“Margo’s Baking Boutique”

  The sign above the small storefront practically glowed in Balthazar’s eyes.

  He did not know what a “boutique” was, but he knew what baki, and he khere was no way he would just walk away from that pce without going inside.

  “Pies, cookies, and tarts,” the crab mumbled while skittering towards the shop’s door. “It’s just been so long. I’m sure five minutes won’t hurt.”

  Stopping in front of the entrance, he quickly turo Druma and Blue. “You guys wait here, I won’t be long, promise!”

  The goblin exged a quice with the drake and shrugged, but by then the mert was already disappearing into the building.

  A bell rang above the door as Balthazar pushed it open and stepped inside. As it closed behind him, the buzzing hubbub of the busy streets outside was as if pletely removed from the air around the crab, now repced with soothing silend a sweet aroma of sugary treats.

  Balthazar felt himself getting dizzy, both because of the intoxig sts flowing into him, but also due to the fact that he kept spinning in a circle looking around the room.

  The colors were nearly as overwhelming to the senses as the aromas. A bright array of colorful pastries and other sweets filled the tables and ters of the tiny shop. Cakes with multiple creamy yers sat promily atop dispy structures at the ter of carefully structed arras, surrounded by ptes of meticulously pced écirs and mas. Wooden shelves covered the walls, each filled with all manner of colorful bags taining treats of different shapes and sizes. And behind the gss of the ter, Balthazar saw it, perfectly round as a whole, immacutely triangur as a slice: pie.

  His heart beat faster at the sight of his beloved, after so many weeks apart, deprived of her beauty, her st, and most importantly, her taste. Breathtaking as everything else around him was, right there and then, all the heavy breathing crusta wished was for the world to fade away, the gss separating them to cease to exist, and to have a few minutes aloh that sweet pastry.

  “Ah, good m. You may leave them by the—” a dy’s voice said, approag from the back of the store. “Goodness gracious! There’s a crab sl all over my gss ter!”

  With a jolted start, Balthazar’s fused eyestalks snapped back to reality. A reality where he was leaning over the baking dispy, with his face pressed against the gss, mouthing like a fish at the pie oher side.

  “Oh, I… I’m sorry,” the traveling mert awkwardly said, taking a couple of steps back from the ter as he wiped the er of his mouth. “I got a little too focused on your… uh, impressive sele of goods.”

  The woman’s finely plucked eyebrows perked up. “Ahh, you talk. For a moment I worried you were an adventurer’s wild panion who wandered into my shop.”

  Her response gave Balthazar some relief, even if it still felt odd to him how casual everyone in that city seemed to be about a talking crab.

  “At first I was expeg you to be one of my suppliers delivering some milk jugs,” she added. “He’s runnioday.”

  The crab g the floor briefly. “Yes, who knows, maybe some of his product went missing…”

  “Never you mind that, though,” the fancy-dressed dy said. “Wele to my boutique. What we offer you today to satisfy your sweet tooth?”

  With a warm smile, she spread her arms and pced both hands on the ter. If she was a baker, she did not show it at all. Unlike Madeleine, who always wore simple dressing, fit for w in a kit and by the oven all day, this orted fiailored vestments, makeup, and an absurd amount of jewelry.

  “Pie,” Balthazar simply said, one pincer exteowards the pastry oher side of the gss.

  “You want one of our pies?” the shopkeeper said. “Of course you do. They are one of our most requested products. I’m sure you’ve been hearing about them nonstop before even arriving in Marquessa.”

  “he crab bluntly said. “Never heard of you, this pce, or your pies. I was just passing by on my way to the city hall, saw a bakery, and came in to get pie.”

  “Oh,” the woman said, taken aback by the slight disappoi id onto her by the crusta, befaining her posure aurning to her friendly manners. “Well, in that case, I’m sure you will soohe one spreading tales far and wide about our delicacies. I’m Margo, owner of this baking boutique.”

  Balthazar started impatiently tapping a foot on the polished granite floor.

  “Great, great. I’m Balthazar, owner of a hungry belly. Now, about that pie?”

  “Certainly,” the dy said, pulling the rge pte with the pie from the gss dispy and pg it on top of the ter.

  Perhaps it was due to all the weeks spent away from any baked goods, deprived of the nourishing sight of a pastry, but the pie before Balthazar’s eyes looked nothing short of divine.

  Its crust was fwless, and visibly fresh, no doubt baked just a few ho, but it was its filling, visible from the oriangur slice cut and pced on top of the rest, that really caught the crab’s gaze. Of a yellowish e color, it was dense and humid, pad devoid of any air pockets, almost like a more solid jelly.

  “Quite something, isn’t it?” the smiling shopkeeper said, resting her elbows on the ter.

  Balthazar nodded, eyes fixed oe. “What is it?”

  Margo raised her eyebrows in surprise. “A mango pie, of course.”

  “A mango pie?” the traveling mert repeated, lifting his gaze to her.

  “Not from around these parts, are you?” the woman said with a ile. “Probably from the west of the ti, if I had to guess.”

  The crab’s eyestalks arched. “How did you know?”

  “It would expin your surprise at seeing something made with mango,” Margo expined with amusement.

  Balthazar’s curiosity now grew at a simir rate as his hunger.

  “How e I never even heard about mango pie before?”

  The simple idea that a type of pie could have existed all this time without his knowledge, and worse, without him trying it, was leaving the mert filled with great internal e.

  “That’s quite simple, my dear,” the bakery owner said. “The climate on the west side of the ti is no good to grow mangoes, unlike our more temperate fields here in the east.”

  “So?” said Balthazar with a slight frown. “Why not export them there? Seems like a wasted business opportunity to me.”

  Margo chuckled, c her mouth with a hand full s.

  “Maybe if it was that easy, but mangoes don’t keep well during a several week cart trip to the other side of the ti, my dear. We sell them to nearby towns alements, but only those within a couple of days ride, otherwise no one wishes to trade in rotten fruit.”

  His aspirations ing a new delicacy to the nds of Ardville dashed for now, Balthazar focused on finding so the one good thing in front of him.

  “Alright, enough chit-chatting, time for chewing.”

  The baker pulled a small pte from uhe ter, along with a serving spatu. “I mean no offense by it, but I should mention we did have to increase our priango products retly, if you must know before I serve it to you.”

  The crab’s eyestalks stood to attention. “Hold up! How much?”

  “25 s a slice,” said the shopkeeper. “A bargain once you taste it, I assure you.”

  Balthazar gulped. “25 gold s for just a slice?!”

  Used as he was to Madeleine’s more than “affordable” deals for him, the mert now found himself faced with the impossible dilemma of which of his two loves he cherished more: or pie.

  “Why do you say you had to raise the priango products?” he asked, trying to find any way into a bartering opportunity.

  “Ah, I suppose you haven’t been in town long enough to hear,” said Margo, with a sigh.

  The shop’s bell rang again, and they both looked up at the front door to see who had just arrived.

  A rotund man wearing a bowler hat stepped into the store with hurried steps, his thick walrus mustache twitg and shaking as he grumbled to himself.

  “Marvin, darling, what happened?” the boutique’s owner asked with .

  The man stomped his way around the ter and through the doorway to the back, seemingly not even notig the giant crab standing in front of the ter. There he stopped by a coat stand, hanging his hat and jacket before angrily putting on an apron.

  “It happened again, Margo!” Marvin excimed, while fiddling with the straps of the apron he was attempting to tie behind his back.

  Margo pced an open hand—along with about four or five oversized rings and bands—on her chest, looking distraught. “Tell me you don’t mean what I think you mean.”

  Exhaling exasperatedly, the man nodded his head.

  “Yes I do,” he said. “The mango thieves attacked again.”