A Taste of Home

The air in Leo’s small bakery, usually thick with the comforting aroma of yeast and sugar, now held a faint, bewildered scent of… something else. It was the scent of desperation, tinged with the faint, lingering perfume of a princess who had clearly seen better days. And those better days, as Elara had made abundantly, hilariously, and increasingly frustratingly clear, involved churros.

Leo, wiping flour from his brow with the back of his hand, eyed the strange, golden-brown, vaguely rod-shaped concoctions on the cooling rack. They were his latest attempt. His *tenth* attempt, if his increasingly frazzled memory served him right. Each time Elara had entered his shop, her regal bearing slightly askew, her eyes wide with a desperate plea that transcended language, she had uttered the same series of sounds. “Churros.” He’d managed to piece that much together. And then, with a flourish of her hand that could have either meant “I am a sovereign monarch” or “Please, for the love of all that is holy, just give me a fried dough stick,” she’d pointed at his empty display case.

Today, he’d tried a new approach. He’d remembered a recipe from his grandmother, a woman who, he suspected, had possessed a touch of the peculiar herself. It involved a rather robust amount of cinnamon and a daring dash of cardamom, a spice he’d usually reserve for his more experimental fruit tarts. He’d piped the dough with a flourish, ensuring a satisfyingly irregular shape, and fried them to what he considered a perfect golden hue. They smelled… interesting. Not quite the intoxicating, cinnamon-sugar cloud Elara seemed to dream about, but certainly closer than his previous doughy disasters.