Just Desserts: A Tale of Two Toppings
Candy Lane had made its name as a place where dreams came true, and looking up at her new house, the strawberry could see why. It smelt gorgeous, its honeycombed walls glistening tantalisingly in the sunset. From her days as a young, naïve country fruit, the strawberry had always dreamt of escaping to the big city. Her parents, both very traditional people, disapproved of such worldly notions; however, here she stood, on the most famous street in all of Sweetopolis. The strawberry had worked very hard to earn her way there, having transformed from scruffy farm worker, to unglamorous secretary, all the way to high-powered young businesswoman. She sighed, enchanted by it all, and with a deep breath she pushed open the door and went inside.
It was everything she could have imagined, and more.
The ceiling was high, made from sparkling pink rock. The floor was similar, and on it sat an array of sumptuous furniture. The tables were a deep, gleaming lime colour, with bright lemon yellow chairs surrounding them. Both sofas radiated class, each being composed of luscious brown chocolate, with delicate pink candyfloss cushions. Through another honeycomb door was the bedroom, which contained a large four-poster bed. The magnificent toffee bed frame was decorated with bubblegum sheets, which lay upon a luxuriant jelly mattress. The strawberry sank slowly onto it, an expression of decadent bliss on her face, and for the first time in what seemed like an age felt truly relaxed.
"I've made it," she thought. "After all this time, I've made it!" She let out a long, happy sigh, but she knew she couldn't just rest forever. After all, her arrival here was only possible thanks to a recent promotional transfer at work, which she started tomorrow. Her employer, Food Bank Ltd., had recognised her potential early on, which the strawberry was immensely thankful for - after all, had they not done so she would never have made it to Candy Lane so soon! Work had been stressful, but engaging, and the strawberry was nervous about being in a managerial position for the first time in her life. However, it was a good kind of nervous - the kind you feel as you get on a rollercoaster, or before a first date with a cute fruit.
"First date?" she thought. "Now where on earth has that idea come from?"
One thing was for certain: the strawberry didn't have time for relationships right now. She had already seen a few hunks around Sweetopolis - including a particularly handsome pineapple - but she had to concentrate on work first. If she didn't make an impression at the office right away she knew she'd end up stuck on the same rung of the corporate ladder with no way up, and she was far too ambitious for that. No, men definitely came second as far as the strawberry was concerned.
There wasn't much daylight left by the time she had finished unpacking, so she decided to call some people at home with her bananaFoneTM . First on the list were her parents, of course, though she didn't expect much conversation. Nobody else in the family communicated much outside of talking face-to-face, even though the eaternet had been around for decades now, and phones for even longer. "Typical backward country folk," she would think to herself, whenever the subject came up. After that, she would call her best friend and tell her all about Sweetopolis so far. The two had been inseparable for as long as the strawberry could remember, ever since she had met the outgoing young raspberry as a child on the farm.
The strawberry had been planting the next season's crops out in the summer sun, when in the distance she heard the sound of laughter.
[This piece has yet to be finished, and has been published for personal reasons]
