"I would like that very much." Aurelie felt warm all down to her toes, saying it; voice and smile and face. She didn't quite know why; they had done so before, on the ship. She thought it would be different, looking at them from the ground—and different still again from seeing them from Brunnhold, the few times she'd thought to look.
They had done it before. There was nothing to it, really, and the idea shouldn't make her as flustered as it did. She didn't think, after all, he would take her hand this time. That had been—she had been rather distraught, at the time. It hadn't been that long, really, but she felt like it had been longer. She didn't know what to make of that. Nothing, perhaps, but that she was a silly creature after all.
Aurelie dried her hands while Aremu asked her about baking. He looked so hopeful, and the look sort of shifted into an uncertain frown. He looked, she thought, so very serious and uncertain. Aurelie laughed, quietly and not unkindly. As if there was any chance that she would say no, now or at any other time.
"Of course I want to. Why wouldn't I?" She beamed up at him, still laughing. She thought she might understood why he asked, but it was such a funny thing to be concerned over. She didn't say that she could think of very little she would rather do in this moment; she could, in fact, think of nothing at all. Aurelie went to the pantry to get the dry things that she could carry—flour, baking soda, salt, both sugars, and the chocolate of course. That rather filled her hands, and she let Aremu get the rest.
It had been so long since she'd made a cookie of any kind; longer even than she'd been here. There hadn't been much room for it, in the weeks before... before. Not in her schedule, and not in her heart. Now there was plenty of both. Coated in flour and rolling out little balls of dough, Aurelie thought that this was likely the happiest she had been in a long time. The smile on her face was rather stubbornly attached.