In Our Heads

Chapter 35

*****

Cassian glanced at his phone to note the time, holding back a sigh as he realised there were still fifteen minutes left of the meeting. This was his second scheduled meeting for the day.

Theodore had left just after they woke up to head to his early shift at the store, he would be working until about three, which meant he was gone basically all day. When he returned, Cassian would have his music lesson, followed by the martial arts practice and then math lesson so they still would not see each other for a few more hours once Theodore was back.

He felt bad for being unable to hang out with Zion, he was not being a very good host, but he had heard the kid outside earlier with Rosa and whoever was currently sharing the gate guard shift; it sounded like they were having fun running around.

This was a meeting he did not feel was very necessary for him to be part of; they could have just emailed him the minutes afterwards and he would have been caught up, considering that he was not making any contribution to it anyway, but his parents insisted he called in.

When it ended, he was glad to finally have some time to hang out with Zion, a little grateful his parents were gone because they would have found some way to keep him busy for the next couple of hours leading up to the music lesson. He shut the laptop and left the room heading downstairs to find Zion.

He found the kid in the living room, drawing on a piece of paper while Rosa watched him as the TV played.

"What's this?" Cassian asked, leaning over Zion to see what was on the page. It seemed to be a four-legged creature.

"A horse."

It looked more like it after he had said that and Cassian grinned.

"It looks great!" his enthusiasm seemed to satisfy Zion who grinned as he turned back to the page to continue colouring the horse.

He turned to Rosa and convinced her to leave early, citing that they would order something for dinner. Once she had gone home, he joined Zion on the carpet to begin drawing as well. They stayed there for a while, quite focused on what they were doing.

Sometimes they broke into song because Cassian recognised what Zion was humming and Zion would do little dances as they sang before returning to drawing. He made Cassian a little sad about not having a sibling because he was so funny and fun to be around.

"I want something sweet..." Cassian mumbled eventually as he stopped drawing the landscape he had been busy with. It looked nothing like any of Theodore's drawings, but it did not look bad either.

"Like cake?" Zion replied, without looking up from his own drawing of Batman.

"Yeah... Let's bake!"

Zion looked up at him.

"Cake?"

"Yup."

"Mmm... Okay. I haven't baked before."

"Neither have I, but we'll just look up a recipe or watch a video. Should be quite easy."

It was just baking, he doubted much could go wrong.

"Okay!" Zion sounded more excited about it as he stood up.

Cassian followed his lead and they headed into the kitchen to get started. After looking for a recipe, it took a few minutes to locate everything they needed. Cassian made a mental note to do some exploring of the kitchen the next time he was in it.

After gathering everything, they began. It was going quite well apart from accidental spills here and there and having to fish some shells out after cracking the eggs. It looked pretty good once they finished mixing everything and Cassian was quite proud of them until Zion tasted the batter and scrunched his nose.