I managed to get lost

[Arlene Baines]

Arlene hadn't set foot on Hammel's grounds since she'd been a student and somewhere over the years her memories of the school's layout had become so muddled that she somehow found herself wandering the floors of classrooms in a daze while trying to find the school office. Normally her sense of direction was fairly infallible but Arlene kept getting turned around by memories of her own. A place where she used to sit with her friends, a classroom she remembered being something else when she was a student. The box in her arms was growing heavier with each footstep and she was starting to feel the slightest bit of personal irritation. She had come to the school with the intent of dropping off some things that her grandfather had collected while he had worked at the store. All of the Hammel Memorabilia he had were mostly pictures that people had parted with over the years. There were also a few personal trophies and certificates, a pennant and a a few other things that the school would probably want to chronicle its own history.

Arlene's grandfather had been a student at the school just a few years after it had officially opened and he was quite fond of it. He would often regale his granddaughter with stories from youth, the more outlandish and exciting the more he enjoyed telling them. When the old man had died he had stipulated through several notes left in his apartment and store that Hammel was to have anything related to it upon his passing. It had taken Arlene several days but she finally had everything and had carted it down here on her bike. Except now she was lost. Very, very lost. She was about to stop and personally bemoan her situation when she caught a whiff of something that smelled rather amazing. She quickly readjusted her grip on the box and headed towards the smell, long hair bouncing around her shoulders when she finally arrived at the classroom door and nudged it open (it was cracked) with her foot. "Um, hello, excuse me?" she said quietly as she worked her way inside, almost immediately (and gratefully) setting her box on the table closest to her. "Oh!" she gasped softly when she finally realized who was in the kitchen with her.

It was a dragon.

The fantasy enthusiast inside of her was squealing for joy. What Arlene really did however was try not to gape and cleared her throat. "I'm sorry to intrude but...whatever you're making smells delicious," she said sincerely.

[Kane Woonren]

Kane cooked when he was depressed. Actually, he cooked when he was just about anything, but depression was definitely at least a minor boost to his baked goods quotient. Hammel had recently found its refill list on cooking ingredients getting longer each time, but there was usually a batch or six of some form of baked good in the teacher's lounge these days. Today, he was trying out a recipe for chocolate and coconut bars. If he hadn't spent so much time flying lately as an excuse to stay in Hammel late, leaving his things behind, going flying, and then making like he was coming back to get his things, he'd probably have gained a bit of weight. Not that it would've been a particularly bad thing, seeing as he was at least ten or fifteen pounds underweight as it was.

It was Summer now, so he wasn't particularly busy at the moment. He had thought about offering a Summer cooking class, but not that many students had seemed interested. After spending a semester listening to him teaching them how to sew and that sort of thing, he supposed that most of them were tired of doing chores during class as well as at home. Still, this freed him up to do some of his own cooking, and dwell on his darker thoughts for a while. Right now, he was going over just how long he had until the school realized that they were wasting their money by keeping him on the payroll, and trying out a new recipe for chocolate and coconut squares.

One of the advantages was that the cooking lab was empty, other than himself, so he could spread out a bit. His wings were spread out, not quite to their full length, but still spread enough that he could feel comfortable. People often asked him if he kept his wings spread out as wide as they went when he could. Really, he didn't. Even if you've been cramped, you don't keep your arms spread for hours on end. He was also being sure to use one of the front ones, so his tail was spread behind him, twitching around a bit as it was spread across the floor. It wasn't often that he got to have his tail out and comfortable, even at the school. People gave him enough weird looks because of his dragonic/demonic wings, he didn't need people giving him more about having a tail. Also, it was slightly harder to get pants that worked with his tail, so he had to put on very baggy shorts. He also didn't want anyone to trip over it, of course.

He pulled out his squares, his oven mitts matching the powder blue apron, not noticing as someone came into the classroom. She wasn't being very loud, and he was slightly focused on his cooking. Her talking when she made it into the room caught him off guard, and he was lucky he had already set the pan down on the counter. He jumped a foot in the air and slammed his head into the cabinet. "OW," he said simply, clutching his head with his slightly clawed hands, his loose sleeves sliding down his arm to reveal a number of scars, and some tears formed in his eyes. He swallowed the pain after a few moments, turning around and biting his lips. "S... sorry." It took him a moment to gain his composure, biting his lip again and trembling, making sure his head wasn't bleeding. "H... hello."

[Arlene Baines]

Arlene gasped when she saw the man jump and heard the thump as his head knocked against the cupboard. "I am so sorry are you okay?" she asked as she dared to get closer in order to help if needed, leaving her box abandoned on the table behind her. She carefully worked a path around his tail and wings (the fantasy fangirl inside was still squealing) as she realized that he'd taken something that looked a bit like chocolate out of the oven. She tried not to get too close in case he didn't really want her too but put herself into his line of sight.

"I didn't mean to startle you; I'm actually a little lost..." she admitted. “Um, sorry to be so forward but that smells wonderful, if you don’t mind me asking what did you make?” she asked curiously. Arlene didn’t remember a dragon from her days in school so this man must have been a student either before her or at a foreign school. Hammel got a lot of exchange students from overseas. She hoped that she hadn’t offended him, he didn’t seem so but she wasn’t sure if most men liked being caught wearing baby blue aprons and oven mitts either.

[Kane Woonren]

Kane tended to get absorbed in his thoughts, which was why that bump quickly forming on his head wasn't the first one he'd had. Probably in that same exact spot. He was lucky there wasn't a dent in the cabinet. He had been caught up in those lovely little thoughts of his, along with trying out a new recipe. He did his best to focus on something when he was trying it out for the first time. Better that he was doing it right rather than setting the school on fire several times. His students did that enough without his help. He rubbed the top of his head and waited for a moment.

"That seems to happen a lot," he replied, when she said she was lost. Which was true, actually. Seeing as how he had been trying to hide himself from the world, particularly those at the school, and hide what was going on in his head. Which was hard in a building full of telepaths. "Oh," he said, looking down at the squares. He nodded his head for a moment, "Uh, just a recipe I found for chocolate and coconut squares. My other one was kind of dry."

Other than what he looked like, Kane was one who liked to blend into the wall as best as he could. He hadn't exactly been popular, or even had something like a close group of friends. So, if there were people that knew about him, they were people that knew him to be a pushover, or knew him because he'd had dragon wings and a tail. And he was sure that there'd been a number of people around the school that hadn't believed that there was actually someone with all the features of a dragon there. Outside the building, there were probably a lot of people that wouldn't believe that either.

[Arlene Baines]

"Ah well, my memories of this place got jumbled with other's," Arlene said with a bit of embarrassment. She decided to drop that though in favor of trying to get a better view of what it was that he had made. Arlene was a rather terrible cook herself due to many things burning or boiling over or just plain beginner's crappy luck. About the only thing she could reliably make for herself on any sort of basis was spaghetti and that was with premade Prego sauce. "Chocolate and coconut? That sounds delicious, they smell really good," she commented. "Do you like cooking?"

She wasn't sure what else to say at this point, she was starting to feel like maybe she should make an excuse to leave in a minute or so. He might not want company at all if he was busy trying to cook. Arlene could relate to a point. There were times she closed the shop specifically so she could do some appraising when things came in for her to look at and there was the possibility that she had to dig deeply into their memories. Just last week she'd been digging into the history of a piece of jewelry and spent the next hour sitting perfectly still as she slowly remembered that she wasn't in fact, a necklace.