Cinnamon buns

Lucy was alone when the doorbell rang. It was afternoon, the sun was shining, and her whole family was out doing stuff. It was just her, waiting for visitors.
Eustace and Jill had agreed to come over for a week in the holidays.

She raced down the stairs and opened the door with such momentum that the red haired girl outside stumbled back.

“Oh I’m so sorry!”, Lucy said, her grin making room for widened eyes.

Jill bursted out into laughter. “Hello Lucy”, she said, coming forward again.

Joining the laughter, Lucy hugged the redhead. “It’s great that you’re here.”
She took one of Jill's bags.
"You could have told me when you'd arrived, I'd have got you at the train station!"

"I didn't know when I'd come", Jill said, following Lucy inside. "I'm glad I remembered the way."

"It would have been quite terrible if you hadn't", Lucy agreed.

Inside, Jill was greeted with the beautiful coziness that seemed to spread over everything the Pevensies had and everywhere they were.
Their house was still neatly organised, and everything had its place, but you didn’t feel like a criminal when you took something.
It was so different from her own home and even Eustace's.
She couldn't imagine that one of his parents was related to one of Lucy's parents.

Lucy placed her bag on one of the chairs around the table and Jill did the same with the ones she had left.

"Everyone else is out, so we're alone until dinner", Lucy told Jill. "That is, except Eustace joins us. Do you know anything from him? I haven't heard from him since we cleared the date.”

Jill shook her head. “I haven’t heard of him either", she said. "But I sure hope he'll come."

"Edmund's been talking all week about that, I think they get along better than they show us", Lucy told her friend. Jill laughed.

"I bet", she said. "They're both the kind of person to draw back and read."
Lucy giggled.

"Do you want to sit down?", she asked then, realising they were still standing.

Jill shrugged and Lucy went to the couch.
"I would have offered you cookies, but dad and Peter finished them yesterday."
Jill laughed, sitting down next to Lucy.

“We could play chess later”, Lucy suggested. “Don’t we have that on the list?”

Jill pulled out a folded piece of paper from her pocket and unfolded it.
It was a list they’d made the last time they met of things they had to do together and nothing had yet been checked.

After a moment of searching, Jill nodded and laid it down next to her.

"Do you think it's also autumn in Narnia right now?", she asked then, after her gaze had wandered out the window.

Lucy also looked out of the window. "That would be nice. Like we were connected, for a moment at least."

"How was Narnia in autumn?", Jill asked, her mind wandering off to the few things she had seen.

Lucy looked to the ground and smiled.
"Colourful", she said quietly. "Colourful and loud and full of music and dance and singing and feasting. And then it was quiet and peaceful and also a little lonely at times, but always beautiful."

She paused.

"There were balls every other weekend almost, and Peter finally wore his longer robes again, which I thought were always prettier than the shorter ones for summer, and Edmund kept himself hidden away reading all day while Susan kept looking for him and never found him. And Mrs. Beaver was in the kitchen when she was visiting and made cookies and all sorts of other things and we had so many things to eat and to do."

Jill smiled. "It sounds so beautiful."

"It was."

"I bet the food was so much better than here."

Both of them laughed.
"Food in autumn is generally amazing, but in Narnia it was really different. It’s a pity we don't have Narnia food!", Lucy said.

"What was your favourite thing to eat?", Jill asked.

Lucy groaned with a laugh. "Oh, everything! There was everything you could imagine, pumpkins, nuts, apples, just everything! But, now that I think about it, I really loved Mrs. Beaver's cinnamon buns."

She stared into nothing for a moment trying to recall the sweet taste of free afternoons and rain.

Jill smiled. "We could make cinnamon buns", she suggested. "They might not be as good as Mrs. Beaver's, but I bet we can make just amazing ones."

Lucy's face lit up. "I just have no idea how to do them", she said.

"I think I know enough to make them", Jill said. "It would be very helpful though if we found it in a cookbook."

Lucy jumped up and got all the cookbooks she could find, and when she came back to Jill, her arms were filled with books so old, the pages were yellow and cracked, and books so new, the covers were some sort of shiny.

They didn't have to look for long, a recipe for cinnamon buns was in the first book Jill opened, and after a moment of reading through it, she nodded.
"I was almost right", she said then and laughed.

“How come you know the recipe so well?”, Lucy asked and started to gather the books in her arms.

“A few years ago when I was really bored at home, I started baking, and cinnamon buns were the favourites of the maid my parents had hired at that time”, Jill told her.
“So I made them quite often. I bet it’s more fun with you!” She grinned, starting to help Lucy with the books.

⊱

They had just said goodbye to the buns and put them in the oven, when the doorbell rang again.

“Jill, can you go?, Lucy asked, currently cleaning her hands from all the dough sticking to her fingers.

“Course”, Jill said and went to the door, hoping it was no one she didn’t know.

“How on earth do you look?”, the boy outside said.

“What a nice way to say hello”, Jill answered, unaware of the flour on her face.
Eustace raised his left eyebrow.

“Are you going to let me inside?”, the blonde boy asked.

Realising she’d blocked the way, Jill quickly went back into the house. “Sorry”, she said.
Eustace came inside, putting his bags where he saw Jill’s already standing.

“We made cinnamon buns”, Jill explained.

“And cocoa and tea!”, Lucy’s voice came from the kitchen. “Hello Eustace!”

She finally came out of the kitchen, her clothes full with flour. “Hello Eustace!”, she beamed.

“It is very nice to see you. Did you fall into the flour or why-”
He got interrupted by the girl’s laughter. “We just had a nice flour fight, that’s all”, Lucy said.

A delicious smell spread from the kitchen.

“I think we did great”, Jill commented on it. Lucy nodded, a grin beaming on her face.

Eustace tried to ignore the sweet smell as best as he could, but it was just too vibrant and too fitting with the coziness of the house filled with laughter and flour.

“When are these going to be finished?”