[Time might heal a lot of wounds, but even close to five years later, cooking made Ryner uncomfortable, if he was honest with himself. Setting foot in a kitchen was fine, but anything more than sticking something in the microwave or putting a kettle of water on the stove to boil was a huge pain in the ass.

(And he still couldn't stand coffee, not that he'd admit this.)

It's not that he couldn't cook at all, given proper motivation. ...And preferably instructions, when he was younger he'd have been fine subsisting on dry bread and raw potatoes if it was just him (and in truth he'd still have no problem with it), so he'd never really bothered to learn. It was just awkward, okay? And besides, Marian cooked most of the time anyway and had a blast with it, so it was usually a moot point.

This, however, was a special circumstance. Celebi itself was showing its face, after all. It was only polite to bring a gift, right? And, well, something handmade and meaningful was probably the way to go...

What would have more meaning than something associated with a dear friend? Something she'd greatly approve of, were she only here to see it.]

Well, here's hoping you and the Dango God that Ferris is always going on about don't have anything against each other...

[Hence how Ryner ended up in front of the shrine, placing a box of handmade dango gently down in front of it. He'd cooked it himself, using the recipe he'd asked Marian for a couple years back. ...Well, he'd asked Rose to help too, and she'd been okay with it after he'd explained his reasons (and also after he'd conceded that half of the batch was for her). It hadn't seemed to take nearly as long for the dango to cook as it had last time... but, well, he'd gotten stuck in a weird loop at the Leid house for an hour the other day when bringing Marian to visit her parents, so it was probably better not to comment on it.

And then he just stood there in silence for a few minutes, contemplating time gone by and people he hadn't seen in far too long.]