#sleigher

"Whatcha makin'?"

Ruby's voice had honestly startled Tai: he'd thought the five-year-old was taking a nap. Yang certainly was: she'd been knocked out on the couch for the better part of the day, this cold was hitting her hard. He closed the fridge with his foot, setting the ice cube tray beside the bowl on the counter, then picked Ruby up and balanced her on one hip to let her see.

A bowl of shredded chicken and diced carrots and celery, an ice cube tray full of cubes of what looked like solidified broth, and twelve small lumps of bread dough on a plate. All sitting beside the bamboo steamer, a little bowl of flour, and a pile of parchment paper squares.

Ruby may not have recognized the other ingredients right off, but she knew that dough. That dough, next to the steamer, meant one thing.

"Buns!"

"Yep."

She looked over the bowl, tray, and plate again, and, in a very small voice, asked a question that, in hindsight, Tai had been expecting to hear from her for awhile now. "I help?"

"... y'know what? Sure," Tai nodded, giving the child a slight squeeze before setting her back down and walking across the room to grab a chair for her to stand on. Instead of setting it up at the counter, though, he first directed her to the sink. "You're gonna need clean hands first, though."

After Ruby's hands were sufficiently washed, and the chair moved over to the workspace, Tai floured the counter and divided the lumps of dough between them, handing her six of them and keeping six on his side. "We have to flatten these first. Do you know how to do that?"

"Uhhhh..."

He grinned a little, picking up one of the lumps. "Just do exactly what I do, got it?"

Ruby mimicked him, taking a lump of dough into her little hands. She trained silver eyes on his movements, watching how he rolled the rough into a ball between his hands. Copying almost exactly how he pressed the dough flat against the counter.

Once she finished her first lump, she looked up at Tai as if to ask if she'd done it right. He looked over, poking at different parts of the dough, before shaking his head a little.

"Close, sweetie, but here, watch again." He rerolled his dough, flattened the ball again, but made a show of the step that followed. He pressed the outside edge of the round flatter with his fingers, leaving the middle somewhat raised. "You have to keep the middle a little thicker so the filling doesn't leak out. The middle needs to support the whole inside of the bun, so there needs to be more of it."

"Oh."

"But it was a good try. No one does it perfect the first time. Just roll it back up and try again."

It took her a few tries, (Tai had actually finished his half of the dough before she even got to her second round) before she finally managed it. She halfheartedly pushed three of her dough lumps over to Tai, letting him finish them while she fumbled through the ones she'd kept. As she finished hers, he placed each piece onto a square of parchment paper and set them aside.

Noticing that Ruby looked more than a little discouraged, Tai nudged her shoulder a little with his forearm to get her attention before picking up the ice cube tray to dump out the cubes onto the newly-emptied plate. "You remember how Yang and I fill buns, right?"

Her eyes lit up, and she nodded quickly. She'd watched them do it so many times, and once or twice, she'd gotten to help with that part.

"Okay." Tai held out a spoon, which Ruby took. He normally would've rationed out ingredients with chopsticks, it was how he normally cooked, but Ruby was still using training chopsticks. "We've gotta put a little spoonful of filling in each bun, then one of those cubes, then another spoonful of filling. Why don't we do a couple together, then you do the rest while I close the buns up?"

"Okay!" Ruby made sure to watch closely this time when she copied Tai's movements, keeping the filling of the bun all in the middle with her first spoonful, then picking up a cube. She became sufficiently distracted, however, when she felt it. It felt squishy. "What's this?!"

"These are chicken soup buns," Tai explained, laughing. "That's the soup part."

"Ewww, feels weird."

"Yeah, it does. But it's got all that yummy soup flavor in it, so we need it."

Ruby giggled, pressing the cube into the filling and covering it with another spoonful of chicken and veggies, before sliding the whole thing over to Tai for his approval. When he nodded and picked up the bun to close it up, Ruby beamed brighter and set to work on the rest of the buns, her tongue poking out of her mouth in concentration as her eyes narrowed and focused on her work.

It didn't take nearly as much time as flattening the dough had, and finally, Tai was closing the steamer and placing it on the stove. "Alright, now we wait."

"When are the buns gonna be done?!"

"We let them cook like that for about fifteen minutes. Then we turn the heat off and wait five more minutes."

"Why?"

"So the buns can finish cooking."

"Oh."

Tai set the timer on his scroll, then moved the bowls, plate, tray, and spoons to the sink with the pot that he'd made the broth in in the first place. He rinsed them each sort of roughly, then set to washing them properly. Ruby even pulled her chair over to the sink to help, picking up a towel to dry the clean dishes as Tai set them aside.

They worked in silence while they did dishes, and finally, Tai set the last one in the drying rack and turned to open a cabinet, pulling down a container, a few cups, and a small plate. He pulled down another pot from the next cabinet over, setting it on the stove. He wandered back to the fridge for the milk, pouring some into the pot to heat up. Just as he turned on the heat, his scroll buzzed, letting him know to turn the heat off of the buns and let them sit. He set the scroll for another five minutes and let the buns finish and the milk heat up.

Ruby had pulled the chair back to the table, and sat down to let Tai move around the kitchen as he needed to. He didn't usually like people in the kitchen with him, but of course, he'd never told Yang or Ruby "no" when they wanted to help.

After another five minutes, the heat was shut off of the milk, and Tai was moving again, filling two cups with cold mlk and one with warm milk. He placed several of the buns into a container and set it on the counter, putting three of them onto a plate. He moved around in place for another few minutes, before finally turning around with the cups, plate, and container on a tray.