl mercilessly.
"Fine, bug princess, what do you have inside you?" Starlight deadpanned.
"Your mother."
"She's dead."
"A squeedly smooch."
"I-" Starlight squinted at Chrysalis as she continued to keep her eyes on the bowl. "You're.... bluffing."
"Nope. It's the thing that sucks in love. It's just below my throat. I could show it to you if you don't believe me."
"Please don't peel yourself again. I just... that seems fake. This is a setup for a joke, isn't it?" Starlight looked around as if expecting to see a camera.
"Is it? There's only one way to find out, right?" Chrysalis leaned in, flashing a fang again.
Starlight met her gaze firmly. "....Go... Ahead...."
Chrysalis leaned back, sitting up, and took a nearby kitchen knife. In one swoop, she stabbed herself in the stomach and opened her skin like a costume.
Hundreds of spoons fell out.
"Return to oven and bake 15-20 minutes."
"Which is it, 15 or 20?"
"Depends on the voltage, I think."
"Well, what's the voltage?"
"I- It depends on what it says!"
"Well where does it say it?"
Starlight peered over the oven, wrenching it from the wall and growing more panicked as she did. "I don't know! There's no sticker or anything!"
"Check the inside!"
Starlight pulled the door open before stopping, glancing back. "If you push me in, I can just teleport out. You remember that, right?"
There was a suspiciously blank silence.
"Yes." Chrysalis murmured.
Starlight rolled her eyes before shoving her head in, looking around at it. "There's nothing! What do we do?"
Chrysalis danced between her hooves nervously. "Ah! Ah! I don't know! The exact halfway point?"
"We've spent hours on this. We cannot risk burning it." Starlight shook the pan in fear.
"Let's calm down! Let's think this over!"
The two took deep breaths, Chrysalis flexing her lack of lungs by continuing the breath for a minute and a half. Then, they mulled it over.
"What if..." Starlight manifested a glowing blue hand between them, sticking a pondering finger up. "We set it... to the lowest possible time?"
They hmmmed.
"That... could work. It's ludicrously insane, of course, but... Quite possible." Chrysalis relented.
The two slowly turned to the oven, taking half of the pan each and moving it inside gingerly, gently closing the door without making a sound. Then, beeps echoed through the room as Starlight silently popped the numbers into the microwave.
The microwave began to hum as they exhaled, backing away and hugging each other in relief.
Starlight sat up. "Wait, I forgot to preheat the oven."
The meatloaf was set on the island. Starlight carved it into two pieces, and they both took one, Starlight taking a cautious nibble and Chrysalis popping the entire thing into her mouth and swallowing it whole.
They thought it over.
"This has no right to be as good as it is." Starlight admitted.
"It... isn't the worst possible thing." Chrysalis confirmed.
"A little too much... Like, the salty stuff? Salt?"
"Really, I could eat that for the rest of my life."
"Holy shit, the more bites I take the better this is."
"That was most definitely ambrosia."
"Heck! This is probably what kissing feels like!"
Then Starlight swallowed, and Chrysalis finished digesting.
"Actually, that kinda sucked." Starlight tossed the spoon into the sink behind her.