Sometimes, you just didn't know.
Sometimes you just didn't know the certain ingredients for a recipe, sometimes you just didn't know the neighbour down the street, sometimes you didn't know the quantum fluctuation of a p-brain, and sometimes you just didn't know that everything could be relative. For example, time was relative. That was always the best example, and people had been using it for thousands of years. In this particular case of relative time, it had to do with two people observing the cooking of a delicious pastry. One person, the baker, was not hungry, and therefore the baking of the large pastry was moving at normal speed. The other person in the bakery however, was very hungry, and so each minute would be an agonizing hour.
However, when that pastry was done, it would be frosted with a delicious chocolate, and then would be ready for consumption. The patron would then be back to living in a time frame that was more concurrent with the rest of the little town. For the time being though, the hungry fellow was leaning on the counter, watching the pastry bake in the special stove. This was a different style of oven than most were used to, but when you were a purveyor of fine foods, you needed something a little extra. This stove definitely helped out. It was large enough to cook a LOT of things at one time, and thanks to a helpful free thinking Mage who designed a series of special inserts, there could be different zones of heat for different foods. Currently, there was one pastry, three trays of breakfast muffins, and six different loaves of bread rising.
In La'marri, you came to this bakery for almost anything you wanted. It was attached to an Inn, to save on money, and people could be seen behind the large ovens on stoves and other things, cooking up a breakfast meal for the patrons of the Inn. The baker was a master of cooking, if not a little bit strange. The different breads alone were to die for, and all the unusual and wonderfully different pastries that were concocted were usually a blast of flavour. Granted, you were warned not to eat too many, or else you'd find yourself getting bigger and bigger everyday. The main thing that brought people back was the coatings. The baker had a unique coating, which was called frosting, derived from sugar cane, creme, and usually either vanilla plant or cocoa beans that made an excellent spread over most things. Perhaps more disturbingly was that the Baker had a habit of spreading this delicious treat on itself.
The baker in question, whose sanity could be questioned, was a very odd looking creature. With a strange skin of blue-green hue, two large hazel coloured eyes, no eyes or mouth, a soft and gentle looking face with a decidedly sharp chin, and long hair that was a mite darker than the skin. The odd thing, well, one of the odd things at least, was that the hair seemed to move and float all on its own, it wasn't weighed down by things like the law of gravity, though it seemed to at least obey some rudimentary law of motion. When the baker walked forward, it streamed behind like it was swimming underwater, and when the baker stopped, the hair continued going forward until it reached the end of its leash so to speak. This didn't seemed to bother the strange alien creature, as it would just sweep the hair back and everything would be fine.
Right now it was mixing up a large bowl of chocolate covering for the pastry. People enjoyed the sugary treat, children more so, but even the adults liked the decadent treat. It was almost a tourist attraction, and it did help drum up business for the Inn, which was good. People would be more willing to stop in La'marri as well for supplies or to spend the night, lured by their noses and the siren call of the baker's ovens.
The strange baker was quick to finish stirring up the coating before taking the pastry from the oven with a long flat wooden utensil. It was quickly coated with some chocolate and wrapped in a thin piece of cotton, to help the patron eat it. Then it was relinquished to the man who slowly slipped back into normal time, his eyes glittering with delight as he put down some money and hurriedly began to leave and eat at the same time. If the baker could smile, it probably would, but there was no nose, there was no mouth, there was...nothing. More confusing was the gender. Long ago, people learned that the baker could be any gender it pleased, it could even be no gender. Today it was one of those days when no gender really fit. Still, it wore a simple grey tunic and simple grey trousers. It had to wear something, despite having no defining gender features, people still were disturbed by a naked baker.
"Neze, can you please taste this gruel to see if it's alright?" A voice from behind the ovens called? With a nod, the creature navigated around the ovens. They were actually well insulated, and that tricky smart mage had found a way with simple hollow tubes to pipe the heat and direct it around, in this case, to out the top of the roof. This helped to keep the kitchen a comfortable temperature, and meant the back wouldn't be giving off huge gobs of heat. Once in the actual kitchen part of the Inn, the one known as Neze inspected the large pot of gruel. A small dab was taken and spread carefully onto the back of Neze's hand. Slowly, most of it began to disappear, at least, the liquid seemed to be absorbed until there was just a bit of dried pieces of left. Brushing it off, Neze turned to look at the cook in question.
Once more, if Neze could smile, it would.
"Very delicious, Sallin. People will really enjoy this. I like the cinnamon taste." The voice was strange, it seemed to have a strange distorted sound to it, and a bit of a vibration. The voice, like the body, was gender neutral however. The cook gave a small smile at the alien creature. Most were quite used to the strange being with the pointed ears. For whatever reason, they felt safe, and almost like Neze was familiar. It was probably the ears, which were quite Elven in appearance. "Thank you Neze." The creature nodded once more before heading back to the ovens to check on the bread in the bakery. Most of it was done, so Neze was pulling it from the oven and placing them by the window sill to cool down. Fresh baked bread was always a good lure when you wanted to bring people in. Neze enjoyed this job to no end, the people that came into the place, if just because of the smell luring them, the baking was also quite fun, and though some thought it mundane, it was never really dull. Sometimes on slow days, Neze would go to the Inn portion and just listen to the customers.
Truly a blessed existence for a creature so strange.