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Osono’s mother is a Japanese confectioner, her father is a chef born and bred in Koriko, owner of the restaurant where her deft hands spin flowers and birds and teardrops with delicate precision. Their romance is played out in crystalline sugar and strong coffee, pea soup and pancakes, the fresh pink flesh of fish. And so, Osono’s childhood is full of these things too - she grows on the knowledge that food is a craft as well as a necessity.
She is still small when she notices the strange comfort that comes from kneading dough, and feels the glowing satisfaction of precise measurements resulting in something that is her doing entirely. Soon she is covered in flour at all hours, the red tangle of her hair brushed with white.
There are many experiments, many disasters that leave her with what to others may seem an unreasonable reaction. A cheesecake that collapses into itself, the doughy dryness of the first batch of muffins she ever makes, a vain attempt at changing a secret family recipe for cinnamon rolls.
Eventually, she learns to keep the flour out of her hair. Her creations, for the most part, stand proud and strong along the shelves she has built, in the walls that she has newly purchased. She bakes her own wedding cake, her husband-to-be beside her, their companionable silence unbroken.
Her son is eager and bright and bites his lip to keep from breaking down at his own first disaster.
Osono says, “Watch.” She says, “Watch, this is how.”
~
People tell Ursula she spends too much time alone.
“Why are you always in that cabin?” asks a friend, eyebrows bunched in concern. “Don’t you get lonely with just the crows?”
“People are too noisy. I need the quiet to hear myself paint.”
“Crows are noisy too.”
Ursula folds her hands under her chin - her smile is crooked and thoughtful. “Yeah, but the crows are good listeners. And good models.”
She disappears for weeks at a time, sometimes with little to no notice, more often in the summertime, when the lazy heat makes everything seem longer. It is just her way, everyone knows. She’ll return in a stranger’s truck, sometimes with a dozen canvasses, sometimes with only one, not yet finished.
The sunrise seems to come earlier in the forest, and every morning Ursula ascends to the rooftop, filled with the bright, if slightly sleep-rumbled promise, of the day. Often she will sit, just for an hour or two, marveling at the clarity of her thoughts.
She might not do any sketches, and she might not put a single brush in a pot of paint.
Ursula is not patient by nature, but what she loves to do forces her to learn patience. And like the crows, she is a good listener.
~
Once every week or so, Kiki visits Madame for tea. In the airy spaciousness of the old kitchen, a familiarity slides over Kiki, although she has known this woman for such a short time.
Kiki has learned about her life in tiny snatches, an opulent life that seems like a movie. Singer, actress, dancer, mother of five children, grandmother of three. Kiki can hardly imagine, sometimes, that the woman sitting across from her, calmly stirring cream into her cup, has been all of these things. She tells Madame this, and is replied to with soft laughter.
“What is your favorite thing to do?” Madame asks, suddenly. “The thing you care most about in the world? It’s flying, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Kiki says. “At least, I think so. I feel more sure now than I used to, anyway.”
“I’ve done lots of things in my life, Kiki. But I’ve never once needed to do any of them, in order to feel like myself. I must say I envy you a little for that.”
“I don’t really understand,” Kiki says, shaking her head, although part of her is beginning to. “I’m sorry.”
Madame smiles, her eyes sea blue and almost mischievous. “You will,” she says.
Kiki takes the long way home. The ocean is swollen beneath her, a storm will be coming soon. She dangles her feet and watches it roll in and out, buoyed by air and magic, until the sky is purple and cold.