The Kitchen Chronicles cast in the Starbucks Misadventures
Part 4
©ESR 2025

Part 1: The Fluff Cup
Part 2: Espresso Awakening
Part 3: Shattered Morning

Benny was in exile.

Self-imposed, of course. There had been no official edict, no scroll rolled out across the marble halls of their humble abode. But he felt it. In the way the Flame’s voice didn’t say his name the same. In the way Oro didn’t offer him scraps under the table. In the way the once-hallowed blanket fort now held a silence too sacred for little paws.

So he hid.

Under the couch. Behind the curtain. In the linen closet he’d once sworn never to enter again after the Great Dryer Sheet Incident. He even squeezed into the narrow space between the fridge and the wall, where time and dust lived. Anywhere to avoid their eyes.

Because he had crossed a line.

He remembered the sound of the mug hitting the ground—sharp, like a snapped tether. He remembered the way the Flame’s voice cracked open like thunder, not in rage, but in betrayal. That sound hadn’t been fire. That sound had been hurt.

And he had seen Oro’s face. Not the gentle smile. Not the sarcastic smirk. The other face. The one beneath the Warlord’s calm. The one that moved with the weight of centuries and stormfronts and unrelenting devotion to one being: the Flame.

Benny had never realized until that moment that Oro wasn’t just a man. He was a blade…sheathed by love, but sharpened by purpose.

He had watched through the kitchen window as Oro knelt in front of her. Watched strong hands turn gentle as he tended to her wounded feet, one palm wrapped behind her ankle, the other coaxing glass from torn skin with reverent precision.

Benny had seen her flinch. Had seen the tears she tried to hide. And then he had seen Oro look back…just once…toward the glass-strewn floor and the sink where Benny had cowered.

It wasn’t a glare. It was worse. It was a promise.

⸻

The first two days, Benny didn’t eat.

He tried to, but every time he padded toward his bowl, the sound of shattering glass echoed in his brain. So he returned to the closet, tucked his nose beneath his tail, and dreamed of fluff cups and forgiveness.

By midweek, something shifted.

Oro had returned to his usual self. Or, rather, a version of it. But it was the quiet that changed. The playful jabs were softer. The teasing lullabies rarer. The Flame moved slower in the mornings, wincing when she walked, and Oro watched her with thunder in his jaw.

The guilt was unbearable.

So Benny made a plan.

⸻

Day 5: The Offering

Benny dragged his favorite plush squirrel (the one with the missing eye and the weird patch of dried catnip cemented into its tail) and laid it reverently beside her pillow. He did not stay to witness the discovery.

That night, the squirrel was gone.

But the door remained closed.

⸻

Day 6: The Trial Run

He approached her while she was brushing her hair. Just a step or two into the room. Tail low. Ears halfway up. She paused, brush suspended midair. Their eyes met in the mirror.

She didn’t speak.

He took one more step.

Oro appeared in the hallway behind her, arms crossed.

Benny retreated.

⸻

Day 7: The Apology

At dawn, he leapt onto the bed. Not stealthily. Not smugly. With intention.

He sat on her chest.

She startled awake, one hand reflexively reaching to catch him.

He didn’t move.

He meowed. Once. Quietly.

And then—he licked her chin. Slowly. One, two, three times.

He bowed his head, and pressed it against her chest.

Her arms came around him, hesitant at first, then all-consuming.

She whispered, “I missed you.”

And in that moment, a tiny fluffball shattered the last shards of silence.

⸻

Later that morning, Oro entered the kitchen to find Benny sitting beside a newly purchased mug, one paw resting solemnly on a napkin that read: “I promise I’ll be good. Please fluffcup?”

Oro stared.

Then nodded…once…and ruffled Benny’s ears with a sigh.

“…Just stay off the espresso machine.”