Sharing Space with a Ghoul

His tail was actually longer than Lulu's. Long enough if he turned too fast, he could catch the end. That was kind of awkward to realize. He shook it off and looked at Lulu. She was trying really hard to laugh. His hair must look fun, to put it lightly, but at least it was getting the job done. He inched over to the dough, trying to keep a decent distance between himself and Lulu.

"Um." He picked up a shape and turned it around. "We had... decorators," he mumbled, frowning as he tried to figure out what the shape was. Maybe it was upside down? No, that didn't help. "There was a party for the upper crust, and then we went our ways. Traditions were... tepid." He turned it again. "Is this a squirrel?"
 
Decorators? Upper crust? Jeez, where had this guy come from? It sort of explained why his kitchen had been so empty. Even the few titbits he had mentioned indicated that he had been rather taken care of for most of his life. But why was he living all secluded in a tiny town like this, on his own and apparently in need of a room mate to help pay his bills?

She glanced at the shape in his hands, turning her head sideways to get a better angle. “I always thought it was a chipmunk, but squirrel works too.”

Lulu set her star aside and reached for a new cutter, this one in shape of a leaf that might have supposed to be a maple leaf but could just as easily be weed.

“So you had a big party, and then? Surely your family did something together. Sing carols or make Christmas cards together. I mean Christmas is probably the most family oriented festival of all.”
 
A circle should be easy enough, right? Nice and simple. Hard to mess that up, unlike the chipmunk/squirrel. He cut out three of those before answering Lulu.

"How family-oriented your festival is depends on how family-oriented your family is." Idly, he moved the three circles to form a snowman. It only seemed natural. "We had one tradition together as a family. Christmas evening, we would sit down together after the rush of the festivals and celebrations and we would all exchange one gift to each other. My father always insisted on that one tradition. Other than that, he was fine with us running all over the place doing everything else, as long as we all spent just one quiet hour together."

Huh. He hadn't thought about that in a long time. His mother had been a true debutant, so she had never been one for staying home and, well, mothering, but that hour had meant a lot to his father. That had been the one hour no one ever really protested that much. Not really. Not even himself or his sister.
 
“Just one hour?” That sounded rather sad to Lulu, who had always been surrounded by a large and loving family. There had always been someone around to do stuff with, no matter if cooking, playing, helping with homework or anything else. There had been times, especially during holidays where there were often other relatives visiting as well, when she thought the only place she might have a moments peace would be when locked in the bathroom and even that was only a temporary reprieve. Still, she wouldn’t give up her family for the world and so the picture Irie painted felt depressingly lonely.

The sight of the rudimentary snowman brought a small smile back to her face. Despite the shape fitting their current topic of conversation, it was hardly in line with the warm sunshine streaming through the windows. Laying down her own cutter, she grabbed a knife and traced a freehand shape into the dough. She set the shape on top of the upper circle, commenting, “There. Not complete without a top hat.”
 
Irie blinked as he stared at the slightly crooked yet still obvious shape. For an instant, a phantom of a smile flittered across his ghostly features. "Yes. A hat is most important. But there is no snow this time of the year."

He moved away and started trying to cut out a star, finding it difficult to find a decent part of the dough to fit all the fiddly points. Despite his comment about the time of year, he left the snowman where it was, tophat and all. A flower came next. Perhaps a daisy? He thought it was, though it could have been a gladiola for all his knowledge of flowers.

"I take it your family was... festive?" he asked cautiously. He wasn't too certain about sharing family information, but it felt proper to follow up on their conversation about Christmas traditions. Besides, if she was busy talking about her own family, then perhaps she would forget to ask more about his. That subject was not only touchy, it was... complicated. So cliche, but sometimes cliche's existed for a reason.
 
“Maybe a sombrero then.” A flash of triumph filled Lulu at the sight of that tiny smile and she went back to her own shapes with renewed enthusiasm. This time she chose one of her favourites, a gear.

At Iries tentative question, she cocked her head to the side, considering for a moment before answering. “I suppose so. Not in the religious sense. But yeah there were always people around for any holiday. My gran lived close by and so did several cousins, so they were usually there. Christmas day was just my parents and siblings though, oh and sometimes gran. But you don’t have to be festive or family oriented to do christmasy things. Its just fun.”
 
"That sounds... fun," Irie said painfully. Small talk was beginning to wear on him.

Topics... topics... safe topics... That narrowed down an already slim list. Family? Jobs? Jobs might be good, he'd have to come back to that. What else could he talk about? He looked down at the dough sticking to his fingers and the numerous shapes littering the workspace.

"The cookies are ready to go into the oven, yes?" he finally settled on.
 
“It is, if you let it be.” Lulu looked at Irie from the corner of her eye. His impression of family and Christmas stuff still seemed rather low. He also seemed to have exhausted the days supply of words, silently and rather mechanically cutting out various cookie shapes. They worked in silence for a moment, with Lulu wondering all the while if this counted as an awkward silence or not, until only a small amount of dough was left shapeless. Lulu gathered it together into a small ball and was about to offer Irie a piece to eat when he spoke first.

“Yup.” Lulu smiled in answer, reaching for the oven mits.

Once the cookies were in the oven and the timer set, she pulled a bowl towards her. “Now for the icing. What colours would you like to do?”
 
His eyes were on the oven, watching the little pats of dough sit under the glowing red element. How did it not scorch everything to a cinder in a matter of seconds? He had never really noticed things like ovens before. Oh, sure, he knew them, used them a few times, was around when they were used... but he had never thought about them. Not really. People used to work hard to get fire just right to cook things evenly, and now it was just a twist of a knob, and a miniature sun snake cooked stuff. It was like a tiny miracle it worked and did not melt or set everything on fire or explode. Yet, it was completely taken for granted.

Irie realized he was waxing poetic about an oven...

He really needed to get out more.

Colors? He blinked and looked up at her. "Color?" he repeated blankly. "Uh... Pink?" he said, casting around in his mind and settling for the first not-grey color he could think of.
 
As she cleared away a few of the thingy they didn’t need anymore, Lulu noticed that Irie was watching the baking cookies with a rather pensive look about him. He really hadn’t ever made cookies before huh. She still didn’t really want to believe that, but there was something almost childlike in the way he stared into the oven, its light giving his usually pale face a strange glow, but still unable to chase away the shadows around his dark eyes.

Hearing his answer to her question, Lulu could only blink at him for a moment. Pink was probably the last answer she would have expected from him.

“Sure.” She said somewhat uncertainly, then powered on. “We can do pink and green and maybe some yellow. Spring colours.”
 
Irie nodded calmly as if he'd meant all along to say "pink" because it was a perfectly normal color for someone like him to pick. Nothing strange about pink at all! It was so obvious he loved bright colors... as he stood in black pants, dark grey shirt, black hair, and drawn curtains. Totally in love with bright.

"Spring colours are good," he agreed solemnly. "They are very... springy."
 
Lulu giggled. "Indeed."

She separated the icing into three smaller bowls and added a few drops of colour to each. She pushed the pink one towards Irie.
"You can mix that one. To make sure it's the right pink."
 
The right color of pink? How many pinks were there? He waited until she was no longer touching the bowl before reaching out and cautiously pulling it closer. He stirred the frosting and stared at the mostly white results. Well, there was a tinge of pink, but it didn't look very "spring-like." So he dumped in several more drops of color and stirred viciously.

"Oh," he blurted flatly, staring at the results.

The stuff in the bowl looked like someone had slaughtered a pig and drained the blood. It was quite possibly the most unappealing Shade of red he'd ever seen. How?? He hadn't thought he'd added that much coloring!
 
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