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Prompt 7: You've seen the commercials, take a bite of a chocolate mint patty and feel a rush of so cold you feel like you're atop a frigid mountain? Now, imagine you found a cute little shop with a sweet grandmother selling cookies from a recipe passed down for generations. She was warm and friendly, and very good at selling her cookies. They look normal, taste normal--except when you take a bite, for a few seconds, your vision fades and is replaced by a glorious view. You're at the top of a mountain, watching the sun rise above the clouds. The sunset is beautiful and soft, and you can't even feel the absolutely frigid air despite the snowcapped mountains all around you. There is something otherworldly and timeless about the location, and even in the dark of winter it has the ability to fill you with some unshakeable hope. When you swallow, the illusion rapidly fades, and no subsequent bites guarantee any further illusion--but, maybe if you eat enough, you'll eventually find that magical bite again...
Aiden always felt like it was cheating when he stopped at some other small bakery, like if Arias found out that he was giving money to some other little small business he would feel betrayed. It didn't matter how many times Arias had assured him that it was fine--or pointed out that Aiden also rarely ever bought anything in Arias' bakery--Aiden still felt guilty.
But. This one smelled so good, he just couldn't help himself.
And the owner seemed like such a sweet old woman, how could he not just try one cookie.
Just one.
It was cold enough outside, and the cookies were fresh baked and sounded so good after an otherwise stressful, monotonous day of completely average trials and tribulations. A little reward was good, every now and then, so he got some hot chocolate and some of the cookies she suckered him into getting. (It hadn't been hard.)
He was out in the park, just enjoying the fresh snow, the sound of people playing in the distance. Destiny City was always busy and he thrived in it, even when he was just taking a quiet moment to himself. The bench he sat on was frigid, but the rush just woke him up. He leaned back against it, took a sip of his drink, and extracted the cookies.
His first bite, he wondered if he'd made a grave mistake. His teeth were so cold he wasn't sure if he'd bitten into the cookie or a snowball, but when he blinked and saw something else he suspected something was wrong.
Aiden wasn't so good at powering up, not because he was inherently bad at it, but because he was taking to heart the warning he'd received about it. He wasn't going to be some casualty and he wasn't going to go into this blind, but finding out he was a Knight had opened the door to magic, and that was the only way he could think to describe this.
He felt like he was on top of the world, staring at a beautiful sunset. The winter chill left, and he just felt comfortable. He felt like peace had absorbed into him, like suddenly all of his problems melted away. Everything that had been plaguing him earlier seemed so small, so unimportant.
Such a waste of energy and emotion to be worked up over.
He almost even thought he felt good--an impressive feat, considering that he'd been so angry he wanted to scream and break things just twenty minutes ago. He held the cookie in his mouth, transfixed as he watched the ethereal world around him.
He wondered if such a place really existed on Earth, or anywhere. It felt like he'd taken a seat on Heaven's front lawn and all the worldly troubles had disappeared beneath the billowing clouds curling around the mountain tops.
Swallowing was a mistake. The illusion vanished, leaving only an empty feeling where the hope and peace was. It didn't fade, he just hadn't been ready for it to go.
There was no explanation. The only thing he'd done was--
Oh, the cookie. He looked down at it and took another bite, desperate, but it was just a chocolate cookie with a faint mint aftertaste. Delicious, but nothing he couldn't have gotten at Arias' bakery, probably. Soft and moist, but--just a cookie. Delicious flavor or otherwise, by the second bite there wasn't anything special about it.
The third was good, but the same. The fourth.
He finished the first cookie but seemed confused and desperate to figure out just what had caused that sensation. He wasn't quite frantic, but curiosity and a need to know drove him. He ate the second cookie in a matter of seconds, but when each bite didn't give him the same image of the mountain again, he just shoved more in.
By the time he got to the third cookie, he'd really just shoved it in whole and was spilling crumbs everywhere.
Desperation had men do many things, and making a fiend of himself, devouring cookies on a public park bench was maybe not how Aiden wanted to be remembered--especially if he were to accidentally choke on one of them.
Oh, Arias would be so disappointed.
Cheating on A&H Bakery and choking to death on the competition.
Aiden had to force himself to stop shoving the cookies into his mouth, no matter how desperate he was to see the sunset on the horizon. He tried to burn the image into his head, something to reflect upon when he needed to take a break, when he needed to just breathe and remember that there was good in the world. That not everything was bustling and yelling and bumping into each other and bad luck and falling in holes and people being rude and cruel, and monsters, and magical space wars, and--
The ball of chewed cookie went down his throat painfully, in a single giant lump, and he had to cough and pound on his chest to try and breathe easily.
The image was good but it wasn't worth dying for.
He inhaled, let the tension and stress ease out of him, and took a sip of the drink he'd gotten. His jaw hurt, and he faintly registered the cold that still prickled at his extremities.
His mind was whirling too fast again, sending him a thousand things to worry about, and yet he'd had a taste of peace. He wanted more.
This time, he took out the next cookie and nibbled on it. There was no denying the disappointment when he wasn't thrust back up to the sight of the sunset from the mountain top, but as he chewed he closed his eyes and found he could still picture it.
It wasn't quite the same, and though the worries and stresses he'd had earlier in the day still seemed to dance at the back of his mind, when he held that sunset it place it eased him into a place of relaxation.
It wasn't perfect. It was just his imagination.
...But it gave him the strength to calm down. To make it through the rest of the day.
To march back to the bakery and get another bag of cookies, just in case.
