𝑳𝑶𝑵𝑮 𝑳𝑰𝑽𝑬 || 𝒑𝒆𝒓𝒄𝒚 𝒋𝒂𝒄𝒌𝒔𝒐𝒏 𝒙 𝒐𝒄

another year older, but not any wiser

Thank gods Sally was a fantastic baker. Because the same could not be said for Maisie.

Darrell usually did the brunt work of baking the muffins or cupcakes they sold at the café. Maisie was tasked with displaying them nicely and adding sprinkles when needed. But her decorating skills were really being put to the test while making Percy's cake. She'd gone for an aquatic theme (because duh) but perhaps it was a little too ambitious of a task, trying to paint the ocean on a cake with icing.

She used to bake cakes for her siblings' birthdays growing up. They weren't great, but throw enough icing and colorful sprinkles on it and they would be gleaming nonetheless. She tried not to think about how long it'd been since she got to celebrate one of her brother's or sister's birthdays. She was done being sad for the evening. She could save that for tonight when she predicted she would stare up at her ceiling for hours on end, unable to sleep.

But for now, it was party time!

Since she definitely wasn't receiving any invitations to be on cake wars, she went with a more abstract route, layering globs of blue and white icing, hoping it looked like waves. And it actually looked pretty good.

Sally was busy making two more cakes, because Tyson was coming. But since Maisie was waiting a while for those cakes to come out of the oven, all she currently had to do, was critique and analyze the cake in front of her. Her ambition and creativity got the best of her, and she started adding more, and more, and more, until there was an unhealthy amount of icing on the cake.

"Can you even tell what these things are?" She muttered to herself, after creating another little sea creature sitting in the mass of blue icing. Though her crab kinda looked like a spider.

She decided to try and hide all the flaws of the cake by writing out 'Happy Birthday' with pink icing. It didn't take long until she was frowning again. Pink was Tilly's favorite color. And if her favorite color ever changed in the future, Maisie might never know.

Gah! Stop being sad! She continued making letters with the icing, trying to think of anything even remotely funny to get her mind off of her troubles.

She nodded once she was done. Happy Birthday P—

"Oh my fucking gods," Maisie mumbled, scrambling across the counter to grab a spatula to correct her mistake. In her attempt to fill her mind with funny thoughts, she had accidentally wrote out a five letter P word that was definitely not 'Percy.'

"How's it going, Maisie?" Sally asked, still working by the oven.

"All good!" Maisie squeaked, shielding the cake with her arms, not wanting Sally to see the profanity she had accidentally labeled her son as.

She scraped away the second and third letter with the spatula, before changing them to an 'e' and an 'r.' It now read, Happy Birthday Persy.

Perfect.