The Cake Run

The forest is quiet as the small and nimble girl carefully passes in the shadow cast by the many branches and leaves of the trees surrounding her. She knows that he is also in this forest, looking for her. The timer hooked onto her backpack shows a bright green readout of 15:00. She takes a deep breath in, reminding herself that if she sticks to the plan, she will be in the clear in fifteen minutes. After checking her compass, she is off, moving, towards the edge of the forest.

Unbeknownst to her, he had been following her for at least ten minutes now. Not once did her eyes meet his nor her actions become suspicious of his prescence. He knows, without a doubt, that she thinks she has lost him and that she is being the most stealthy person on the planet. But he finds amusement in watching her creep forward so slowly, and so carefully, so very sure in herself that she is going to win this game. So he continues to follow her, at an appreciable distance, for a little while longer. Because he knows that he can catch her and win within the last few moments.

The girl finally arrives at the river that runs parallel to the entrance for this side of the forest. If she can make it across the river, it's only a brief sprint to the tree line. The problem she is noticing, all too late, is that she will have to walk across the entire river, in sandals, while keeping her soon-to-be-prize held safely above her head. Without falling or dropping her prize. She glances down to her timer. It read 5:15. It's down to the wire and she knows that if she loses, she gets none of the prize. "All or nothing, as they say" she thinks to herself before stepping into the frigid water of the river. She raises both her arms above her head to keep the container as far from the water as possible. She proceeds to look down, to try to find the safest rocks to step on, and begins the process of slowly and carefully getting to the other side.

He is leaning up against an apple tree that's only a few feet from the edge of the river that she is currently walking towards, and holding an apple in his hands. He is currently deep in thought on whether he would rather eat the apple and just let her win, or be a gremlin because she knew the rules and took it anyway. That's when the sound of her voice hit his ears. He could hear her happily singing, while carefully stepping through this river and carrying what she stole from him above her head. He closes his eyes and listens closely and he can hear her singing "He's never gonna catch me, and I'm gonna win. Never gonna catch me, I'm gonna win. My cake now." "Gremlin it is, then", he thought. "That's MY cake."

She somehow managed to make it all the way across the river without falling once or dropping anything. Her timer readout is showing 1:30, so her number one priority now is to make sure she has good, dry footing before sprinting to the forest's edge. But before she could take her last step onto dry land, she realized that she was looking at boots. "There should not be boots here", she thinks. With great hesitation, she looks up and into the face of her older brother, whose cake she just stole and tried to abscond with. He looks smug, and that annoys her.

"Give me the cake" he says.

"No" she replies. "You can just move so that I can make it to the finish line."

"You are being a brat, just give me the cake." he says sternly.

"I don't have to listen to you and I still have time."

It is at this moment she realizes that she just made a bad choice. She was going to try to duck around him, but when she moved her feet they slipped on a wet river rock. She lost her balance and knew that she was about to fall and couldn't stop it. The next moment, she is soaking wet, sitting in cold moving water. Victory was so close but now it's just gone. No cake for her because that's house rules. You want to steal a dessert, you have 20 minutes to get to the edge of the forest and you can have the whole dessert. But if you lose, you get none at all, from this dessert and the next one. She really thought that she was going to be fast enough and stealthy enough to win this time. But she was foiled at the finish line due to her own hubris.

He watches his little sister sit in the water and contemplate all the ways that her plan went wrong. He inspects the cake closely, to see if it had any damage from the travel. Fortunately, there was none. "How did you catch it?" she asks, without even so much as attempting to get up. "I caught it when you realized your foot slipped." he replies. Her eyes fill with tears as she says "you chose a cake over me?" "Well you stole my cake and wouldn't give it back!" he grumbles back. "That's fair" she said. He goes to pick up the cake carrier and get to drier ground. He knows that she will get up when she is ready to get up.

A few quiet moment later, she joins him while he's quietly eating handfuls of cake. She sits down and stares at him for a moment. "I'm sorry I didn't give it back when you asked. I knew I wouldn't make it in time, but I was being stubborn and greedy." "Yes, you were." he mumbles, mouth full of cake. She lays down and looks at the sky and wonders if maybe one day she'll be fast enough and get to eat a whole cake. The sound of his voice breaks the silence, "Do you want some?" "What?" she replies, confused. "Even after I stole it and didn't give it back when I knew I'd lost?" "Yes, even after all that." "Why should I believe you?" she replied warily. "You should be really mad at me." she almost whispered. "Because you're little and a brat but I also love you. So you can have some, but you also have to promise to not try to steal the next one." he said, trying very hard to sound like their parents. "I promise!" she exclaims excitedly. "Then you can eat some cake, not steal the next one, and listen better, okay?" he says; while watching her stuff an entire handful of cake and frosting into her mouth and part of her face. "You got it." she attempts to say, but it more comes out as "mmm mm mmm" but he understands what she meant. He knows that she's going to wait a while before she tries again, and she might honestly win next time.