One of Moriko's guilty pleasures was a visit to the Serenity Bakery, where everything was so good that she always walked away with at least six different pastries, when one or two would have been plenty to make a meal. Ten waited behind an invisible line that separated the seating area from the serving cabinets, his forepaws making tippy taps as he danced impatiently, while the Phoenix browsed the selections. She had a tray balanced on one hand, and tapped the tongs in her other hand absently, pouring over the choices.

Finally, she had eight delicacies on her tray, but one of them was for Ten, and three of them were pretty small, really. She paid and Ten followed her to a table, grinning and wagging.

Hoshi's selections had been very similar and Ren had waited patiently with Ten. Following her sister to the table, Hoshiko sat down, pausing to reward Ren with affectionate petting.

"This all looks amazing." she grinned.

"I love love lovelovelove this place," Moriko announced in sing-song. She had a large cup of iced milk-tea, flavoured with chocolate and caramel, and she took a sip before rearranging the items on her tray, deciding on the order in which she was going to eat them. The dogs stared hopefully, but they were obedient, wagging. "Tell me what's new, Hoshi-chan?"

"Not much, to be honest." she shrugged. "I had dinner a few days ago with one of the Crab. Did I tell you about that? It was just before we visited the shrine. I also ran into one of the Unicorn near the ranch last night."

Moriko's face lit up, "do tell," she urged, "I didn't know you were home last night, you should have dropped in, I wasn't doing anything."

"I should have. I'm sorry." she nodded. "The dinner came from that night at the arcade. I ran into someone who, like me, had a lot of tickets but wasn't sure what to do with them. We decided to combine them for dinner tickets at Snow-Moon-Flower. It was a nice dinner."

"Iuchi-sama, who I met last night, was interesting. He's a late arrival." she explained. "I found him drawing otori."

Moriko gasped, food halfway to her mouth, "the Snow-Moon-Flower? fancy! So who was this lucky Crab? dish, my dear sister, dish."

"Fundai Tetsu." she answered after a bite of chocolate pastry. "He was nice."

She couldn't put a face to the name, but it did ring a bell, "oh, the robotics fellow? What's the verdict, do you think he might be in the running?"

She shrugged. "I haven't talked to him since. I'm not sure he's interested."

"Then he doesn't deserve you, dear sister," Moriko decreed and bit into a pork-substitute filled bun. A drop of juice from the filling ran down her hand, and she blotted it against a napkin. The splotch would still be there later, when she was participating in the event.

"The Iuchi might be interested, though." she said. "But, that may be because he arrived late."

"Or," she mumbled around a mouthful of food, holding up a finger to keep Hoshiko from interrupting her as she finished chewing and swallowed, "and bear with me here, he might be interested because you're awesome." Moriko nodded and sipped her milk tea, "do you have his communicator? you should call him for a date. He's a Unicorn, right? come by the ranch and borrow an otori for him."

"That's not a bad idea." she smiled. "I might give that a try. So, what have you been up to?"

She took a bite out of a sweet roll.

"Do you remember Pippi?" Moriko asked. The otori had been bred on Futago Ranch when the girls were young, and had a calm, sleepy demeanour that made the creature ideal for teaching new riders. "Asako-sama, from the Shinri Temple, came to visit the ranch so he could meet an otori."

"Oh?" Her eyes locked on her sister. "How did that go?"

The younger twin equivocated for a moment, “it was pretty good. He looked like he thought Pippi was going to open up her beak and swallow him whole, though. It is a testament to his courage that he still pet her even after I told him about the whole you don’t want to get kicked by an otori thing.”

"Iuchi-sama was a bit tentative, too." she laughed. "It's good that they respect the otori, though."

“That’s what I said,” Moriko agreed, biting into a chocolate cream filled bun. “He managed to get on Pippi’s back on his first try, so I might say he’s a natural.”

"As expected of a Unicorn, he had some riding experience." she nodded. "So he didn't have any issues getting on and riding around a bit."