Wings of Fire: Absolution

We Were Rangers

My name is Cormorant, and sometimes I do things I immediately regret. Things like serving three-bean casserole to our staff the morning before drill. Or volunteering to help my command staff clean up the canteen on the third Tuesday night of the month. In this case, I had made the fateful decision to try my talon at baking. Again.

It was Merlin's sixty-seventh hatching day, and that year I had decided to treat our resident SkyWing to a squadron favorite: pecan pie. Now, there are quite a few MudWing staples I am sure you could name, but of all the dishes that are synonymous with our culture, pecan pie takes the cake. Or does the pie overtake the cake? Personally, I think pie beats the snot out of cake any day. No matter.

My idea was that I would try to recreate Merlin's rendition of the pecan pie and make enough for the whole squadron on her hatching day. Seemed simple enough: there are seven ingredients and six steps to making Merlin's "Patently Prestigious Pecan Pie," however, my every attempt at making pecan pies had... not gone according to plan... okay fine, I failed to make anything remotely resembling a pie. The best I could manage up to that point were circular pans of sooty... something doused with corn syrup and pecans, and I realized too late that I had forgotten to add the vanilla extract. I will admit, baking is not exactly my forte, which is pretty pathetic considering I am a MudWing. Go ahead, laugh it up.

Now, you might be wondering what a SkyWing is doing stationed in the Mud Kingdom and preparing MudWing food better than some of our MudWing staff. As odd as it sounds, Merlin the SkyWing had been a resident of the Mud Kingdom for most of her life. She ended her stint in the Sky Kingdom's army as a buck sergeant in the early fifties and decided to make her living as a teacher. She found some backwater MudWing village in the Diamond Spray Delta and stuck herself right there. Within three months, Merlin had built and founded a single-room schoolhouse for MudWing dragonets and was walking, talking, and yes, baking like a MudWing not long after that. Merlin is our honorary MudWing and adopted grandmother, and we are proud to call her "ma."

Anyway, my baking enterprise was beginning to more closely resemble a disastrous misadventure, and I needed help, fast. My command staff was busy enduring one of Merlin's many stories about her glory days doting on MudWing dragonets, but I knew before too long she would excuse herself to make snacks for the squadron. As the commander of this ranger squadron, I should have known better than to execute this operation without adequate support, and I was paying the price for my planning, or uh... lack of planning. Fortunately, I had a top-notch team of rangers to back me up, and I knew exactly who to call.

❖

It was roughly ten-hundred hours when I realized my baking crusade was at imminent risk of crumbling like my pie crusts, so I could expect that our squadron safety officer would be in the infirmary. I hauled tail out of the kitchen and worked toward the entryway of the squadron HQ. It was late spring in the Diamond Spray Delta, and that meant hot and muggy days would be our lot in the days to come. That being said, it was rather cool inside our glorified cabin, if a bit humid; I was relieved to leave the heat of the kitchen behind for the cooler hallways. The smells of burnt pie crusts and... hot MudWing were replaced with the sweet scent of pine timbers, complimented by more earthy tones wafting in from the gardens outside.

Most of the staff were outdoors that day, doing gardening or finding goodies for supper. Knowing them, most of those farts were probably snoozing in the mud flats out back where they hoped I would not find them. I, for one, did not blame them. We had been cooped up in our bunks with little else to do as we endured almost a solid week of rain. Nobody wanted to pass up an opportunity to get some fresh air, even if the heat was right bad. Despite their training, I was worried our guys might suffer heat strokes in their enthusiasm for outdoor shenanigans. Everyone had behaved themselves up to that point though, so I took that as a blessing.