The Joy Fest in the Royal Academy kitchen was the best night of Lyra's life.

No memory could touch it. Not even that solo baking session when the yellow light had first manifested came close. That delight had been potent, but Lyra had experienced most of it alone. Everyone else had merely caught the lingering aromas, while she had devoured a whole meal by herself.

But now the table was laid, and they could all feast together.

Lyra gladly agreed to take over as recorder so everyone else could focus fully on baking. She kept herself on a leisurely circuit around the kitchen, pausing for a few moments at each baker to observe and make notes in Caramelle's trusty notebook.

Chef Flax and Bumble were working as a team. The head chef worked butter into flour while his furry sous chef sprinkled in salt. Judging by the amount of cinnamon Sprinkle was bringing in from the greenhouse, Lyra guessed Chef's famous cinnamon rolls were the chosen Enjoyment recipe.

"They are our favorite thing to make together," Chef Flax confirmed when she voiced this guess. "I never enjoy baking more than Sunday mornings. Cinnamon rolls with Bumble, and Sprinkle's special spice mix… it never gets old."

"Are you adding any special elements to your process?" Lyra asked. "Like Caramelle's dancing, or my singing?"

Chef Flax looked at Bumble, who chattered emphatically for several seconds.

"Quite right." Chef Flax bowed to the squirrel, then turned to Lyra. "My sous chef believes we should simply bake. Maybe add in a spell or two. Maybe just do a bit of singing for fun. Whatever strikes our fancy."

"But… haven't you done that before? For years and years, without the yellow light manifesting? What makes it different tonight?"

Chef Flax's eyes twinkled. "Ah, but we were not channeling our Enjoyment in any magical sense. We were not even aware there was magic to channel. Besides, baking magic needs time to steep. Or, more appropriately, to proof. Time and the right environment."

He glanced around at the large kitchen, already buzzing with happy activity.

"Tonight, I think we've finally got both those ingredients to their proper levels."

Bumble leapt onto Lyra's shoulder just long enough to give her a quick peck on the cheek. Then he jumped back to the counter and began mixing an array of spices into a small bowl.

The professors were next on Lyra's rounds. All three seemed to have taken their cue from Caramelle's mention of the talent show. Since the yellow light had appeared when Caramelle was practicing her dance routine, indulging in their own talent show performance plans seemed like a good place to start.

Professor Genoise was belting an aria at full volume as he whipped up choux pastry dough. He paused the aria to listen to Lyra's questions but insisted on answering musically.

"I am making croquembouche," he sang, stuffing choux batter into a piping bag with a series of expert wrist-flicks. "A lofty tower of pa-a-a-stry dreams. And when the tower is doooone, 'twill be worthy of a sooooooong!"

Lyra started applauding halfway through the final note. The Presentation headmaster's breath stamina and pitch accuracy were equally impressive, especially when one remembered his lack of consistent singing opportunities over the past few decades. She left him piping choux buns with gusto and gearing up for several more rounds of aria practice.

Professor Honeycomb was even more of a spectacle. The Flavor headmistress was somehow managing to mix scone dough and tap dance at the same time. Lyra wasn't sure how her hands' movements stayed so steady while her feet were so active, but the professor was managing somehow. When she reached the stage of rolling out the dough, she even incorporated a few fancy baton tricks into the process, tossing and catching the rolling pin without missing a beat.

Lyra hadn't realized her heartbeat had quickened to match Professor Honeycomb's tapping until she reached Professor Puff, and her internal temperature instantly settled into a gentler rhythm. The Texture headmistress had opted to make madeleines, apparently her favorite 'sweet tooth' treat. She recited poem after poem while mixing the genoise batter and pouring it into a tray of shell-shaped molds.

The professor's manner was as sedate as ever. Her calm tone and leisurely speaking pace never wavered. Lyra might have thought she was merely delivering a lecture if the air around her weren't humming with tangible delight.

Taking a deep breath of that glee and making sure to record it in the notebook, Lyra moved on to the students.

Caramelle was merely repeating her recent exploit, practicing her talent show dance while making 'Mac's Favorite Cake.' Mac himself, of course, could not rehearse his routine in this setting. Still, it was obvious to Lyra that the bespectacled boy was entering fully into the spirit of the process.

He was baking with total abandon: tossing tools into the sink as soon as they were used, measuring sugar so quickly that it dusted the counter like snow, and generally making a gorgeous mess. All the while, he was muttering to himself. Lyra had to lean in close to hear that he was having some sort of imaginary conversation with Fortescue, planning how to make this four-tier meringue cake the most elaborately exquisite confection the academy had ever seen.

Lyra's smile, which had refused to fade since her first glimpse of Caramelle's glowing hands back in the dorm, grew even wider as she left Mac's station. She couldn't even hold back a stray giggle.

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I've never seen him so happy, she thought, scribbling furiously in the notebook. And considering how giddy he's been all term, that's saying quite a lot. The air around him is buzzing even more than around Professor Puff.

Ginger, too, was vibrating at a merrier frequency than Lyra was accustomed to.

"I feel like I'm about to float away any second," she told Lyra with a grin, whisking egg yolks with sugar for her crème brulée. "But I'm afraid I'm not the best test subject for this particular experiment. Too many other factors at work. You and I were already simmering from Caramelle's Enjoyment flurry in the dorms, so I'm not starting at the same base level as everyone else. And then there's the fact that I missed the other late night baking sessions. Maybe I'm just thrilled to be here."

"I don't think that disqualifies you," Lyra replied.

Ginger waved the whisk, scattering droplets of sugary egg yolk into her own hair. "Of course not. And even if it did, I'd still be here. I'm not going to miss this again. Just include it all in your notes, alright?"

Lyra dutifully recorded all these 'other factors', as grateful for Ginger's love of experimentation as she was for her friend's perpetually zesty presence. The warmth of Crumble cheer braced her as she moved on to Boysen's station.

She had saved him for last, trying to gather strength to face the Berry wall. But to her surprise, it was the 'baking with Boysen' melody that enveloped her as soon as she was within three feet of him. Even more surprising was the actual song coming out of his actual, physical mouth as he stirred chocolate chips into a small bowl of cookie dough.

"Is that… Master Brulée's Coloring Charm?" she asked. "For yellow?"

Boysen actually jumped. She'd forgotten how completely focused the Flavor King could become while baking.

"Got it in one." Recovering quickly, he indicated the five small bowls into which he'd divided the dough. "I wanted to make chocolate chip cookies, but it's an important night. I thought some color would make the batch more festive."

If she hadn't already been smiling, the familiar mirth dancing in his eyes would have lifted the corners of her mouth irresistibly. She could feel her own eyes dancing in response as she pointed to the first bowl, which was swiftly approaching the color of marigolds.

"Yellow for Enjoyment?"

"Sure… and for Lyra Treble." He pointed to each of the other bowls in turn. "There'll be red for Mac, and purple for Caramelle, and green for Ginger. Blue for me, of course."

"The original Whisk Whizzes," Lyra observed.

"That's the idea. This all started with the five of us, last year. And tonight… it's great that we can all be here for this. Just the original gang, with the professors and Chef."

"And Bumble," she added.

"And Bumble. Like I said: just the original Enjoyment crew." His eyes were still twinkling, but the rest of his face was serious as he held her gaze. "I wanted to celebrate… us."

Strangely, Lyra's insides were not suddenly swamped in an overwhelming chorus of the Berry melody. In fact, she didn't hear any of her internal music. All she could hear was her own heartbeat, which had spiked far beyond Honeycomb-tapping speed and was still increasing.

"That's great!" she squeaked. "Great… great idea for tonight. I wonder if the color charms will affect the Flavor? Like, is green more savory, and purple more sweet? Which personality color works best with chocolate?"

He laughed, causing another spike in her heartbeat. It had been too long since she'd heard a good, unforced, genuine Boysen laugh…

"You're starting to sound like Crumble," he admonished her. "One experiment at a time. Tonight is about Enjoyment, remember?"

"Sure." Either her breakneck heartbeat was somehow making her bolder, or she was still riding Caramelle's earlier Enjoyment wave. Regardless, she found herself leaning in and dropping her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "But I do believe this question merits scientific investigation. We shall have to perform a follow-up experiment in the future on the relative Flavor merits of the different coloring charms."

He grinned. An authentic Lyra-only special, or she would eat Bumble's hat.

"You're on."

Salts and sweets and savory sharps… She skipped across to Chef Flax to begin another round of documentation, wondering if she'd ever be able to just 'walk' normally again. It may not be a very 'scientific' observation, but Enjoyment really can work miracles!

The whole evening did feel rather dreamlike for such a purportedly scientific occasion. Time, in particular, seemed to have slipped free of its customary steady meter to dance dizzily around the kitchen. Lyra found herself unable to tell whether a few minutes or a few hours had passed since the experiment began. She just kept moving from baker to baker, watching and listening and taking notes and always, always, always smiling.

She also found herself unable to say with certainty where the yellow light appeared first.

Boysen always swore afterwards that it was Bumble. Lyra didn't doubt his eyes, but since the Flavor King was already awash in sparkling yellow when he yelled and pointed at the glowing sous chef, everyone agreed that he might have been a bit distracted.

The reports were universally conflicting. Professor Genoise insisted he had caught Professor Puff's sparkling fingers in his peripheral vision seconds before Boysen's shout. Mac thought he'd noticed a shimmer around Chef Flax's hat several seconds before that. Caramelle claimed Mac's completed meringue cake was shining so brightly, he must have been glowing for a full minute at least, without anyone noticing. Professor Honeycomb's eyes were so full of happy tears as she stared at Boysen's radiant scones that it took a while to get her to look at her own glowing hands.

Suddenly, Caramelle shrieked.

"The mixing bowls!"

Throwing her arms around Mac, she began spinning him around and around. "It's like in your drawing! We spent all those days in the practice kitchen, and the bowls finally got full! The magic overflowed! It's real, it's real, it's real!!!"

As with the yellow light, Lyra never could pinpoint who started the laughter. Mirth spread through the kitchen faster than rapid rise yeast, coating the air with golden glee and pulling every voice into its cacophonous song.

Much later, when her hands stopped shaking and tears stopped streaming down her face, Caramelle would enter the laughter wave into her reclaimed notebook as an important scientific detail.

"Alone among the baking disciplines, Enjoyment manifests audibly as well as visually. Laughter is an important component of this discipline. It expresses effective joy no less tangibly than the golden light, giving our senses another avenue through which to experience the invisible magic at work."

But that would come later. In those first few moments, not even Caramelle was pondering the need for scientific documentation. She was laughing along with everyone else, too breathless for speech or even to keep standing. Only when all nine humans had collapsed onto their stools, with two flying squirrels sprawled on the counter, did Lyra manage to voice one coherent thought.

"Wh-what n-n-now?" she stammered through stray giggles, staring at Professor Puff.

The Texture headmistress let out another long laugh, ignoring the fact that her blue chef's hat had gone perilously askew.

"Now, Aspiring Baker Treble… I do believe it's time to call an emergency board meeting."

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