"...Excuse me, sir? Those are the incorrect ingredients for the wonderberry swirl."

A fifteen year old Bella stands in front of you with her golden eyes on the floor and a scarlet blush upon her face. Her pristine chef's coat is little more than a silly costume had made for her after she amused them so much by scrambling like mad for years to learn how to cook without being taught how. But now that she's wearing it in front of a true master (even if she is already taller than him), she wants to die.

"N-not that I needed to tell you that. The... young Miss here was doubtlessly about to inform you that it requires a genuine wonderberry. And... as I am sure she is [i]also[/i] aware, a wonderberry is a very peculiar sort of food that overripens when it is watched. So Miss, if you could kindly..."

She falters, watching Dany cling to this sheep that she does not know. Her eyes linger on the blanket clutched in that tiny princess' arms, and a shadow crosses over her face. She tucks her hands behind her back to clench her fists tight without calling attention to it. She stands up a little bit straighter to hide the tension in her body, though the posture of her tail gives the game away immediately. One sharp, quiet sniff is all the space she gives herself. And then her head turns low again toward the floor. 

She slips away, only to return from a farther stand carrying a large plate of fruits. Grapes and bits of carved melon, mostly, with the occasional strawberry.

"Ahem. Yes. As I was saying Miss, if you could kindly administer these to the, ah..." don't look, don't look, don't [i]look[/i], "...Woman in repose behind us. As c-certain as I am that Sir has done his best for her, anyone can see she needs. Erm. Th-that is... this will help her even more. I need to help makes sure your snack turns out right, but it would be an incredibly brave and heroic thing for you to take these over to her and make sure she eats the entire plate. It's... it's just important, ok? I can't count on anyone but you. Will you please help me, Your-- I, I mean... Miss?"

She waits in delicate, precise silence as she wills the sweat not to show on her face and watches for a little nod she is not remotely confident is coming in the first place. Her smile is half plastic professionalism and half the useless adoration of a Servitor who never thought she could wind up in this position in the first place. She sees that golden head start to move and she has to fight to keep the plate from bobbling. When she places it in Dany's hand, the princess will notice it is [i]precisely[/i] balanced to allow it to be held by a smaller hand with ease, even if the other one is occupied keeping a death grip on a very warm but horribly patched blanket.

She doesn't so much sigh to see her go as she leaks. Deflates. She seems almost to decrease in mass with how rapidly all of her muscles seem to melt into gelatin. But one look at the Synnefo and that relief instantly turns to embarrassment and tension again. She rolls up her sleeves, careful to never let her claws show the entire time, and for the first time dares to approach him. And pass him. And take over his station, and begin cooking right in front of him. 

"I don't expect you to understand," she whispers, "And it's not like it even matters since every one of you is going to die here. But still. She remembered it. Asked for it, even. So I..."

Calling her cooking technique unrefined would be a kindness she does not deserve. She does not use tools or utensils; everything is done by hand. She cracks the heating pellets open with her bare hands, she checks for temperature by holding one finger over everything (her left pinky, not that it matters), and she spends pretty much all of the rest of the time hunched low over the pot so she can take quiet sniffs of what's cooking inside. She even stirs with the the tip of one claw, as if viscosity was something she needed to test for through tactile sense. 

"I don't want her to know this entire stupid recipe is bullshit."

Her tail has full-on bushed, now that the words are out of her mouth. She spins around, but if she's angled for a fight she's chosen terrible posture to try and win it. Her tail isn't even the signature flick that means she's ready to pounce. She is, if anything, too worried about her syrup to even notice what you're doing with the knife you've had all this time. It would be easy to kill her. It might even be a good idea, because when she relaxes enough to smooth out her tail and returns to cooking, the things that she starts adding do not add up to food so much as... very creative poisons. 

She dips a careful claw tip in the mixture and licks it with the tidy precision only a cat can manage. Her lips widen into a relieved smile. One more cautious sniff, and she adds three drops (3!) of a substance identifiable by its label as an amphibian-origin neurotoxin. She watches the look of horror on your face and (at long last) grabs a spoon. She needs it if you're going to try it for yourself.

"They... cancel each other out. When these mix at this temperature the... look I don't know how it works, ok? You're a professional chef, it's embarrassing enough having to talk about this in front of a master already. Don't you think you know how obvious it is I don't have any training?! You, I... I-it's fine. I know it is. It has to be fine because I've served it to her it to her a hundred-hundred times. Just like this."

Flustered. Angry. Aggressive. But armed with nothing but a spoon full of what should be deadly venoms which you are somehow supposed to believe make up a wonderberry swirl. 

"I don't want her to know. She doesn't get to find out this is something I threw together with whatever I could reach in time. I mean, gods, she doesn't even know it's my recipe to begin with!"

She is being loud. Much too loud. So loud that even inattentive ears will bend toward her voice in the middle of snack time, which is not what she'd been counting on.

"Do you have any idea how scared I was the first time? I didn't even want to serve it! I wanted to just throw it out, even after I panic-drizzled it over all the food: whoops I tripped and ruined it all! Clumsy, silly Bella hahahaha! But that [i]stupid[/i] fucking serving girl went and plucked it up while I was hyperventilating and now! And now!"

All at once she becomes aware of her surroundings, and the sound of her voice. She does not look around. She merely pulls her sleeves back down and straightens out her silly costume-coat. A moment to straighten her hair, another moment to straighten her spine. One last one to lift her tail very intentionally into a posture of happiness. That is what it used to mean to be Bella. If she can simply be professional, courteous, and above all [i]docile[/i] enough, then she will survive long enough to see the next disaster.

"...Look. I'm a Fragment, do you understand? Lady Aurelia doesn't consider me worth assimilating, so I only stay alive as long as I'm useful to [i]this[/i] world. So I've got no gods damned clue about how any of this works or why Redana is like this. All I know is that she should know better by now. But she asked for this anyway. So I... if she's going to die here anyway? I'd rather she die believing in wonderberries."

Inside the theater, the loudest giggles yet heard echo out from inside the walls. Just what is that girl in there watching, do you think?