The Secret Ingredient

The aroma of freshly baked bread usually filled Leo’s small bakery with a comforting, yeasty embrace. Today, however, it was something more. It was a symphony, a crescendo of sweetness and spice that made even the most stoic townsfolk pause mid-stride, their noses twitching with unbidden delight. And the source of this olfactory marvel? A young woman with eyes like melted chocolate and a vocabulary that seemed to consist entirely of impassioned Spanish pronouncements.

Elara, meanwhile, was having a crisis of epic, pastry-related proportions. Her stomach rumbled with the ferocity of a dragon guarding its hoard, a hoard that, in this instance, was comprised entirely of perfectly fried, cinnamon-dusted churros. She’d tried. Oh, how she’d tried. She’d pointed, she’d gestured, she’d even attempted a rather dramatic reenactment of a churro being dipped into thick, velvety chocolate. The baker, this Leo fellow, had merely tilted his head, a look of utter bewilderment plastered across his handsome, flour-dusted face.