Keeping the heat low, he stirred the chocolate as it melted. He did not want it to burn, and it certainly would if the chocolate stuck to the bottom of the pan. Dipping a finger into the chocolate after it was a liquid, Elan tasted it.

Hurrying away for a brief moment, Elan grabbed a bottle of vanilla extract and poured a cap full into the chocolate. After stirring it into the heating mixture, Elan scurried over to the bowl of fruit. Picking up an orange, and a cheese grater that was lying in the pile of equipment, Elan grated some of the peel into the chocolate before stirring it again.

Once the chocolate was done, Elan saw that Shelley was nearly done with the main meal, so he removed the main dessert, a chocolate custard crouching in a cookie bowl of his own creation, from the freezer. Using the spoon, he poured the chocolate mixture over the dessert.

Contact with the frozen dessert solidified a shell of the chocolate, while the remaining liquid pooled at the base, filling the saucer that the dessert sat in.

Setting the pan aside, Elan licked one side of the chocolate-coated spoon. Tasty. Smiling, he proffered the spoon to Shelley.

Elan was not aware that he had chocolate on the tip of his nose.