For several successive Sundays, Dinky and Suzie met at the park and played together for as long as they could. Their time together was mostly limited by Inkara’s patience and whether she had another appointment she had to take Suzie to. Derpy started to understand that the less she talked, the longer Dinky got to play with her friend, so an uneasy peace had developed between the two mothers. On one Sunday, Inky announced to all concerned at the outset that today’s play would be limited to fifteen minutes.
“I’ve got a full day planned, I have food shopping and other errands to do, so make whatever you’re doing quick.”
Suzie bawled, “Aww, mom! Fifteen minutes is like no minutes. You can’t even get a good game started!”
Derpy decided to take advantage of the situation. “You know, if you do have so much to do, I could look after Suzie and Dinky together, and then they could play for a long while.”
Hoped kindled in the fillies’ eyes. Inkara looked suspicious. “You mean, like a play-date?”
“They can play dating if they want, though I think they’re a little young for it. Mostly I figured we’d just go hang out here for an hour or so, then go back to our house and play with toys.”
Inkara glowered. She was dubious that such an unaware mare would be able to care for her filly whom she had described to others as “quite a hoof-ful.” But an ulterior motive crept into her mind. Her husband was out of town. If Derpy did look after Suzie, she could rush through her errands and have some alone time, which she never got. The scales of her mind tipped.
“Well, all right, if it’s not too much trouble for you.”
“No trouble at all!”
The little ones cheered, “Yay!” Derpy followed a half-beat behind. Inkara wondered if she wasn’t just letting them have a play-menage-a-trois. But she trotted off, hurrying to the food stands to get what she needed.
After the two fillies had had their time in the playground, they all headed back to Derpy’s house. As Suzie entered, she noticed the small size and the mismatched furniture and thought that it compared poorly with her own dwellings. But as they all sat down in the kitchen, she reconsidered. The scratched table and yellowed curtains might have been of sub-par quality, but they had character, and bespoke of a home that was lived-in, that had seen the lives of its occupants. Her home was showroom-quality and always kept immaculate, but was missing something compared to this.
“So, Suzie, what would you like to do?” asked Derpy.
“Well, I don’t want to be too much of a bother. What do you normally do at this time?”
“I had planned today to be a baking day. Dinky always has fun doing that, right?”
The little unicorn grinned. “Yeah, it’s the best! Suzie, don’t you bake with your mommy?”
“No, I don’t think she likes cooking much. Or, maybe she does, but she’s just too tired to do it often.”
“Then join in and you can learn. Maybe you can do the baking so your mommy won’t have to!”
The thought gave Suzie pause. She’d never thought of herself as being able to help her mother. She could do her own chores, but those were assignments, her job. To do something she didn’t have to, to impress her mother—if she was proud of me when I won ribbons, she thought, how proud will she be if I can learn to bake something?
“Now, Suzie, what kind of muffin do you like?” said Derpy.
“Well, I think corn muffin is OK to eat, but bran muffins might be healthier.”
“Yes, but what kind do you like?”
“Hmm. Whatever one you make I’ll help you make.”
“But it has to be something you want to eat lots of! Now, let’s see, there’s jelly muffins with lots of powdered sugar, or there’s the red velvet muffin, that’s very popular this year. Or just good old-fashioned chocolate muffin.”
Derpy would be the first to tell other ponies that she wasn’t that bright, but she knew enough to know that when you offered little ones chocolate as part of a list, the other items get knocked off the list.
“Chocolate?! Is that all right to have? Mommy says it’s unhealthy. Actually, she says it’s unhealthful, because she’s picky about words like that.”
“Is that true? OK, let Dinky know that she can’t have any muffins any more.”
Suzie was mortified, believing that she had cost her friend her favorite treat. But Dinky burst out laughing.
“Mommy, you’re such a teaser!”
“All right, you can still have muffins, but you have to run around really fast to counter the bad stuff in them.”
Derpy and Dinky were going around to various cabinets, removing bowls, measuring cups, flour, sugar, cocoa, and other baking needs.
“OK, Suzie, your job is to measure out exactly four cups of flour and put them in this bowl,” said Derpy.
The two little ones climbed on a chair and pulled the measuring cup and flour in toward them. Dinky leaned over to Suzie. “Mommy always says that baking desserts is easier than making regular food, because if you follow the recipe exactly, it’ll come out right.”
The fillies scooped flour a little bit at a time into the measuring cup, then dumped it into the bowl. Derpy kept giving them other tasks in measuring while she combined the wet ingredients, the eggs and milk. When everything was set up, she said, “OK, time for the fun part: mixing!”
“Ooh, can I turn on the mixer?” Suzie asked.
“In one sense, I guess you can. Our mixer is a Suzie Cutie 2379 with multi-speed option depending on how fast you go,” she said, handing the filly a wooden spoon.
Suzie realized she had made a faux pas, but saw that her friend and her mother were smiling about it, and she felt at ease. She curled a hoof and took the spoon in it, then started spinning it in the bowl.
Dinky watched her work. “Make sure you get all the powder off the sides of the bowl,” she said.
Even at her age, Suzie’s brute strength was comparable to an adult pegasus or unicorn, so the mix came together fairly quickly. Derpy busied herself greasing the muffin tins. When it looked like the muffin batter was fully mixed, she took out the spoon.
“Now, here’s two more reasons that a wooden spoon is better than an electric mixer. One, there’s more room on the spoon for batter to collect, and that means more to lick off.” She presented the spoon to the girls. Dinky grabbed hold and took a lick, then passed it on to Suzie.
“You lick the spoon? Is that safe?”
“Well, that’s the other reason it’s better: a wooden spoon can’t start spinning while you’re licking it.”
She turned her back after saying this, so Suzie was never sure if Derpy was speaking hypothetically or recalling a painful memory. Dinky was still holding the spoon out. “Go on, take some, it’s good.”
Suzie took a tentative lick, and moved the sweetness around her mouth, then grabbed a hold of it and took a larger portion.
“Hey, not all of it!” said Dinky.
Suzie looked. She had taken more than her share. “I’m so sorry,” she said, quickly handing the spoon back.
Dinky’s smile never left her face. “Don’t sweat it, I’ll get more next time.”
While this was going on, Derpy had poured the bowl into several tins and opened the heated oven, sending a blast of warmth into the room.
“OK, Suzie, come and put one of the trays in the oven.”
“The oven? Mom says I need to stay away when the oven is on. I could get burned.”
“You should be careful, but you can do it. Just don’t touch any of the metal inside and you’ll be fine.”
Cautiously, gingerly, the filly picked up a tray of batter and held it firm in her mouth, trotting over to the oven and moving it in as slowly as she could, flattening her ears back so as to avoid getting anywhere near the hot surface. As soon as she felt the rack take the weight of the tray, she let go and backed out quickly.
Derpy closed the oven door, pushing the tray in the rest of the way. “Now, these will take about 25 minutes, but our oven is small so I can only fit in one tray at a time, so it might be a couple of hours before these are all done. Why don’t you two go out and play?”
Suzie had misunderstood. “OK, we’ll all come back in 25 minutes then.”
“No, no, you girls go off and have fun, I’ll stay here and change the trays.”
It clicked with Suzie that she wasn’t going to come out with them to supervise. Dinky was already halfway out the door when she started following. As she turned back, she saw Derpy setting up the other trays to go in. It looked like she was talking to the muffins, saying, “Bake up nice and fluffy this week, boys, we’ve got a special guest.” And Suzie marveled at how different the pegasus was from her own mother.
“C’mon Suzie, let’s play tag!” called Dinky from outside.
And Suzie trotted out to meet her.