#(Good luck Gundham. I hope your stomach lining will survive!)

[more-than-a-princess]

"Ah...perhaps I should be the lead in this particular ritual, my dark queen..." Said "ritual" was baking Christmas cookies to celebrate the season, or so Gundham assumed He...wasn't normally one for the holidays, but knowing how lackluster Sonia could be in the kitchen, he had offered his assistance in making them. "If...that is acceptable?"

Unprompted IC asks - Accepting from mutuals!

If Gundham wanted to lead the ritual, he was a bit late for that. Sonia had already taken up residence in one of the dormitory kitchens for the past hour, and it had been a busy one at that. After politely declining offers to study, or dine out, or see holiday decorations with other members of Class 77-B, Sonia had finally arrived at her goal: an empty student kitchen with no one to bar her from it.

This year, the princess had decided, would be the year. The year that she'd finally be able to offer Christmas biscuits and chewy cookies to her family without the immediate reaction to throw them away and let the Castle kitchens handle all manner of sweets. When they were necessary, that is: her holiday schedule was often packed with performances, shows, formal dinners, and balls that she rarely had time for sweet treats at Novoselic Castle, Christmas and New Years aside.

Gundham, however, had interrupted her at a rather inconvenient time: Sonia had managed to tie back her long hair and tie on a pale blue apron over the front of her dress, but the rest of her was a bit of a mess. She'd looked up as he'd entered, holding a piping bag as she added icing to a raw biscuit. A raw sugar biscuit, or so the recipe she'd attempted to follow had indicated: she would be adding the green icing to her evergreen tree-shaped biscuits before putting them in the oven. Beside the tray of trees, she'd arranged ingredients for two different types of cookies: one of them, considering the jar of raspberry jam beside the mixing bowl, would be filled with fruit while the other empty bowl had a small dish of shaved chocolate beside it.

Well, it was mostly in the dish. Some of it had ended up on Sonia's hands, her cheek, and just above the tip of her nose. Excess sugar, flour, and butter also adorned her hands, lower arms, and face, though most of the ingredients seemed to have made it to their proper bowls.

"Tanaka-san, I'm so pleased to see you!" She beamed, holding up her baking tray of raw shapes already adorned with icing. "I did not know you enjoyed baking, but if you'd like to bake with me I would welcome your company. I'm baking seasonal biscuits before I go home next week, you see."

She nodded to the other bowls, which she'd start making once the first two trays were in the oven. She'd turned it on and, since the biscuits needed to be cooked through, had put it on a high setting. Setting down the tray and wiping her palms on the front of her apron, she tried to ignore the fact she'd made a rather sizeable mess in the kitchen. And that she was likely flushed, if not a bit harried, with some of her blonde strands freeing themselves from her ponytail. She had yet to notice the amount of batter and ingredients that had migrated elsewhere.

"I was feeling rather sad that I wouldn't be able to spend the entirety of the season here in Japan," She explained: unlike the rest of her Class 77-B friends, who would be in school until Hope's Peak officially let out for the holiday, Sonia had to return home almost three weeks in advance due to royal duties. "But I'm determined to surprise my family this year with Christmas biscuits! They have forbidden me from entering a kitchen without a supervising presence, but they don't have such authority here. So it's sugar biscuits, spitzbuben in the shape of round ornaments," She gestured to the jar of jam, "and basler brunsli, which I'll be doing with the shaved chocolate, almonds, and cinnamon."

She paused, reaching into the small dish of shaved chocolate for a piece. She held it out to him with a smile. "Would you like to try the chocolate?" She inquired, "It's from my country. We prize our chocolate-making abilities quite highly: tourists seem to adore it, too."