Dinner passed in relative quiet, though not for lack of will. Good food made talking difficult, but every now and then, between bites, one of them would chime in with some observation, or a joke, or a little anecdote about their days. Quiet, but contented and pleasant. 

When the meal was done, Besca cleaned the dishes while Dahlia took the cake from the oven. It looked plain, but then, to someone like Quinn who’d never seen one before, what else could there be to it? Dahlia showed her. She brought out icings in an assortment of colors, in flavors from chocolate and vanilla to strawberry and pumpkin. Quinn had no preference—no reference to have one—and so let Dahlia decide. With a wide, flat knife, she began to spread vanilla over the cake, and then once she’d demonstrated, handed it over to Quinn and let her finish covering the rest. 

That done, handed her a squeezing tube, gestured to the various colors of icing and asked her: “[color=skyblue]What are we celebrating?[/color]”

It took some time, but eventually, Quinn took up the yellow icing—a shade not dissimilar to her eyes, or the streak in her hair—and hunched over the cake. With delicate if imperfect form, she began to push letters onto the flat top. “E”, “V”, and then later a “Y” and an “N”. It was hard to tell what exactly it was that she was writing. Both Dahlia and Besca squeezed in close, hovered over her, and still couldn’t make it out until she finally set the tube down and sat back, proud and excited. 

It read: [i][color=ffe63d]EVERONE’S ALIVE!!!!![/color][/i]

Dahlia and Besca exchanged a look, but it was all smiles soon after. Quinn was right, after all; everyone was alive. Everyone had come back from Casoban together, and that was because of her, because of who [i]she[/i] wanted to be. 

Because of the kind of pilot she was. 

Besca retrieved some plates, while Quinn continued to scrawl little figures onto the top. “[color=skyblue]Not too much,[/color]” Dahlia said, when they were nearly through a second tube. “[color=skyblue]Icing’s heavy—you’ll want to be able to taste the cake.[/color]”

She cut a slice for all of them. Quinn pointed out which figure was which, and Dahlia parsed it so that they each got themselves on a plate. Thick slices, just enough to fill what room was left after dinner. 

“[color=skyblue]What do you think?[/color]” Dahlia asked, slicing her piece apart with a fork. “[color=skyblue]Too sweet? Too hard? Do you like the vanilla, or you think you’d wanna try something new?[/color]”