A Piece of Cake [poppu]

Every part of the small monkey's body had a small hint of nerves just under the skin. When he shared things that he liked with his friends that were more... people-y, he tended to have poor results when he shared his things with others, especially when he tried to share food. It wasn't even a cultural thing--it was just something that he, as a monkey child, liked to eat. It was something that monkeys liked but humans didn't so much, as unfortunate as that was.

They were tasty. They were crunchy and yummy and it was best when they had gotten a chance to dry out a little but not entirely, so he could get the crunchy and also the gooey insides.

But Hari didn't like them, so he guessed he's eat them alone.

Following Hari's instructions, he dumped three spoonfuls of banana mush into the bowl for "him" (he had to resist the urge to add four, five, or six) and looked over to the phone Hari had placed onto the table. It made mention of flour, baking soda... melted butter...

The hardest thing about this, though, was that measurements were not in grams and kilograms. That's the only thing that was frustrating. At least with grams he understood about how much is was supposed to be by eyeballing it. But with 'cups' or 'tablespoons' or whatever this was, he really didn't know if he was doing it right.

The only thing he did right was add the correct amount of eggs. Everything else was off. When it came to flour, it was only a little below, baking soda a little too much, but sugar and vanilla extract--there was far too much, and he completely forgot to add salt. Finally a cup (treat yo' self) of grasshoppers, all dead already except one who tried to hop away. Wei caught him and shoved the bug into his mouth. He almost felt bad, as he crushed the bug between his large, sharp teeth. But he couldn't have grasshoppers hopping around Hari's kitchen. That would be rude.

"Okay, now what?"

Once he was done he dusted off his hands, making a small face as he noticed that all he did was bury the flour deeper into his fur to wash off later. Oh well. He had been taking so many showers that he would be looking forward to anything that would let him soak in a bathtub for a few hours.

He looked on as Hari pointed out which spoon was a tablespoon and which spoon was a teaspoon... apparently the difference was a relatively imperceptible one that referred to their size more than anything else. What made one more likely to be a teaspoon than a tablespoon? "Do you actually use one for tea and another for the table? Do you not prepare tea at the table?" The entire concept of the teaspoon versus the table spoon made no sense to him. Was it the same as a pinch of something? A teaspoon and pinch seemed to contain about the right amount...

"Hmmm..." He had never actually had bacon before, so he couldn't actually compare the two. "It's like biting into a soft nut. Like a pistachio. Or a cashew. And it's okay, the people people from where I'm from didn't like them either."

Wei took the bottle of oil and the brush and moved over to the bread pans, brushing the inside with oil. Luckily there was really no way for him to mess this up other than putting a little too much oil, but he stopped spreading it when the oil was sufficiently spread on the inside of the pan.

"What does meat taste like?" He asked. Monkeys tended to eat whatever was around them that they could, but Wei had never tried meat before. He wasn't sure he could actually eat it.

Hari was going to let him put in his own bread? That seemed dangerous. He'd never actually worked with an oven before. How would he be sure he was doing it right? Were ovens the same thing as stoves? Did they work by the same rules? Would there be fire? Would his fur catch on fire? Would he have to be taken to the infirmary?

Anxiety started to nibble at him, his arms and toes felt prickly and numb in a way that was especially uncomfortable. He shouldn't be allowed to do this, this was dangerous for little monkey people like himself. Using oven was definitely something that people people should be in charge of, with their... toes. And their.... hatred of bugs.

Still, Wei slid the oven mitts on over his hands, covering them. He tried to grab the pan with his batter in it, but found that it was difficult given that the oven mitt only really had two allowances for fingers--one for his thumb and the other for literally all of the rest of his fingers.

But monkeys were naturally dextrous, so he did manage to get a grip on the pan, using both of his mitted hands. Toddling towards the oven, he curled his tail around the handle to open it--

And was blasted in the face by hot air.

It singed his face, he could feel his cheeks turning red from the heat. It was definitely frightening and uncomfortable, but he had to put the bread in. He reached in, careful, careful--

He reached in a little too far, his sweater pressed against the grill of the hot oven and he could feel it through the fabric, immediately pulling back, forgetting the bread as instinct took over.

A loud clang rang through the kitchen as the pan hit the grill, balancing precariously before spilling a quarter of its contents into the oven and righting itself.

Wei let out a whined sigh. Then another. They came one after the other with a pronounced raising and lowering of his chest as the monkey nursed his arm and growing frustration.

He didn't like it. He didn't like that he couldn't put the pan in without it spilling all over and wasting the batter he'd made with Hari's help. He didn't like that he had to have help using an oven even though he'd never used it before. He didn't like holding his arm because he could feel the skin tightening in response to a burn that couldn't possibly be that serious.

He didn't like it.

Wei let Hari lead him to the sink and took off his own oven mitts, pushing his sleeve up to reveal his arm. It wasn't easy to see because of his fur, but there part of his fur was singed and parted, giving way to the part of the burn that had actually touched his skin.

Finally he let out a long exhale as cold water ran over his arm, wetting his fur and skin. "That wasn't very fun."

Wei listened patiently to Hari as he talked, but he really wasn't feeling it. He'd never really felt this way outwardly before, so frustrated about his shortcomings and ambivalent about the consequences. It happened a lot when he was alone, and as soon as Hari left, Wei let out a frustrated groan, letting his head hang limply from his neck.

"This sucks," He muttered under his breath, the familiar inflections of his native language soothing him more than cold water. "Why am I even here, all I'm doing is causing problems for Hari..."

His voice dissolved into an effortless spiel in Chinese, his tone shifting from various forms of anger and frustration to a fairly melancholy, which is what Hari returned to--a Wei leaning on the lip of the sink, not caring for the wet patch developing on his sleeve, still muttering to himself in Chinese for a few more moments before shifting back to English.

Wei hissed as Hari dabbed at the small burn with a cotton ball. "It was little burn," he said, his English a little garbled. "This much is unnecessary."