Scene Archives

: “So. I’ve asked you here on an important mission,” she begins nervously. She’s pacing. “I need some beef. From Almachadta. And some bacon, ideally.”

leans against the wall, arms crossed, one foot crossed over the other, his hair ominously draped in front of his face. His voice is low, almost gravelly. “Sounds like a rough job. And bacon wasn’t in the original deal.”

: “But I– ack–!” He coughs a few times, clearing his throat. “Whew!” The gravel is gone now, and he shakes the hair from in front of his face.

: “But I mean, both of those sound really easy. Any kind of particular beef or slab of pig we’re looking for?”

: “A shoulder. Well-marbled. I was thinking I could … maybe link with you, to send you an image of what I’m imagining? And a couple thick slabs of … do you know what raw, uncut bacon looks like?”

tilts his head side to side, finally shaking it in the negative. “Nope! Maybe I should, though…?”

: “I could also maybe send that with the link?” She walks over to him, dropping her voice. “As for your payment … well. Since you’re doing me such a favor, letting me alter the deal like this, I’ll let you choose your payment.” She wraps her arms around his waist, looking up into his eyes through her lashes.

grins, devilishly. “Peppered cheese. Grilled onions. And that apron is going to have frills.”

rests his forearms on her shoulders, leaning in, framing her face with his hair.

: “Weird that you want to see Luĉja in an apron, but be my guest,” she teases back, kissing him. She takes. A bit of time, to kiss him thoroughly, before going, “so, do you want to try … whatever my version of Circling is for this, or would you prefer me to use my human words and explain the specific cuts of meat?”

takes a bit of her time too, lingering a bit longer as she tries to pull away, but ultimately relents. “Let’s experience your circling technique! Rotate a cow in our heads for us.”

: “It works … better if … do you think you could try to … reach out to me first? Weaving flourishing in with pellucid seems to be best.”

: “One flourishing-pellucid on bread, coming up!” He leans forward again, gently pressing his forehead to hers. He summons forth flourishing gnosis- a bit like preparing a bed of soil for planting of a seed.

[Take Half]

reaches forth with pellucid gnosis- it weaves and winds, taking right angles in incredibly precise movements, simulating every instance along a curve, wholly making an unseen spherical cover, and slowly molding it into a four-legged, wide headed… beast.

thinks of the legs, and where they meet at the body, and ever so slightly carves into it longways. Salme, if you could help, what does a solid bit of shoulder look like?

twines flourishing through the base he’s built, imagines seeds cracking open, rooting, after a downpour of pellucid rain, and then the beast—cow, she thinks of soft short fur, big brown eyes, blood up to her elbows and pulling back thick hides to stretch and scrape and stretch and scrape again. But not parchment, no. She thinks of the shoulder, the thick, heavy yellowed bones still embedded there, the odd jutting shape of it, the marbled fat. It will hang in a butcher shop window, not as long as a flank, but big—about the size of his torso, maybe larger.

holds the big spread of meat in a mind hand, and the tendrils of pellucid gnosis swirl to something smaller, yet still very large in and of itself- a long, cylindrical beast, short and stout, with a stubby snout, adorable curled tail, and yards of unharvested, uncooked flesh, just hanging from its jowls and rotund midsection. MEATY. What DOES uncooked bacon look like, Salme?

thinks that it’s less exciting than you would think. A compact rectangle of meat—fatty, heavily striated, like a rock that’s been made after years and years of silt deposit. Likely wrapped in paper in the front window. She’d like two packages, if possible, but if not she can deal with it. You can cut that block of meat into strips either thin or thick as you like. Her favorite butcher in the Courtyard sells both bacon and beef. She sends also the coolness of her shop, her steady way with handling the meat, her matter-of-fact approach to the whole thing.

’s mouth is watering as he pulls back from the mind meld.

: “I think I got it.”

gives Salme a quick kiss on the forehead (it’s juicier than usual) before heading over to one of the work tables. He lays his hands on top of the tables, and with both eyes open, he holds the image of the beef shoulder in his head, and thinks of the Almachadtan butcher’s table, and how it would hold such a massive slab of animal goodness. Right there. In front of him. Like he could just reach into the tabletop- which now has a thin veneer of violet covering it- and… lift it up and off the table…

: “Ahh c’mon now, just need like… twenty, thirty pounds of the stuff…”

: “What I need…” he looks about the workshop, and under the tables…

: “Is a tarp.” He finds a large blue tarp, nearly folded and clean, underneath one of the tables, sitting in a small alcove.

: “And something… hm. Something approximating the size of what we’re looking for.”

: “Something we don’t mind losing.” He winks.

: “Hmm.” She turns to the very large … ‘Freshness Unit’ was a term that was involved in the name of this contraption, but it spelled some acronym she can’t remember. She pulls out a truly large bottle of some kind of … that weird gin concoction they’re so fond of here. “This is sardine-infused gin. It was forced upon me. Will that work?”

: “Yeah, that’ll give us a good starting point.” He sniffs the head of the bottle first.

: “…sardine-infused. The brewers were really on something, huh!”

: “Did you know that same Kushtaka is working on making an alcohol from fish?” She says, faintly. She remembers the taste of the sardine-infused stakt. She kind of wishes she could go back to not knowing what a sardine was.

glances at Salme, and his look is half-wonderment and half-apprehension.

: “Well, I suppose it won’t kill anyone… right?”

carefully takes the bottle with both hands and lays it onto the table. He holds it in place with one hand, and swirls the tarp up and over the bottle, covering it and his hand and a fair bit of the tabletop. He reaches back under the tarp with his other hand now.

: “Okay, so… Something more… this size.. or like this…” Something’s moving under the tarp. The curved form is squaring up. His forearms go from pointing towards each other to becoming parallel, and coming apart…

turns his head and gasps, gawp-faced, to Salme.

: “Ohhhh I think we got it!”

removes one hand from under the tarp and gives it a smell… and then a tiny lick.

, who hadn’t hand hare mouth covered but who had definitely had her hands clasped in front of her near her mouth, throws both hands in the air and gives a loud whoop.

adds, “You really shouldn’t lick uncooked meat, Sininen.”

: “I don’t think my hand counts as uncooked meat. It’s the salt, yeah?”

removes both hands from under the tarp and then dramatically whips it off to the side, revealing mounds of marbleized, glistening beef, and a thick rectangle of pig-side, dense and streaked with fat.

: “I think touching it and then …. well, it doesn’t matter. You did. You did it!” She hugs him, hard. Grinning. “Thank you so much.”

: “…a bonus!”

eyes shift left and right in hasty thought, before adding. “…yeah I absolutely did this, too!”

laughs but picks up the coin, examining it. “The same as when Aury summoned the Traveler’s Guide.” She tilts in, frowning at the letters that make no sense. “Did we ever figure out what was up with that coin?”

: “Don’t think so! Maybe if we collect enough of them, we can turn them in for a prize somewhere.”

: “Ah… ahahah…”

: “Oh man! Where’d this one come from?” He gently holds aloft the small bundle of wax paper with the… “It’s… provolone!”

: “They had this on Almachadta?! Man, I must not have looked hard enough.”

: “Provolone?” she leans in to peer at it. “No. I don’t think we have that one on Almachadta.”

tucks the coin back into the cheese—box. “Someone loves you very much I think,” she says, looking curiously at it.

: “Don’t supposed they’re inclined to any answers?” She does wonder if they can turn them in for a prize. Maybe Awoken is right. They have … wooden tokens at festivals that work similarly?

carefully weighs the bundle of cheese in his hands, mulling over Salme’s words. “Yeah… yeah, I suppose so.”

: “Well, I mean… of course someone does! There’s someone who does in this very room, too!” He winks at Salme.

picks up the small pack of bacon and loads it into the … Freshness Unit … what was it called? The Freshness Unit. “Of course I love you. Adore you even. But I cannot manifest your favorite cheese out of nowhere, alas. Would you help me lift the beef into the Freshness Unit?”

: “Sure!” He goes to lift one side of the beef, and looks up into the sky… well, no, it’s more like the ceiling, since they’re indoors, but he looks up and he looks directly at you- yes you- and gently smiles, before giving a small nod of approval.

takes her side of the beef and heaves it into the Freshness Unit. That will keep it pristine until she can process it. She’s reserved a room with a meat grinder—she’s trying not to think too hard about why there’s a room with a meat grinder in the Academy—to process it into patties. But that’s for later. “Do you want to hold on to your cheese blessing?”

: “Absolutely.” He loops an arm around the smoothly-laquered basket, carrying it as one would a basket of flowers, taking care not to swing its contents out and down the hallways.

tows the Freshness Unit … was the next word something with an N? behind her. “The meat-grinding room is a couple floors down,” she says. “Did you want to try to steal something from Sanctuary since we’re doing liminal bullshit or should that wait for the void?”

: “Yeah, I don’t see why not!”

does not need to consult Aurelius’ map as she calls the elevator and … levitates the FU into it.

: “What exactly do we want to steal though… hmm…”

: “I mean, we can find decent potato bread here, for the outside.”

: “There weren’t really light sources, everything was just… sort of bright naturally.”

: “Something that has a likelihood of being old, I think.” She pats the top of the FU like it’s a well-behaved, very large dog. “Do you think it could be a bad idea? Aurelius seemed to think so.”

: “I think some of the crystalline flowers would look kind of nice arranged around some of the sea ferns and rainbow-esque shells, but I don’t think everyone would share that same feeling.”

: “OH!”

: “Okay. I think I got one.”

: “Oh? What did you think of?”

: “There were some odd sauces there that I didn’t try as part of breakfast. Sure, breakfast was overall weird, but I’m kind of curious on what those sauces were like.”

: “Oh. Hm. Well, while those could be interesting in terms of food, I was thinking some sort of artifact instead? Maybe … some of that weird sand we fought on outside Sanctuary? Maybe … there were wall sconces? One of those too?”

: “Oh, yeah, that’d be better.”

: “One of those stone slabs we woke up on are probably too big though,” she says thoughtfully.

: “Guess I’m still hungry from fishing out the beef.”

: “Okay, sconces, yeah I’m remembering them now… weren’t too big, so there’s gotta be something in the grinding room that wound approximate.”

: “I mean, it was a lot of work.” The elevator dings and she floats the FU out. “And that, or I have more weird sauces in here.” She pats the top of the FU. “This bad boy can hold so many weird sauces, Awa.”

: “FU? Yeah!”

laughs, and slides open the door to the prep room. This one has been thoroughly sterilized, and all the surfaces polished to a sheen. It’s filled with all sorts of knives and grinders. Salme taps the FU, and has it dump the beef out on one of the prep tables. Then she shrugs out of her jacket, and removes her transparent, airy top. “Are you sure you want to be here for this? It’s kind of gross,” she says as she eyes the array of knives before selecting a large, wicked looking one for the initial de-boning.

: “I know how the sausage is made, it doesn’t bother me. Besides, I figured you’d want to have a look at the sconce I’m about to steal.”

: “That’s true. Also if you can manage a handful of that weird sand outside the Sanctuary? Though we might be testing our luck there.”

draws one of the large, flat, butcher’s carver from a butcher’s block, twirling it in his fingers quite dextrously yet dangerously close to his face.

sets to work de-boning the beef shoulder. If the knife isn’t up to the task, she uses a lick of tenebrous gnosis to cut through muscle, gristle, fat.

: “Hah! Of course.” Her shoulders work, muscles shifting elegantly as she dismembers the shoulder. She is not an expert—no one would mistake her for a professional butcher—but she has done this before, as she has done many odd jobs around Almachadta before, and her hands are steady and don’t waver. “Is that your sacrificial knife, Awa?” she asks, a smile in her voice.

: “Gonna borrow this, thanks!” He carefully picks up Salme’s Jacket, carefully laying the butcher’s carver onto a table, and then the jacket over the carver. “Sure is. Imagine crossed weapons above a fireplace. Now, it’ll be crossed carvers along a hallway. Except it’s only one carver.”

: “Well. That will be hysterical if he discovers it. Hopefully he doesn’t track us here, though. I suspect if he wanted to he probably could.”

thinks that maybe Aurelius was right and this is a bad idea, but she’s too far down this path now.

: “Even odds he finds it amusing that we’re out and causing ‘trouble.’ Because really, we don’t cause any trouble, we’re solving problems and at least working towards solving bigger ones.”

: “Just, y’know, sometimes interactions get off on the wrong foot. Intentionally. For… some reason.”

: “You think that was intentional? I think he was trying his best. His awkward, depressing, miserable best.” She slices the last bit of beef free from the bone, and sets it aside and begins to work on slicing the chunks up into thicker steaks. “Hmm, though.”

thinks of him, all of him, the liminal-tenebrous-radiant entwined in him, his azure eyes and fey smile, and sends out a thick, vining rope of flourishing gnosis to curl around his ankle. It doesn’t restrain; he cannot pull it taut and would not be able to pull it taut unless he left the room. The other end is twined around her wrist. “Just in case.”

blows a kiss with his open hand, and reaches under the jacket. One of those sconces is about this size, right? Except it jutted out a bit more. Had a bit more fullness to it. How did it hang onto the wall? Gnosis, I bet. And through gnosis, shall it be stolen.

I must advise against attempting that action.

Aw. You’re no fun.

: “Don’t suppose you could tell us why?” she asks, stacking her cuts of beef and walking over to the meat grinder.

It would not lead to a satisfactory outcome for anyone involved.

snorts through his nose, and reluctantly whips the jacket off the table and over one of his shoulders. A hand lies on the flat of the blade, a finger tapping upon it.

: “Well, someone’s lookin’ out for us on both ends, I see.”

quirks an eyebrow. “What, you can’t see that?”

: “They’re the same as Aury and Jorule. It’s a whole theme,” she observes, cranking the meat grinder methodically.

sighs. “Which one’s the Jorule…”

: “The one that talks like this. Though mostly because the clueless ‘what just happened’ is 100% Aury.”

: “At least grinding the meat is going really smoothly. Haven’t lost a finger yet despite the sudden distraction.”

: “Would you still love me even if I accidentally lost a finger in the meat grinder and fed it to you?” She says distractedly. The grinding is going very smoothly. She’s going to send everything through twice, and then mix the chuck with the brisket cut from the shoulder. Then she’ll form them into patties, stick them into the FU, and they’ll be good to go, whenever this actually happens.

: “I would. I would completely digest the ground Salmeat and fully absorb it into myself and become even more powerful!”

laughs and for the first time her attention does waver for a moment. “You’re absolutely impossible,” she says, like it’s a compliment. Luckily the moment of distraction does not lead to her losing her finger, because she has no wish to become ground Salmeat. “Though, if we’re done committing liminal crimes, would you like to help me with this, Sininen?”

: “It’d be my pleasure.” He stops messing around with the butcher’s carver, wiping it down with a clean rag before replacing it into the butcher’s block. He hangs her jacket onto a set of wall hooks by the entryway door, shrugs his coat off to hang it up likewise, and moves to work with his hands (after washing them!)