Chapter Text
When the calling came, during a torrential downpour occurring when the party was already leagues-deep along the Sugar-Free Road, it arrived not as terror or as another bout of furious thunder, but as relief.
That night had stretched long, long enough for the rain to seem eternal: a thing without end, and a thing that was destined to sweep them away. It had turned the path beneath weary steps to an unstable mire, bowing the weight of the earth to something entirely unnavigable. It had been a miracle in itself, that a camp had been constructed through the deluge to shelter those who remained at his side.
This journey had been long.
Long enough that the beginning was blurry in memory, long enough to forget the first faces that had ceased their quest, and turned back when the weather and trek proved indeed impossible. Long enough to wonder if theirs had been the better choice. And now, with the downpour that bore down without mercy on which few remained, the night, and storm contained within it, was growing long enough to feel perpetual.
Yet, when the breakage of the storm came, it came not with spectacle. Not with the cracking of the heavens to cast away the clouds, or an early rising of the sun to bring a close to the night. But it arrived still like the promise of a dawn, waiting patiently beyond the hills, to bloom upon those who so desperately awaited its shine.
It was warm, gentle, and inevitable. A light not seen with sight, but felt bright enough within, to chase away the last shadows still clinging to his convictions, and warm enough to heat even the most drenched, and frigid parts of Pure Vanilla Cookie's form. It did not command belief, or demanded it. Instead, it unveiled it anew.
It nurtured the purpose that had dwelt in his spirit since youth, that small and steadfast certainty carried through years of wandering and want. Through hunger, through doubt, through the gains and so, so many losses, and through roads that offered no promise of a true destination…
Through tonight, and all the doubts this storm had threatened to drown him in.
Under the touch of this impossible light, that purpose quickened, it pressed upward. It bloomed within him, until nothing uncertain remained. There was no longer the tremor of cold and fear; there were no whispers that remained of his hesitation, or his doubts, or the ceaseless, burning questions that prickled in the darkest corners of his soul, in the most trying hours of the journey...
There was only certainty as his destiny had come. Not in a blaze, but in the simplest of gestures:
In a warm hand at his collar, pressing over his chest. In the sensation of a form that curls and coils around him, offering the most secure of grasps in his lowest moment. Alone in his tent, the presence is as pure, and as burning as a living star. And then, when the sensation had settled to place around and within him, there came three questions. Softly spoken not into his ears, but into his very soul.
Can you bear the weight?
Even in sleep, Pure Vanilla gasps.
Not because the voice is powerful enough to shatter the storm. It does not roar with like judgement, as if it bears the weight of some untouchable almighty. It does not rattle his dough with the awe of its existence, or strike him still in dread at its presence, demanding kneeling or barters made of awestruck fear.
Instead, the voice that speaks to him, feels like... home.
If feels of sunlight stretched across endless fields, beneath the clearest skies he had ever known. It spoke like harmony long-promised, and now returned to him at last; like the peace that follows a day well-spent, of laying oneself down in a place of comfort, with the knowledge that the night holds no threat. It felt of safety, of being held fast in the surest arms, of devotion, so raw and complete, it didn't really need words at all... only the mere act of its presence.
It is a euphoric sort of assurance. Like a lullaby vast enough to hold the world in its purity, and strong enough to hold it secure.
And so, Pure Vanilla Cookie answers at once. Almost too quickly, offering no more than the single syllable required, for he dares not speak longer over the song that fills his head. For fear it might fade away if challenge, it might leave him if denied or answered incorrection, beyond the simplistic response of—
Yes.
His answer goes unremarked upon; only the second question follows seamlessly in similar melody.
Will you do what you must to carry it?
Again, there is no hesitation.
The answer rises not from fervor alone—though in this moment, a sort of fervor does indeed burn bright within his dough—but from sincerity. From the knowledge that this burden being asked exists not to crush, but to be carried for the greater good of those beyond him. There is strength within his dough. Perhaps not that of a warrior, but that which he is still capable of carrying.
That strength had carried him to this rain-drowned road, stripped of sweetness and comfort alike. His strength had helped steady each weary step of this long, unyielding struggle of a trek; it had lifted others too, when their legs had failed them and when their faith had faltered.
His strength, on the coldest of nights, on the harshest of climbs, had been that which had guarded their health, their safety and their hope. Even now, even in the midst of this horrid, terrible storm, and where his own hopes had waned, he still carried his people on the pilgrimage. He still had the strength to carry their futures, and so, strength was offered.
And he longed for that strength to endure eternally.
Not in the form of a selfish desire, and not only for the cookies of the present hour, with their fragile joys and trembling griefs within every footfall along this Road. But, Pure Vanilla Cookie wishes for this for those yet-unbaked and unknown to him. To be their shelter against the coming storms, to shoulder the weights meant not to be held in solitary hands. To endure so that others might rest, while he acts as shepherd and guide to their better days... this path will allow him to do this.
It will allow him, he knows in the depths of his jam, that this is the path set before him, to ensure that he will be the strength Cookiekind needs. This is the only path meant to be his, the only future he knew to be a certainty. And so, the answer is once more given in the affirmative—
Yes.
And then, there comes the third question.
The hand upon his chest does not withdraw, but now shifts—rising slowly, and deliberately, until warmth traces the line of his throat, and it eventually settles to cup his cheeks. Drenched, pale locks are brushed aside with reverence, and display a sort of an eternal-care that borders on the affectionate. Fingertips edged faintly in claws pressed just beneath his eyecings. It is not a cruel touch, and it is not kind either, but it instead proves to be searching.
Measuring something he cannot see, analyzing, seeking deeper beyond his dough and jam, into the very center of him. And though he lies alone within his tent wrapped in rain-swept wrath, for one breathless moment, the touch feels undeniably real.
When the final question comes, it is softer and heavier than the two others that had come before it. It resembles a lament of sorts—or perhaps, considering what it contains, a dirge.
Do you know what regret is?
For the first time, Pure Vanilla Cookie hesitates. The words feel… misplaced.
They do not strike him as cruel, not in the ways of mockery or as a threat. Yet, neither does it belong alongside the inquiries of strength, endurance, or duty like its preceding questions. It lingers strangely. Almost too personal.
The journeying cookie turns it carefully over and over again in his thoughts, and soon, finds the question slotting neatly against his memories. Memories of losses endured without bitterness overtaking him, of kindnesses he has chosen, even when it proved to cost him dearly.
If regret is the scar left behind when one loves too deeply, when one strives too earnestly, when one stands where others can not... then regret is not a foreign thing, not for him. In the experiences he has faced, then they doubtlessly will serve as a prelude to what more aches he shall perhaps endure in his future. Pure Vanilla Cookie has stood for this long, even with the heavy burdens already laying bare on his spirit and shoulders.
If more of such weight is the price to devotion, the price for the strength he feels is meant to be his... then, let it be paid. For at this moment, for what is promised, he finds himself willing to pay the price.
The traveler does not claim understanding, and he does not pretend wisdom. Instead, with the steadiness of one already kneeling beneath unseen weight, the cookie gives his final answer not as boast, but as a vow:
I will learn.
Silence immediately follows.
It is not empty, but instead, full of consideration. Of the weight of being judged, as the warmth remains cupped around his face. It feels not only as if his words are being turned within the mind of what holds him, but that they are determining the shape of the soul that had formed the words; an ultimate decision of great importance, being mulled and deliberated around him, by a force too far beyond his ken.
There is no rebuke or praise for his earnest answer. Only a stillness so utter, it feels like the last breath made before the world is reshaped anew. Then slowly, those claws trace down from his eyecings as something shifts, and the presence leans closer.
And, for all the lifetimes he endures after this, Pure Vanilla Cookie will never find the words to describe what presses between his brows.
Only the sensation of it: a point of impossible, complete focus, of a pressure that is both gentle and absolute, as through the very axis of his being had been found, and is now being rebalanced for the sake of what stands before him. It is neither painful or tender, yet it is both... it is intimate beyond language’s comprehension.
Then—
There is light.
It pours inward, rather than outward, illuminating chambers of thought he had not known were existing dark inside of him. The world does not change; only his understanding of it does. Threads reveal themselves, of consequence, interwoven fates, of sorrow braided inseparable with joy. He sees not events, not in their passing images of fleeting memories, but the architecture beneath them, and that which makes all things in a being's soul...
The way choice bends time and fate. The way devotion births both salvation and ruin.
It is not omniscience. He is not made here a god.
But it is enough to widen him, enough to make his earlier convictions and perseverance feel smaller, though certainly not weaker. Only enough to plant within him a vast horizon, that will never again be contained only by the simple answers of the universe.
The presence that blessed him lingers there, at the center of him as the power that be settles into his dough. More sustainable, more bearable.
It speaks a final time, not in question, or encouragement:
We shall see.
Once again, it is not a promise, or spoken cruelly as mockery, or a threat. These parting words exist only in the solemn, final vow of destiny's inevitably, as weighty as his own vow had been. Then, the warmth withdraws, and the dream breaks apart—
And Pure Vanilla Cookie wakes with a breath gasping free from his mouth, his form surging upright from rain-dampened blankets, as if emerging from a plunge in deep waters.
The storm is... gone.
Rain is no longer drumming against the canvas with the intent to pierce through. There are no harsh winds tugging ferally at the seams of his shelter, with the goal to tear him and his followers apart in these harsh, almost violent wilds. No, only stillness remains... the kind that follows upheaval. The kind that occurs, when nature has exhausted all its fury, and now, can do nothing else but wait for its creation to be built anew.
Eventually, the cookie rises slowly from tangled sheets, steps out free from the tent, and into the new world that awaits him outside.
The Sugar-Free Road stretches before him, washed clean of dust and gleaming faintly beneath the first light of dawn. The clouds above drift apart, like they are parted by unseen hands, to unveil a horizon that is brushed in the pink and orange glories of a bright dawn.
What lies before him is not another mountain, not another rugged, desolate domain that must be climbed.
Instead, the pathway that the new day reveals between the mountains, flourishes down into a green utopia. It is an impossible stretch of forests, cradling green meadows and crystalline pools. It is an impossibility of a place, an unthinkable location, after the harsh and dusted paths that have brought them this far. But here, at the end of the road, there does indeed exist a grandiose home, for him, and the other cookies that have traveled this long, long way.
Pure Vanilla Cookie grips his staff, beckoning it to bring a sharper edge to his vision, while he raises a stunned, shaking hand to his brow to block out the light, the shine that gleams over this view that should be impossible... and then, his fingers quickly still.
Because there, pressed in the dough between his brows, rests the shape of a star. Not as a carving, or burning, but an imprint. Like it had always been meant to be there - this true, open signage of a cookie now blessed.
Bestowed onto him, brighter than the newborn dawn, was the marking of an inevitable, and unavoidable sort of fate.
What had begun as a valley of untouched greenery at the end of the harsh and desolate Road, did not remain untouched for very long.
Where his first slow, navigating steps into the valley had pressed the grass flat, pathways were quickly formed; first in the dirt, and then later, in stone. Where he and the other weary, awestruck travelers had paused to rest, fires and then hearths were raised up. Soon, made around them were walls, roofs, and spires that eventually towered high. Where hopes had found fertile ground, roots had been quick to take hold; soon followed by crops, and then by fields upon fields of thriving abundance in cultivated rurality.
And so, it came to be that the valley flourished.
Not in sudden conquest or spectacle, but in the hands of those who beckoned a steady, patient growth. Beneath the hands willing and wishing for work, meadows widened into fields heavy with harvest, and clear pools were shaped into fountains that caught the sun, gleaming like unearthed gems through the land. Homes rose in layered, harmonious tiers along the hillsides, their windows lit no longer by fear of the dark, but brightened by the laughter and love that existed within.
The road that had once ended there became a new beginning. Cookies came, some broken, alone, and some merely wandering. Some that were only curious at what had been built, or perhaps even doubtful at the rumors of abundant peace and harmony, and, regardless of their purpose for being here, all were welcomed.
Pure Vanilla Cookie was not one who found himself ruling with decree, but with presence.
His was a kingdom built upon listening before casting judgement, upon speaking truths softly, yet firm and undeniable, and upon ensuring perseverance was communal, rather than solidary. Happiness was not a mandated thing; it was cultivated, through kindness, patience and understanding. Justice was not a sharp or swift thing, but measured, made to mend with hands extended in forgiveness within the fair.
Regardless of the title the people gifted him, he walked often amongst his people as a close-equal, with crowned light upon his brow. The faint star pressed-there on that stormy night, had long-since been accepted as a symbol, rather than a marvel unknown. To the young, it was simply a part of him, a feature no different than his pale, heterochromic eyecings or the ever-gentle smile on his face. To the elders of the kingdom, it was reassurance, a sign of greatness despite his humility and proof that the desire to settle within his lands had been correct.
To those who had traveled from distant lands, it was proof that this valley was not chosen by chance. It was destiny—not granted, but marched toward, with every day that it grew and expanded, from those barren mountains that had once seemed impossible to trek through in one-piece.
This was fate, raised patiently by Pure Vanilla's bare hands.
And in the quiet hours before sunrise, where the world still slept and it was only the sound of the winds whispering at the highest towers, Pure Vanilla Cookie could feel that fate's boundary. The gentle limitation of his reach, a finitude that belonged to nearly all other living things upon Earthbread.
At first, it meant only what it should. That he was a Cookie of this world, that he could stand amongst friends and other cookies alike. An equal in laughter and loss, in celebration and sorrow; that regardless of the weight spoken to him on a rain-laden night, he was no different from any other cookie. The once-pilgrim from the Sugar-Free Road cherished that sameness, that state of being that marked him as ordinary. Were this another life, were Pure Vanilla a cookie that had been guided to a different path, he would've remained in this existence. Gladly mortal, and happily singular in his life.
But, the path that he had followed to now, could not end in such a way.
Yes, he had the powers to sooth and to guide. Long before he had set onto the Road, he had been fortunate to be baked with the powers to heal and nurture, and an innate ability to perceive the deepest, sometimes unseen parts of others; an ability only enhanced, thanks to what had been granted to him on that night long-ago. Yet, with all those gifts, it did not exactly settle what stirred within him.
There remained something that felt unanchored, a quiet, ever-persistent absence. Not an absence of joy, of gratitude, or of purpose, but of being whole.
Beyond the newer borders that he and his people have formed, other kingdoms have long existed, risen from splendor and severity alike. Other rulers that had stepped-fully into great awakenings of their own rights, those that had in their own experiences, been chosen by a higher-power, for a calling they had settled into. They had become friends, long-standing companions long before Pure Vanilla Cookie stepped into their attention—and, after joining their ranks, it often seemed that only they, in all of Earthbread, could hold even a modicum of understanding.
Understanding towards what made them worthy of their calling to guide and lead, and who had once felt a presence just as he did.
Between the four of them, between those who had answered the call and crossed some unseen threshold in response, there was a resonance. They were as different as the seasons, with purposes and goals diverged, and yet each with each one, with their full-awakenings into a higher power in their own right, something within his four fellow monarchs had been completed.
And something in him, had not.
Pure Vanilla Cookie held no resentment, to either his friends, or this simple face. There was little need to make comparisons between himself and his realized-companions, however, that did not erase the sensation that something was only half-opened within him. Like the horizon had been glimpsed, in a glorious show that displayed what lay just outside his reach... not unlike the utopia of this very valley. It could be seen, but the hard-work to obtain it as his own, had yet to be done.
And as the years of his budding rule passed, and cookies came, stayed, left again, while orchards ripened and children grew full of wonder and laughter that filled the halls he helped raise, that yawning space between him and what he knew to be his fate, did not shrink.
It was not a painful ache, this chasm between him and what was his. But it was persistent, and utterly undeniable.
The Soul Jams marked the close of that final gap to that completion. Four were obtained individually by the immortal companions that made up the ruling-heads of Crispia's central kingdoms, and without prying into the intimate trials, Pure Vanilla Cookie understood that those crystallized conduits were not trophies, but the purest symbols of their ascensions. An item that refined the very core of their beings, until conviction, and the existence of what it had built from, no longer wavered apart.
It was the ultimate amplification of one's virtue, the truest measure of a cookie's spirit.
For many years, Pure Vanilla Cookie had led and guided his own kingdom without such an item, despite knowing the fifth existed for him, and him alone. He had prospered without it. Healing, building, and enduring, mortal as he was—the only claim to greatness he had to his dough, was the warmth between his brows. And that alone, was more than enough—yet, somewhere beneath the steady rhythm of his days, beneath the harmony he had cultivated so carefully, and in the deepest recess of his spirit, Pure Vanilla knew that this life was not asking him to remain as he was.
It was asking him to become something more, to use this life, and the blessing given to him upon the darkest of all his nights.
And so, one day, beneath a sky clear, untroubled and wholly different from the night his path was irrevocably changed, Pure Vanilla Cookie gathered his friends within the heart of his kingdom's castle. His smile was as soft and as bright as a star as he looked from one to another. Before, he said simply, "I believe I am ready. I intend to lay claim to the fifth Soul Jam, my friends, and join you in leading Crispia for all of its days.”
The words needed to be simple. For Pure Vanilla Cookie, it was a simple statement of fact, a framing of a certainty that had been laid long-ago, settling easy within the healer's voice. This was not an impulsive decision, or one made from a sudden sense of ambition; this was a decision long-lived, and long-ago made...
And it was a decision met with absolute silence from his friends.
Of course, Pure Vanilla had not expected surprise. From so soon after meeting them all, it was clear it would be an inevitable, bygone conclusion of his eventual ascendency to their ranks of the powerful and Ancients. Still, this particular brand of silence is something that surprises him.
Because of his clarity, the quiet is not an empty thing to his senses. It rings... heavy. It rings like a thing slow to settle, sinking deep in meaning too murky for him to truly comprehend in his present understanding.
To him, in this moment, it can best be translated as a silence weighted by knowledge, by wisdom shared only between four cookies within this space. Understanding of what Pure Vanilla Cookie is saying, yes, but also what it requires. What it costs.
Pure Vanilla, who can’t understand, who doesn’t truly understand this heavy silence settling in the air between his friends, holds his smile evenly despite it. To remain steady in times of uncertainty was a long-practiced skill, and as his gaze drifts unhurriedly from one sovereign, to the next, there is no worry in his gaze.
Only the patience of expectation, and readiness that is willing to wait for an acknowledgement— and perhaps, later, an explanation for the sudden quiet.
The quiet that, at last, Dark Cacao Cookie breaks first.
The king from lands of snow and shadows rises slowly, black-and-white armored robes shifting with the motion as he offers a measured tilt of his head. At his side, upon the hilt, the gleam of his own Soul Jam pulses steadily at his side as his expression remains unsoftened, yet not sharpened either. It is only accepting.
“If you have decided, then you require discipline, and preparation," He drones, voice low and hard as the sturdiest of sugar-ore. “Awakening is not a thing granted. It requires claiming, and if you trust it is your time, then I shall oversee your training for this endeavor.”
Pure Vanilla Cookie’s brows lift at this declaration. “Training?”
“Hah!”
Hollyberry Cookie’s laughter, a familiar and unrestrained thing, rings across the meeting chamber the quintet occupies. She rises halfway from her seat, sloshing goblet already raising high, and her eyecings are alight in delight. The warmth of her Soul Jam glows against the shield at her side, with the Passion gleaming all the brighter alongside her grin.
“Now, that is what I like to hear! Finally! About time you stopped playing the humble old saint, and joined the rest of us properly at full-capacity!” Her goblet is thrust into the air in a proper salute, the liquid cresting but managing to avoid a spill as she declares. “To Pure Vanilla Cookie! May his awakening be bold, brilliant, and just dangerous enough to keep the rest of us honest!”
“Dangerous?”
An... unusual choice of word, but the healer dismisses it as an embellishment, the flourishing language that only a warrior can make, and understand in full.
Then, with a more elegant lift of her glass, Golden Cheese Cookie appraises Pure Vanilla with a gleam in her eyecings.. The sun from the high-windows catches upon both the rim of her drink, and the facets of her Soul Jam upon her brow like a captive sun—one that is rivaled only by the bright smirk she soon offers.
“Well, it was inevitable, was it not? You’ve been shining as king only at half-capacity for years now, dear Vanilla,” Her eyecings flick briefly to the star upon his brow, and she sniffs with a touch of haughtiness. “Though, do not mistake me: I fully intend to reign the most radiant amongst the lot of us.”
A beat.
Then, with a most gracious incline of her head, and even more courteous show of permission. “You may aspire to second place.”
With that, laughter rises in a far lighter fashion, with goblet meeting chalice in a long-familiarized tune. Even Dark Cacao inclines his glass in acknowledgement of the return to levity, even as his expression remains severe in his perpetual restraint—just barely evading Hollyberry’s attempt to press further celebration upon him, with an already-filled second glass.
Conversation returns with ease, just as it has before Pure Vanilla’s declaration of intent. They speak as they always do, of their endurance and discipline, and the refinement they wish to bring to Crispia. Of what the five of them might accomplish for all of Cookiekie, together, as those fully understanding, and accepting of the powers that are theirs to claim.
Tonight, there is no talk of cost. They do not speak of their odd quiet from before, and where the heavier burden of the unspoken had lingered. Those are questions for another time, the sole outliner of the immortal rulers determines, as Pure Vanilla settles into the swell of their voices, the deliberate, pleased brightness that envelopes around him in their presence... and then, his attention shifts.
It shifts to where White Lily Cookie has yet to touch her own glass.
Even in his blurred vision, he can see the stiffness in the way her fingers rest tight upon the table’s edge. Unlike their friends, there is no smile to curve her lips, no soft, well-meaning words to reach him across the distance in encouragement. She watches him, not with disbelief or disapproval, but with a complete quiet, one that was almost ancient, in the heaviness that he could not fully understand at this moment.
“White Lily Cookie?” Pure Vanilla asks softly, the words lost between laughter, and a small round of bickering between the other three rulers. More quietly still, his hand shifting to tap his staff, he tries again with more perplexity, “Lily?”
His Orchid’s clarity provides him with the sight of a million, unspoken words flashing through White Lily’s crimson eyecings. And heavier, more than he could possibly understand at this moment.
Then, she rises.
The movement is absent of any spectacle, anything that could draw the attention of the other Cookies. Her chair shifts back with a muted scrape, and the sound is too small to interrupt the laughter and chattering of their friends.
Her eyecings remain on Pure Vanilla Cookie, utterly, and entirely unreadable.
Not even the assistance of his Orchid can decipher her at this moment. Her chin dips the barest fraction; perhaps in a courtesy, from one leader to another. But, right now, Pure Vanilla would almost be inclined to describe it as something nearer to a farewell.
“I... I have preparations to make,” She breathes. It is so quiet, it might as well have been mouthed, rather than spoken aloud. Yet still, the healer hears it—and has no chance to reply, as she is already turning away.
Her gown whispers like leaves in the wind, slight and silent, as his clarified-sight catches the vision of her pale hand rising to her lips. Not in thought, but in a sort of restraint, like she means to hold something back; something not meant to be spoken here, not now.
The doors close behind the pale-haired queen, and the space she leaves behind settles heavily in the pit of Pure Vanilla’s jam.
For the first time, since warmth had been pressed between his brows, and altered the shape of his understanding and his very fate, Pure Vanilla Cookie cannot help but feel the faintest trace of something cold entering his dough.