"Yeah." She releases the ice from its crystal structure and it reintegrates with the rest, and retries. This time she manages to form some bits of apple ice spread out a bit more evenly through the juice, but not to the point where it could qualify as a slush. She frowns at it and tries again and gets the texture she had in mind. "Awesome. You want it?"

"...Sure!"

She hands over the apple slush and buys a lemon juice to repeat the trick with. This one she slushes on the first try and drinks herself, grinning.

Dao follows, enjoying his apple slush.

"I want," Beila says, "to talk about something besides Avatarhood, and bending, and the media, for once this week. I dunno what. Read any good books lately?"

"Nope. I did finish that lizard crow, though!"

"Yeah, how'd it turn out?"

"One wing is kind of obviously bigger than the other," he admits. "I'll try again."

"You can't just - carve down the bigger wing? I don't know how this works."

He shakes his head. "I could've if I'd caught it earlier, but now that it's finished, no. Because, like... the wood that's where the too-big wing is isn't in the right place, physically, to be part of a wing that's small enough."

"Most people don't! But think about it," he says, holding out his arm with the elbow bent. "Imagine if I was a statue, and my arm was too big so you had to carve it down." He hunches the arm in a little closer. "See how everything moves? It's even worse with wings because they have all those feathers."

Beila peers at his arm. "Yeah," she concludes, "that makes sense. That's a pity. But you can always try again. The roc is perfect - I've been thinking about trying to string it onto a necklace or something but there's no natural place to put the string and it'd be kind of horrible to have it drilled."

"Aww," he laughs. "I can try making you another one that fits on a necklace!"

"But it's not going to be my birthday again anytime soon," she replies. "Speaking of which, when's yours?"

"Fourth of Spark! What, I can't make you stuff because I feel like it? I make stuff because I feel like it all the time."

"I guess you can make me stuff because you feel like it if you feel like it," giggles Beila.

He cracks up.

"And I made you an apple slush," she realizes, nodding, "so there we go."

"You did! And I appreciate that! Because this is one tasty slush!"

Beila slurps her lemon one. "Well, I can't take credit for the flavor," she laughs.

He shrugs. "You gave it to me, I think you can take credit for all of it."