Poem: "Half-Baked Ideas"
This poem came out of the July 5, 2011 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from eseme who wanted to read about a baker; and tangentially by the_vulture who gave me the idea for Dron the barkeeper in " Where the Action Is, and Was, and Ever More Shall Be." Of course a village has more than one establishment, so here is a poem about Dron's neighbor across the street, Brilla the baker.
Half-Baked Ideas
Brilla the baker
watched Dron the barkeeper
toss out a couple of drunken dwarves
followed by a broken chair.
She smiled and waved
at her neighbor across the street.
Dron was good for the business around here,
always bringing the adventurers in (and often out).
Brilla was a practical sort herself.
She kept the bakery,
and that was good enough for her.
It didn't have to be fancy.
Oh, there were bakers in the palace
who turned out enchanted candies
and pies full of live birds
and other such nonsense.
Brilla didn't bake anything like that.
She made hardtack and waybread
and pocket pies that would keep for a week.
Adventurers loved that sort of thing.
She only had one magical item on the menu,
a particular sort of nutcake that never suffered
from overcooking or undercooking
or any other kind of distraction.
Brilla put a batch in the oven every morning,
because the oven's outer wall attracted apprentice bards
who couldn't afford a room with a fireplace in it,
so they huddled against the warm bricks and sang.
The dough for the nutcakes was very forgiving,
and particularly sticky, so that as the magic rose up
from the huddle of bards it soaked into the dough,
and Brilla always knew when the batch was done.
Then the baker would pull out the hot cakes
and put them up on the counter:
Half-Baked Ideas, 1cp.
She always sold out by early afternoon.