Tara was off, in the sink, finding little, tiny puddles of water, so she could get herself cleaned up. The mental image of her in the mirror was still in her head. She must have looked like a clown to Lucy, white powder all over her face. She couldn't believe that had happened to her. They just try to open up a simple bag of cake mix, and she gets it all over her face. Given the size of the cloud it had come from, it was a miracle her face was the only thing that had gotten wet. As she came into the sink, she took her robe off, setting it up on the counter, not wanting it to get wet.

As she got down into the sink, her boots touched the soft metal of the area. She wasn't completely naked, at this point. She still had on a small bra and a pair of panties under her robe, but she didn't care if any of that got wet. The robe was much more sensitive to getting damp. She started walking around, finding a few little puddles of water from when Lucy had cleaned her off before. “Food and I must be destined to be clingy to one another. It seems like every time I help Lucy with some kind of food-making, it gets all over me.”

She knelt down and dipped her hands in a small puddle of water, bringing it up towards her face. As she cleaned herself, she knew she was right. She could remember that twice now, when she was trying to help Lucy make food, she'd ended up getting something all over her. The first memory she had was their first morning together, when Lucy had set down a plate of French Toast Sticks in front of her. In her excitement, she had lunged towards the plate, not looking where she was stepping. She'd lost a boot and fallen, face-first, into one of the huge pieces of French Toast. Now, here they were, trying to get a bag of cake mix open, and she'd managed to get powder all over her face.

The powder was coming off extremely easily, the water taking it away upon the touch. She'd gotten a chance to clean herself, for once. It wasn't a hard thing to do, but Lucy insisted on cleaning her almost every single time she got messy. She knew that her girlfriend loved to clean her, though sometimes, she liked doing it, herself. She could tell Lucy wanted to do her best to take care of her, and she loved that. However, she realized that if she didn't have some sort of independence, Lucy would probably seem more like a mom than a lover. With as much as Lucy wanted to do, Tara probably wouldn't do anything for herself if she had no independent nature.

“It's nice to have such a caring, loving partner...” she whispers to herself, wiping her wet hands around her ears and down to her neck, getting more of this stuff off her. “...but I need to do things, too. I wonder what it would be like if I never were forward about wanting to do things on my own.” She pondered the thought, starting to hover out of the sink, towards her robe and a small tower that hung below the sink. She landed on top of a drawer-handle, which the towel was resting on and pulled the end up towards her face, drying herself off. “She'd surely wear herself out, if things were like that. It's good that I do some things for her.”

Tara dropped the town and started climbing back up onto the counter. As her booted feet came up, she started reaching down for her robe, seeing Lucy off in the distance. She had stayed at the table, to start mixing everything up. Tara saw that towering, beautiful form, hard at work, running a whisk around in the bowl, all of the ingredients finally together. She looked like she was really enjoying it, a warm smile aimed towards the bowl, itself. Lucy was truly someone who loved to cook. Or, maybe, she just liked doing things for others. Tara hadn't thought much about it, but Lucy was making the cake for her, not for fun.

Lucy hummed, softly, as her hand gripped the metal whisk turning and beating, getting the cake mix from dry and soft to smooth, soft, and creamy. She had initially wanted to clean Tara up again, but something else was in play here that made her want to have Tara washing herself, on her own. It wasn't that she didn't want to help her girlfriend, but there was something about the cake that she wanted to do. Tara was helping her make the cake she'd be using for her surprise birthday party. This was also the first big occasion that she had ever planned for Tara. She wanted it to be special.

Not only special, though, Lucy wanted most of the party to consist of things she had made and done for Tara. Since the only thing she could really 'make' for the party, in terms of food, was the cake, she had sent Tara off to wash on her own so she could do as much of this cake as she could. She wanted to put her heart into this cake, and have it as something that she made for Tara, not something that Tara had made for her. The accident with the mix gave Lucy the perfect opportunity to do a lot of it, herself. She continued to hum as the batter was starting to look better and better.

Tara had gotten her robe back on and hovered over Lucy's shoulder by the time the batter was starting to look like it was just about ready to go into the oven to bake. She was hovering over, Lucy's eyes looking towards her, as she saw the batter. Most of it was white, but there were colorful 'dots' all over the inside of it. Those were the small pieces of coloring that made it a “Funfetti” cake, as if the entire thing was lined with confetti, used for parties. It looked quite pretty, and Tara was about to speak up when Lucy did. “Hey, Tara, could you get me a cake pan from under the sink? I think this is about ready for the oven.”

As asked, Tara hovered over towards the sink, floating into an open door from below, far below the towel she'd dried herself off with. Inside, she found a few cake pans, all much bigger than she was. Using the Arte, she brought the middle-sized one out with her, hovering below her as she went. Before long, she had made it back to the table, where she set herself down, to the left of the pan. “Is this one good, Lucy?” she asked. She expected Lucy to look over the pan to make sure it was fine before throwing batter inside, but she didn't. Within seconds, batter was being poured into the pan, along with Lucy's response. “Perfect, Tara. Just what I wanted.”

Lucy seemed to be rushing through things, though Tara didn't quite understand why. Within a minute before she could ask to help, Lucy had the batter in the pan and picked it up, taking it to the oven. Tara just stood on the table, watching it slide into the oven and heard Lucy beeping, setting the oven timer. She saw her come back a few minutes later, smiling towards Tara and reaching forward, patting her on the head. “There we go! Now we just wait for it to bake. What do you wanna do while we wait, Tara?”