The Alchemy of Sugar Cookies

On strange days like these baking cookies is an arcane art. For it is winter outside how we transform the inside into mystic summer. For i know the golden ratio. i have surrounded myself with graduated cylinders that recall the lore of cups and ounces. Retorts of pots and pans where i can observe the powers of this world returning and combining into simmer. Such smells waft from the oven as ginger swirls and cinnamon sworls like molten mountains jumble. As the elements combine eggs and butter await their transformation. Some believe that transmuting baser metals into gold somehow proves their worth but they have never crafted cookies. At my round small wooden table my imaginary children enjoy the coming holiday of doughy spell-making. They beam at me with their gumdrop eyes and jelly bean smiles and write Latin script with licorice and raisins on their raiment. As the homunculus i have constructed out of hen’s teeth and oatmeal. with a retro fish tank. skips like calendar with an extra leap year. hiccupping time. Mice in the wainscot squeak as Saturn rises auspicious in their whiskers. As my roller impresses and passes i fill the silver trays the cuckoo clock strikes thirteen. While i in a black forest script write of spells of life and death and of the perfect distillation of a sugar cookie in baker notation Sprinkles on the flour that has spilled upon my table from the shifter….