Gunpowder

Axis’s breath came in rasps. Her arms and legs ached. She was exhausted.

The woman set down the boxes in her hands and wiped her sweating forehead. She had been working on her new house all day, much to the protest of her muscles.

The whole house was quite quaint. It was made of wood, with a nice little porch decorated with various types of artificial shrubbery and flowers. The inside was quite large, with two stories connected by a wide staircase.

The main floor mainly consisted of a large kitchen that doubled as a a dining room and a living room that included a television and some couches. The upper floor was quite intricate, including two bathrooms, a study, and two sizable bedrooms. It was much larger than the quarters Axis had learned to love, which would mean more cleaning. She had always been tidy, but she had never had a whole home to clean before. She knew she would have to do most of it herself, but she hoped Poppy would help at least somewhat. Axis wondered if the woman had ever cleaned before.

She opened the box she had just set down. It was full of clothing, most of which was identical uniforms, all completely black. She had a few clothes that she wore on days-off and on other occasions. They were mostly bright, loose T-shirts and jeans. She placed the box on the carpet, in the corner of the bedroom in which she sat. Axis had been unloading her luggage from a taxi she had called. She had 5 boxes in all, but just unloading those wasn’t the half of her work. She was rearranging the whole house to her liking, and for the maximum safety of her roommate. As if she was an overprotective mother, she had rounded every sharp edge and padded every sharp doorknob. She had even put a few extra railings around the house, in case Poppy was still having trouble walking.

Axis looked over at where she had placed the box of clothes. The rest of the boxes were already there, having been placed there earlier. She had just finished safeguarding the house, and now was working on plans for what she was to do next. She had already decided that she would go to the grocery store on the next day to pick up food, and took explicit note to buy softer foods. Her roommate’s throat was still injured, after all. She toyed with a other ideas, such as giving Poppy a tour of the town, among other ideas she had since scrapped. For the first day she decided to simply show her guest the layout of the home and help her get settled in her room.

She had been warned to keep her house as free of possible-weapons as she possibly could. She had put all of the weapons she had for work locked safely in a drawer in her dresser. She decided that silverware could be used as weapons, but still kept them easily accessible. It was a home after all, not a prison.

Axis sighed, putting off unpacking her clothes until later. She nudged the box more into the corner with her foot and sat down at the desk situated on the wall opposite the door. The desk was artificial mahogany, its red color contrasting the very light blue of the walls. On its top was a sleek black laptop connected to two other monitors, one on either side. She had gotten Poppy a laptop of her own. It wasn’t connected to the internet, mainly because Axis had absolutely no idea about how to go about setting up an internet connection. She assumed that her guest would be able to get the computer up and running much better than she ever could. If what Poppy said about being a technician was true, she would hopefully take over the technical side of the home. Axis knew she was no good at that kind of thing, and she didn’t think she could ever learn.

With the press of a button, the computer screen burst to life. It was booted up in less than a second, showing the last file she had opened: a grocery list. It consisted of normal things she did not normally eat. She almost always ate in the cafeteria in the barracks, which served items limited to things such as ramen noodles and soup. She had now created a list that consisted of: Bread, pasta, peanut butter, jelly, eggs, milk, yogurt, ice cream, and a cookbook. The new house had already come equipped with the common household cooking equipment like an oven and a microwave.

Axis saved her grocery list, planning to print it out later, and closed the window. Underneath it was a page of the web browser “Tour,” open to a search of “how to make pancakes.” She was not a cook in any way. Besides technology, cooking was her downfall. She had barely managed to get her laptop hooked up to a local network. She just hoped she had the same beginners luck with food preparation.

She scrolled through the page she had opened, clicking on a recipe she deemed useful. The website she opened up was called “breakfastdreams.org,” most likely alluding to the fact that it was dedicated to the first meal of the day. The particular page Axis was on detailed the recipe of a batch of pancakes. She planned to make the meal on the first morning that her guest lived with her, as a sort of welcoming present.

The recipe seemed simple enough. Axis’s gaze scrolled over it.

“One cup of all purpose flour, two tablespoons sugar, two teaspoons baking powder, half a teaspoon of salt, one cup of milk..” she muttered, listing out the ingredients one by one. She opened up the grocery list file, appropriately named “grocerylist.txt,” and added everything she would need to make the pancakes, as well as syrup. Without syrup, a pancake was no more than a slab of dough. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t eaten such a thing before, with the ultimately lackluster cooking skills of her siblings. But still, it did not seem fit for a “welcome to the house” meal.

It was two days until Poppy was to arrive. She was supposed to be arriving in a transport ambulance about noon. That gave Axis two days to finish her plans and put them into action. She had already made the house as safe as humanly possible, but there was still plenty of work to do. She felt like an expecting mother who could not stand to have her child do something as simple as tripping on their own shoelaces.

Axis picked at her messy bun as she continued crafting her plans. She would put them into action the next day.