#if the bottom of the vessel is getting blackened on the outside

[educart-books2023]

Answer:

(b) the fuel is not burning completely.

[silaslich]

I’m only human, can’t you see?

Simon “Ghost” Riley x f!reader x voyeur!Soap

Wc - 2k

Summary - after a close call the adrenaline runs high, Soap stumbles across a pretty sight

Cw - 18+, smut, noncon voyeurism

Part 2 - here 👀

Ghost has to shove two fingers into her mouth to keep her quiet, or at least, that was the idea.

Their adrenaline is too high, pumping through them like gasoline, one spark and they’ll burst-flames licking and heat too much to bear. They’re clutching at each other, her nails bite into his skin, leaving little crescent moon shapes in the back of his neck and the joint of his wrist - his hands are fully occupied too. One hand splays under her thigh to keep her tight against him, pressed back into the wall while her legs twine around his waist. The other hand is to her mouth- gloved fingers pressed down firmly over her tongue.

She moans and it’s a garbled mess of something filthy. Loose and punched from her chest, striking like a battering ram against Ghost’s core. It sends a flooding burn straight to his cock, already buried deep inside of her, enveloped in the wet heat of her pussy as she sucks him in, he drives himself deeper. Impossibly deep. “Fuck” he grits out. All but spits it into her neck, pressing forward so he’s crushing her, his legs almost giving way when her cunt squeezes him. He can’t do much more, he’s lost it, his grip on his senses is long gone, buried in the sand back there along with the enemy.

They’re covered in blood, crusted with it, splashed across their faces and woven into their clothes. It sticks to them. The smell, copper pennies and metallic ink. It plumes on the air between them. It’s stifling as they share breath. Panting against each other, fogging each others skin with it. He’s sweating, it sticks to his mask and runs down his neck, but she sucks away the droplets when she tugs the mask up to kiss him. Licks and sucks the taste of salt from his skin, sucks the flesh between her teeth till the blood vessels burst, pulling that hiss of pain from his chest that she shouldn’t like as much as she does. Then she’s stealing his lips again when he retracts his fingers from her mouth. Spit connects them together in a thick ribbon and she’s quick to sink her teeth into his bottom lip. “Want you to ruin me, Ghost” she smiles, delirious yet knowing, drunk on bloodlust and adrenaline. All of them had almost died back there. Too close for comfort to the bullets and flames, smoke pluming and shrouding them as they step out of the blackened clouds, soot in their throats and covering their eyelashes.

It feels like their skin is flaying, shredded up and pulled away. Everything hurts. Burns like fire, an itch that needs scratching, it feels like they need to run miles and miles to get rid of this buzz. This high that is left in the wake of near death, it’s suffocating, it tastes of fury and gunpowder.

He’s fucking her like he hates her. Like he truly hates her guts, and that’s what she needs. It’s what they both need. The safe house is barren-rickety where it’s structure almost sways along with the sand-storm winds outside, yet it’s enough to keep them covered until evac can pick them up and cart them off to the next near death experience.

Her head knocks back against the wall with a heavy thunk, throat exposed for Ghost’s teeth to sink into, hips knocking into her till he can hear her breath stutter, struggling to match the brutal pace he sets. “Fuck- Ghost” she whines, drilling her hips downward, meeting the slap of his pelvis as it drives into her. He’s holding her up, carrying her weight in one arm like it’s nothing, balancing her on his cock as he presses her into the wall. It’s uncomfortable, yet she can’t feel it, too drunk on his cock and the comedown of a death match.

“Need to feel you cum, sweetheart” his teeth bruise, sinking too deep. He’ll draw blood in a minute. Her cunt flexes around him again and he throws his head back with the most delicious sound she thinks she’s ever heard come out of him. Her smile is lopsided, eyes blown wide, watching as Ghost bites his tongue, hissing when she bounces herself on his cock. She’s quick to repay the favour, leaning to balance her weight evenly before she’s shoving her fingers into his mouth, slipping too far back- making him gag. His tongue is instinctive, pushes up and flattens against her fingers, licking the creases between her index and middle finger, she moans.

“You’re loud” she hisses, kissing over her fingers where they lay in his mouth. Ghost’s brows knit together and his eyes narrow, then his teeth are sinking into her fingers. Only slightly, a threat- a tease. She retracts them, her own eyes narrowing now, she sucks them into her own mouth, all the while Ghost’s eyes don’t ever leave her mouth or fingers. She swears she feels him grow harder inside of her.

“How can’t I be?” He grunts, punctuates the outward thought with a cruel drive of his hips that makes her gasp. “This pussy treats me too well, darlin’” he smirks, he can see the blush that runs from her cheeks all the way down her neck, disappearing down her chest where her clothes are still unfortunately covering her from his greedy eyes. Suddenly her lips are on his, kissing with too much tongue and teeth. Everything about this is too much, too greedy, too much to take and never enough to give. She wraps her arms around his neck and keeps him locked tight against her while he fucks her with abandon like this’ll be the last time they see each other alive - where they’re going, that might just be the case.

Soap’s curiosity is much like a cats, one day, it’ll get him killed.

Everything was a blur. The entire mission, the whole ordeal, a blur of blood and bullets and bad ideas. They’d all crashed into the safe house and dispersed, their ears ringing and pulses jumping-everything is always too overwhelming. They’ve all done this enough times before, when their vision stops swimming and their breathing evens - that’s when they know it’s time to check in.

Price and Gaz take up some weathered old sofas that sit in one of the downstairs rooms, practically crash into them without caring what’s probably living inside of them. Johnny guesses their milky-white colouring isn’t from the material itself.

Ghost and the other sergeant seem to evaporate into thin air. Practically gone before Soap can even turn around to ask if they’re okay. He doesn’t see where they go. It leaves him to pace around the ground level, loops of what seem to have been a living room and paced lines in the dust covered floor of the kitchen. Nature calls and he’s not exactly bothered about pissing in front of Gaz and Price, but something steers him toward the stairs, something deep down in the marrow of his bones seems to guide him there and he doesn’t know what it is. Alas- he follows.

His hand barely touches the splintering banister that leads to the next level of the house when Price whistles for his attention, Johnny turns his head but his body stays rooted. Price tips his hat with one finger, lifting it from where it’d been laid over his face like a shade. “Don’t go pokin’ round in shit, Soap” Price’s eyes are narrow, a warning carried in them “you’ll be the one that comes off worse”. It’s too cryptic and Johnny just needs a piss, he knows how much he’s lying to himself. He follows his gut and ascends the stairs regardless.

It’s a relatively small space, the entire house. Two levels of a handful of rooms, a bathroom can’t be far away, but Johnny knows that’s not what he’s looking for. He stares down at his boots, covered in dust and blood, his cheeks as red as the crimson stains there. He can hear her, he can hear Ghost, it’s filthy, but his gut twists with something far too familiar to misplace. The Scot holds his breath and listens like it’s a whisper from the man upstairs himself. Catching each breath and whimper that are punched out of her chest. Johnny clenches his jaw so hard it feels like his teeth with crack and his cock swells in the constraints of his jeans- seeking out the source of those blissful noises that his ears can’t quite catch enough of.

He feels wrong, downright filthy actually, but he can’t bring himself to turn away- he’s entranced. It’s not just her; the sound of her flesh slapping against Ghost’s, the way he hisses at how tight she is. Johnny isn’t a shy man, not by any means, but he’s certainly more then surprised when it’s the sounds she pulls from Ghost that serve him to grow even harder- achingly so.

“So tight, sweetheart-fuck” Ghost’s voice sounds so clear, the mask is gone. Or at least most of it is, Johnny assumes. There’s no barrier to stop the husk of his tone, the pure gravel and smoke to it as it rumbles out of his wide chest. She mewls something unintelligible and chokes on her words when Ghost must do something she likes, practically wailing Ghost’s name like he’s stabbed her in the chest. Soap can’t see, maybe he has hurt her. Johnny can only imagine it as his eyes burn a hole through the wooden door. Every detail flashing across his vision, it’s perverted, but his body is taking complete charge here. That’s what he keeps telling himself, repeats it over and over again in his head when he quietly unbuckles his belt and sinks his hand beneath the waistband of his boxers and takes his cock in his palm. He fights the urge to hiss, thumbing over the taught head of his cock, gripping it so hard he might rip the fuckin’ thing clean off. He’s not the only one that’s pent up, clearly, but he seems to be the only one that can’t do much good about it.

So- he leans one palm against the doorframe and angles his ear to the crack in the door in an attempt to not let anything be lost through the rickety old wood. He starts to pump himself quicker, chasing the sound of Ghost’s skin smacking against the alcove of her thighs, it sounds so wet and sloppy- she must be dripping; fuck. Soap bites his lip and his screws his eyes shut as he jerks his cock harder- faster. Chasing the same thing they are. He can hear it in the way she sighs and whines when she finally says “fuck- I’m cumming Ghost- please let me cum- fuck” she might be crying, it sounds that way.

Ghost doesn’t say anything, worried he’ll shout so loud the roof will come off when her cunt clamps around him in the same rhythm he fucks her with- fast and harsh and too much. Soap bristles, he’s close, his spine locks up and his whole body shivers. He can try to imagine them, what position Ghost is fucking her in; her chest pressed into the wall as he bends her over and ruts into her from behind or pushing her down into the floorboards while she’s on her back and he’s drilling his hips into her pelvis. Johnny’s brain can conjure so many ways- but it won’t change the fact that it’s him who’s outside wanking like a pervert.

Something rumbles low, Ghost’s chest echoing like a kraken, deadly and sinful.

Johnny cums to the sound of Ghost as he spills inside of her.

It’s a miracle Soap keeps quiet, not silent, no. He’s drawn blood to his own palm from attempting that. He just hadn’t realised he wasn’t quite quiet enough until his heart drops fully from out of his arse at the sound of his lieutenants voice -

“Didn’t peg you for a voyeur, Johnny” Ghost pants, cock still seated fully inside of her.

[najia-cooks]

[ID: A plate of light brown bumpy flatbread with blackened spots, surrounded by za'tar and green olives. End ID]

خبز طابون / Khobz taboon (Palestinian flatbread)

Khobz taboon ("taboon bread") is a soft, chewy Palestinian flatbread. It may be eaten with olive oil and za'tar, but it is best known as the base of مسخن (musakhkhan), where it is topped with spiced aromatics and perhaps chicken.

Khobz taboon gets its name from the vessel it is traditionally cooked in—an outdoor, shallow conical oven with an opening at the top and a clay or metal cover to trap heat. Taboons may also have an opening at the side through which the fire can be stoked, especially in the east of Palestine. These ovens were historically made from a mixture of local clay and hay, but have more recently also been constructed from clay treated to be sturdier, or from metal.

A taboon is used by packing flammable material, such as hay, fabric, animal dung, wood, and charcoal, around the outside of the oven and letting it burn overnight; the fire transfers thermal energy to the clay, and to the river stones, sand, glass, or flint stones (صوان, "ṣawwān") that form the base of the oven. The ash is then brushed away, and the flattened dough is placed on the stones or stuck to the walls of the oven to cook. The clay and stones will continue to release thermal energy and cook things throughout the day. The clay and ash give a distinctive flavor to anything cooked inside the taboon, making this method a source of nostalgia for many people who have transitioned to cooking in indoor ovens.

Khobz taboon was traditionally made with whole wheat flour. Most people today use a blend of around two parts white flour to one part whole wheat, or else all white flour; they may even add milk or milk powder to ensure a very soft dough. This recipe uses a blend of flours to combine the nutty flavor of whole wheat dough with the pliancy of white dough. It also begins with an optional pre-ferment to mimic the traditional Palestinian method of including a piece of dough from the previous day's bread into each new batch (like a pâte fermentée) giving a rich and slightly sour flavor to the final bread. It calls for the use of rocks to imitate the bottom of a taboon; the rocks give the khobz its distinctive dimpled texture, and ensure that no interior pocket forms in the bread.

In the years following 2007, the siege Israel had imposed on Gaza caused a shortage of cooking gas that led to a resurgence in the use of taboons. The ovens were used to bake bread and to grill sweet potatoes during the time of their winter harvest. Meanwhile, in the West Bank, Israeli military forces repeatedly destroyed taboon ovens and assaulted villagers who tried to defend them, as Israeli settlers from nearby villages complained about the smoke that the ovens produced. Some of these ovens had been used to bake bread for entire families of 40 or more people. Palestinians continue to build, use, and defend these ovens, despite the fact that Israeli law de facto forbids Palestinians in the West Bank to build anything.

Today, Israel is deliberately targeting and destroying bakeries in refugee camps that had been supplying bread to tens of thousands of people in Gaza, continuing a long campaign of starvation of the Palestinian people.

Support Palestinian resistance by calling Elbit System's (Israel's primary weapons manufacturer) landlord; and donating to Palestine Action's bail fund.

Equipment:

A large, shallow mixing bowl, like a Moroccan qus'a

A large (12"), shallow clay cooking vessel, such as the bottom of a Moroccan tajine (one that is rated for very high temperatures), or a large baking tray

Assorted smooth river rocks of varying sizes, from 1 to 3" in diameter.

Make sure that your rocks have been thoroughly cleaned, and that they do not contain any fissures, cracks, or veins that could contain water (this water, once heated in the oven, could cause the rocks to crack open). Instead of river rocks, I used lava rocks designed for use in a clay tanoor. You just need something to provide thermal mass and give a bumpy texture.

Ingredients:

Makes 3 large breads.

For the pre-ferment:

140g whole wheat flour

1/2 tsp active dry yeast

140g water

You may also use a pâte fermentée that you already have (just adjust the ratio of white to whole wheat flour added later accordingly), or a sourdough starter. The hydration of the starter doesn't matter, since you will be adding water by eye later.

For the bread:

330g bread flour or all-purpose flour

30g whole wheat flour

5g salt

Water

If you skipped the pâte fermentée step, add 170g (rather than 30g) of wheat flour at this stage, as well as 1/2 Tbsp of active dry yeast. I have not tested the recipe this way.

Instructions:

For the pâte fermentée:

1. Mix flour and yeast in a small mixing bowl. Add water and stir to combine. Cover and leave out at room temperature for a day, or in the refrigerator for up to three days. At the end of the rising time, it should be about one and a half times its original size.

For the bread:

This recipe makes a high hydration dough that will need techniques such as slapping and folding to knead effectively.

1. Mix flours and salt in a very large, shallow mixing bowl. Add your pâte fermentée and mix to combine.

2. Add water until the flour comes together into a soft, sticky dough and continue keading. Have a bowl of water on your workstation. Every time the dough starts to stick to your hands or the sides of the bowl, wet your hands and rinse down the side of the bowl with some water. This will gradually add water to the dough.

3. You will notice the dough growing smoother and laxer. At this point, start kneading by repeatedly folding the edges of the dough in towards the center. Do this by occasionally wetting your hands, then running a hand along the side of the bowl and under the edge of the dough to unstick it from the bowl; then fold. You will get stuck less often if you try to touch the dough as lightly and briefly as possible. Every few folds, dimple the surface of the dough all over with your fingertips. You will have been kneading for about 10 minutes at this point.

The dough should become more smooth and less bumpy—you will notice it holding its shape and becoming more stretchy as gluten forms. It should form into a ball when you fold the corners in and hold its shape for a minute, but then gradually expand to take the shape of the bowl. I added about 2 1/2 cups of water total (in dry conditions) during steps 2 and 3.

4. At this point, the dough is wet enough that the slap and fold method is the best way to knead. Wet your hands and again unstick the dough from the sides of the bowl. Hook your hands under the dough and quickly pull it all up into the air; fold the hanging bottom part of the dough under, and plop the dough back down, folding it on top of the part you plopped down earlier. Give the bowl a quarter turn and repeat. Do this continually for another few minutes.

5. When the dough is very smooth and lax, smear some olive oil on the sides of the bowl and under the dough, and pat some oil on top.

6. Cover the bowl and bulk ferment the dough at room temperature for 8 hours, or for 16-24 hours in the fridge. At the end of the rising time, you should see bubbles beginning to form on the surface of the dough.

To shape and bake:

1. Place a layer of rocks at the bottom of a clay cooking vessel or baking sheet. Put the sheet in the top third of the oven and preheat your oven to 550 °F (290 °C), or as hot as it will go.

2. Meanwhile, fold the edges of the risen dough over into the middle a few more times with damp hands. Pinch off a large piece of dough (about the size of two fists), and fold the sides over into the middle to make a neat packet.

3. Drop the packet of dough onto a heavily floured surface, and flip to flour both sides. Pat the dough flat, then throw it back and forth between your hands, catching the edge each time as you spin it through the air, like a pizza crust, to stretch it into a circle about 1/4" (1/2cm) thick with a diameter of about 10" (25cm).

You may also stretch and pat the dough out on a flat surface.

4. Remove the tray from the oven. Flip the dough circle over the back of your hand to transfer it and lay it down over the hot rocks. Re-stretch it into a circle, if necessary.

5. Place the tray back in the oven and cook for 5-7 minutes, until the top of the bread has golden brown spots. Repeat with each piece of dough, leaving the rocks in the oven for a few minutes between each one to allow them to come back up to temperature.

6. (Optional): Hold each flatbread directly over a gas flame for a minute or two to blacken a few spots and mimic the flavor that a wood-fired oven would give to your khobz.

You may also use a method similar to the dhungar technique to smoke your bread. Place each piece of bread one at a time into a large vessel with a closely fitting lid, alongside a small bowl. Light a piece of wood on fire and drop it into the bowl; then cover the vessel with the lid as you allow the wood to smoke for a minute or two.

[dear-yandere]

— oyasumi dazai.

ada! osamu dazai x reader.

cw: yandere, romanticization of suicide and death, nihilism, depersonalization, implied death, themes of regret and grief.

wc: 1985.

disclaimer: the following content does not depict a healthy relationship, please read the warnings carefully. by click the read more button, you are giving your consent to read this content.

“isn’t it lovely, all alone?” 

i.

he dreams of death.

the stench of iron and the sight of bones is nothing new, but he dreams of death like one would dream of the future. he supposes he is nobody, because no one ever dreams of their own passing (not willingly). people are pushed to that point, betrayed and hurt and put through enough suffering that life no longer seems worth living. whether life is or isn’t worth the effort lays with them, dazai reckons, but the urge to reason death from life has never crossed his mind. to him, to live is to suffer — that is, suffering is inevitable. within the same vein, it must mean that to live is to make the best of that suffering, but what is life if you’d never asked to be born?

the question is foreign and familiar all the same — bittersweet on his tongue, a plague on his mind. his life has always been filled with nothing. the smile of loving parents was a sight he’s unfamiliar with. in comparison to the misfortunes of many others, his parents were saints; and, in comparison to the fortunes of others, they were demons. and yet, that laid the problem. they have a role in this world, a calling, a purpose. but dazai… he is nothing. nothing but a black stain on this white earth. from the day he took his first breath, death has been both friend and foe, a tease and a reprieve for a boy who’d never wished to breathe life.

but, where death comes easy to others, it is nothing short of a luxury for him. it does not welcome him with open arms, nor does it even look his way. suicide after suicide attempt and yet he is still alive. and he has to wonder, is life a gift — as everyone claims it is — or a curse? and why? why was he gifted, why was he cursed? the distinction makes no difference to him, but why must it be him? was he brought into this world for a purpose? for some sort of greater good, or evil? or do the gods simply enjoy the frailty of human life and the suffering it comes with?

of all the people in this wretched world, why is he alive?

ii.

from his first breath, he begun to blacken. his heart is not his own, has never been his own (it beats for someone who is, and never will be, him.) his body holds nothing but muscle and blood and sinew, a vessel he’s been forced into without second thought. he’s never thought of it as anything more. not a temple nor a burden, just… some thing. something that is not his. something that isn’t meant to be his, as if he’s an outsider looking in through the hollows of his eyes.

humanity was always something unbeknownst to him, something he could never quite get a grasp of. the thoughts of others could never quite fit into the process of his mind, its recesses far too unaccustomed to how others should or shouldn’t feel. their expressions are unreadable at all times, a fault that has led to bullying and alienation. he never shed a tear; loneliness is to be expected when you have nowhere to fit in. he is pure black. he may as well be invisible to the human eye, no different than an ant that passersby would carelessly step on without thought. he is no different from anyone else, because he is worse.

had he sold his happiness to the devil in a past life? is life his punishment, or is this how dull it’s meant to be?

cynical — a word used to describe him all too often, but it’s never been dear to dazai’s heart. words, in fact, have never been able to describe him, not in a way he ever found fitting. what does it mean to be cynical? what does it mean to be human? what does it mean to be alive, to have a beating heart, to have feelings? twenty-one years on this earth and he’s never once found an answer.

life, it seems, is something not meant for the likes of him.

and yet, suicide never got him anywhere. whether it be the fault of dumb luck or his own ineptitude, dazai could never die. it’s laughable, how even though his heart beats without his own will, he cannot make it stop. as if some cruel god reveled in how much torture it is for him to live a life he did not ask for. every noose left him choking for air but never took his life. every gun shot blanked or missed his brain entirely. every stab and cut never hit his arteries, never allowed him the luxury of bleeding out. like water in a vase, waiting until the surface tension is broken by a slight drop and starts to overflow — dazai spent his days in hopes of when his own heart would overflow and spill.

life was given to him, and life will not be taken by his own hands.

iii.

he dreams of death so often, his only nightmare is awaking the next day.

he will only ever just be… him. forever living, forever beating and breathing — the thought of experiencing life like others do is something out of a children’s book, to him. to strive for goals, to be torn apart by failures, to get up after being knocked down again and again. he understands it in theory, the process of living, but to put any further meaning on his or anyone else’s existence seems beyond the furthest reaches of his mind.

nothing makes sense.

“i never understood the fuss over weddings, going so far as to plan one’s entire life around it.” he says one day, eyes locked on the black coffee in his hands. darkness always did make him feel at home. “funerals are much more exciting. i’ve planned mine already.” a smile twitches onto his face, one of genuine happiness and excitement. death is like a dear friend, one he feuds with often, and yet one he adores all the same.

but those aren’t words most would say. weddings are a day of joy, but to him, they can only bring grief, one unlike the kind funerals bring to others. the happiest day of his life will be the day he dies, and yet…

he finds himself wanting to marry you.

you, as beautiful as ever, crack a knowing smile and play his words off, shooing them from the air like a pesky insect. the coffee in your hands is almost pure white by this point; drowned in creams and syrups and sugars. he wonders if it’s a reflection of your heart or your soul. “but osamu, i’ve already planned our wedding. you wouldn’t die before we got married, would you?”

he smiles. it’s a reflection of your soul.

he wouldn’t dream of it.

iv.

there’s a reason for everything, or so he’s heard. a mantra mostly uttered by religious heretics, and yet the sentiment was enough to get him thinking; is there a reason he cannot die? is there a reason he’s doomed to live, until whatever entity that tortures him grows bored of his plights? is there a reason he’s alive?

you’re nothing new, nothing he hasn’t seen time and time again. but, he knew: you are his reason. he is a person that someone like you should never get close to. the sentiment is ingrained in his very being, to stay away from you. he knows already: that he will only taint you, corrupt you, drag you down to rock bottom with him. and, if there is a place lower than here, it would surely be hell.

you deserve better than that. you deserve better than him.

“if i were to ever unforgivably hurt you, promise me this.” his heart tugs uselessly, his mind already made up. “if i ever hurt you very, very deeply, please kill me at once.”

he places your hands at his neck and presses. your fingers don’t curl around the flesh like he wants them to, and he knows then that he will never deserve you. you are too good for him, too good to him; your heart is too white and his blackness will only taint it. but darkness cannot be without light. just as the pitch black can overtake the white, the white can overtake the pitch black. life is not solely black and white, he’s come to learn. to be born and to live is to tread through life in a series of greys. there is no good nor evil, only humanity. but, if he were to describe himself, he would surely be black.

“you’ll promise me this, right?”

you hesitate to answer. he caresses you gently, like his mother used to do for him. a means to quell and comfort others, he’s learned, and yet his heart still feels nothing but blackness. he’s never understood why you feel so hurt when he speaks of death so casually — his death is his and his alone, after all. no one would be affected, not for long. memories fade and hearts heal; he is but a stain on life, and no one would miss him.

“right, belladonna?” he prompts. “please say yes. to die by your hands would be my greatest joy. even more so if you were to join me in death, but i could never ask that of you…” he laughs at his desperation, knowing you’d never agree to a premature death like he. you have so much to live for, and he…

he was born to die.

“i promise, osamu.”

v.

you haunt him like a ghost.

he still dreams of death, because a world without you is one he no longer wants to live in. but you would want that for him. you know of his infatuation with the throes of death and yet you want the very thing he detests; for him to live. funny thing, life is. like an idiot ghost, he’d lived wandering through life without any direction. without purpose, dreams and ambitions never held any real meaning to him, not like they seemed to do for other people. the only thing that came close was… you.

he wants to hide like the coward he is. run away, start over again. forget this ever happened, forget he ever met you.

forget he ever tasted love.

it occurs to him that this must be that feeling of ‘regret’ he so often hears. and he’s reminded of odasaku, the only living being that had come close to eliciting some semblance of genuine emotion from dazai. the closest thing he could call to a true friend, dead. and, the closest thing he could call to a lover, gone. life isn’t meant for cowards like him.

but he lives. death has cursed him with the act of living; perhaps that’s a fate worse than death. he has spent all his life resisting the desire to end it, and he regrets never once succeeding. because now he has to live; to live with his own regrets and failures, all the things he said and didn’t say, all the things he did and shouldn’t have done.

he didn’t get to say ‘i love you’.

your tombstone is pristine and he wonders if death is just the same; clean. free of sin, free of burden. what a beautiful thought, one he’s begun to believe doesn’t truly exist. beauty is wasted on him and even death does not hear his pleas. because to seek beauty is human. to be played and toyed with is human.

and to break and destroy, is also human.

death is preferable to losing you. it laughed in his face when it came to claim you, took you away from him forever. to someplace far, far away — to someplace he can never belong.

he misses you. he wonders if you miss him too.

© dear-yandere, all rights reserved.

[vincess-princess]

ex malo bonum

Chapter 6.

Word count: 4751 Warnings: self-harm, graphic descriptions of violence

When Vince woke up, the water had already gone cold.

He jerked up, not understanding where he was, and would almost dip his head in the water if not for the small size of the bath. Blood that had settled down on the bottom stirred up, coloring the water in a sickly yellowish shade.

Vince looked around the room - he was alone in there - then climbed over the edge of the bath and hobbled to the door, leaving puddles on the floor. He turned the knob slowly, wincing at the sound it made, and opened the door just a little, just to peek outside.

No one was there.

Vince opened the door wider and examined the empty corridor. On the floor in front of the bathroom he saw his own bloody traces from last night, and they made everything that had happened to him come to mind, drowning Vince in painfully bright, detailed pictures and loud, harsh words.

He told Mick his name, he recalled. And Mick promised to “pass it to the boys”.

The mere thought of Nikki saying his name – pronouncing it with his own lips, with the same characteristic drawl he talked to him in that night - was revolting to Vince. He shouldn’t have revealed his name to Mick. He should have kept silent. It was better when they just called him “angel”, even though he wasn’t one already. It was a minor relief, but a relief nevertheless. It showed that he was different from them. That he still had some Heaven in him left.

Now he had a name, the only thing he managed to hide from them, to call it completely his; now he had a name, a simple, two-syllable, completely human name, and others were going to know him by it, like a mortal, like an earthly creature, like a de-

Vince clutched his head so hard it started to hurt. Pain was good; pain was familiar; pain was friendly.

His gaze wandered around the room and lingered on the cupboard above the sink. Vince limped towards it, tried to open it, but it turned out to be locked. Who the fuck locks their bathroom cupboards, he felt a wave of irrationally intense anger rising up in his chest, and Vince yanked the door knob in frustration.

It broke off, hit Vince on the head and fell onto the floor with a loud bang and a sound of glass shattering. Vince stumbled back, covering his head, until the back of his knees felt the cold edge of the bathtub. He fell back in the bath, splashing the water onto the floor and hitting his head on the wall.

A couple of minutes later, when sharp pain in Vince’s lower part of the body and throbbing in his head dulled down, he dragged himself out of the bath and plopped down on a toilet, estimating the damage. The floor was covered in water, but the clothes Mick had brought him remained miraculously dry. The cupboard door was lying on the floor with the mirror up. It broke into a few smaller pieces.

Vince picked up the shards so as not to accidentally step on them. He was going to settle them on the counter next to his clothes, but cast a quick glance onto them and dropped them right back on the floor, dangerously close to his bare feet.

His hair started to darken at the tips.

Vince knew for sure this wasn’t just a mortal vessel thing. A vessel’s dyed hair was supposed to start darkening at the roots, not at the tips. Vince let out a shaky sigh, only now realizing why all demons had pitch-black hair.

He was going to have it too.

Not paying attention to the shards hurting his feet, Vince limped to the cupboard, frantically searching for something that could help him. It was there. He could feel its cold steely sharpness inside. It called him.

He cut his finger on the little blade lying in the farthest corner of the cupboard. Vince pulled it out oh so carefully, balanced it on his finger. What an unfortunate coincidence, a wicked thought crossed his mind. Mick had been trying so hard to stop him from killing himself, and all his efforts were now going to waste. What a pity.

Vince glanced back at the door, making sure no one was there, and then began chopping off the darkened tips of his hair. The blade was too small for that and Vince’s fingers soon started bleeding, but he didn’t pay attention. Away with the demon in his body. He wasn’t welcome, he wasn’t going to get anything from him, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to get Vince. Vince would rather die than let him.

His hair, once so pretty, was now sticky and sloppily cut, and Vince felt a pang of regret. He let himself indulge in it it for a moment before proceeding to the next part. An image of Mick popped up in his mind, looking at Vince judgmentally with those clear blue eyes, but he pushed it out of his thoughts. To hell with Mick. Two-three quick movements – and it all would be over. Mick wouldn’t have time to stop him, hard as he tried.

Vince stretched out his left hand, examining the positions of veins under the paper-thin skin of his wrist. He held up the blade and pressed it into his skin right above one of the thickest ones. He wanted to press it deeper, but found himself hesitating for no reason and, angry at himself, slashed his arm from his wrist across to his elbow, leaving a deep cut that slowly but surely started oozing blood.

Vince looked at it as it was dripping down on the floor, mesmerized. Drops of blood were falling down and diluting in the puddles, his bleeding more and more intense. How did he still have so many of it left when most of the time he had spent in this house he had been bleeding?

But it was not enough. Too slow, too little. Vince slashed his arm one more time, drawing a cross of sorts on his skin. It swelled up immediately, one more trickle of blood painting the floor red.

He tried to put the blade in his other hand and do the same to the right, but his fingers, slippery with blood and weak from pain that slowly started to build up behind the cuts, couldn’t hold onto the thin piece of metal. Vince looked at it for a minute or two, a chaos of thoughts in his head, all swirling and darting back and forth up to the point where they made his head ache. So many of them, and he couldn’t get a single one concise or coherent.

Then he brought the blade up to his neck and pressed in lightly. A droplet of blood rolled down his neck and settled on his collarbone. Come on, the very familiar voice in his head said, the one Vince had been trying so thoroughly to mute. Come on, press harder. You wanted it so badly. Don’t miss the chance.

Vince’s hand started shaking. He grasped it with his other hand, but to no avail. The blade he clutched between his fingers vibrated slightly, warm and bloody. So attractive in its deadliness. So… frightening.

Vince raised it back to his throat again, but his hands were shaking so badly he couldn’t position the blade against his neck. Tears prickled in his eyes, tears of fear, hate, contempt of his own cowardice. He couldn’t even kill himself to rid the Earth of one more demon, let alone others.

Vince tried to recall the feverish dedication he experienced when he tried to kill himself not once, not twice, but numerous times. Only its echoes came to the surface of his fogged memories, but it was enough. Enough, because now it seemed terrifying.

It wasn’t dedication. It was an obsession.

Vince dropped the blade and kicked it away. He hurt his foot, but didn’t even notice it. He slumped onto the toilet seat and closed his eyes. Two words were bouncing back and forth in his mind.

Weak. Weak and pathetic.

Blood still streamed down his arm, but much less of it now – the cuts began to heal, too soon, too quickly. Vince watched indifferently the edges of the cuts grow together, leaving red swollen lines on his arm. It’s going to scar horrifically, he had a detached thought.

Wait. If it was going to scar, then everyone would be able to see it. Mick, especially. Who very clearly forbade him to do exactly this thing.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

Vince glanced at the door, cold fear rising in his chest. Mick was terrifying enough even in his calm state of mind. Not physically – his human form was barely taller than Vince’s and even thinner, - but even humans, who couldn’t step beyond their five senses, could feel the innate dread he gave off, let alone demons and angels. His anger would probably make Vince regret not killing himself. Not even probably. Most likely.

He looked around, panicking, trying to find the blade, to finish what he started, but it was long gone under a machine with a round window, atop of which his clothes were lying. Dropping on his knees in front of it and trying to stick a hand under it only resulted in his hand almost getting stuck and his knees getting hurt by little pieces of glass floating around. The water on the floor was slowly seeping into the corridor, and soon someone would definitely notice it and come check up on him. Which was the last thing Vince, with his hands and knees bloody and his hair cut sloppily, needed at the moment.

Wait, a thought flashed through his mind, hadn’t Mick said that he would feel it if Vince hurt himself? Why hadn’t he come already then?

Vince inhaled shakily, trying not to fall into a pit of panic and irrational decisions. Mick would have already come if he could feel Vince’s pain. Yet, he wasn’t there. Maybe he wasn’t home. Maybe he hadn’t noticed. Maybe if Vince played it cool, he wouldn’t notice at all. Maybe.

Vince fished out a suspiciously stinking mop from behind the toilet and wiped the water together with blood. He swept shards of glass and blackened hair under the strange machine, out of sight. The floor still remained stained, but it looked not worse than before – the demons seemed to not really care about tidiness. The mop was completely ruined, though, and followed glass and hair under the machine. Vince only hoped no one would try to move it in the foreseeable future.

Then Vince climbed into the bath again, shivering in cold water, and began washing.

***

Feeling clean was, unexpectedly, a very pleasant feeling. So this was what Tommy and Mick meant when they talked about providing his vessel’s well-being. Life was way easier when he hadn’t had a physical form, but also much blander. He couldn’t feel pain, but also couldn’t really appreciate the pleasure of not having it.

Mick’s pants were a little too tight for him, but not to the point of being uncomfortable. Tommy’s t-shirt, on the other hand, almost reached Vince’s knees, so he had to tuck it into the pants so as not to feel like an oversized human toddler.

He spent too much time picking tiny pieces of glass out of his feet, those that he had been too busy last night to pay attention to. Now that his emotions raged themselves out, and the empty, apathetic calmness that comes after a huge outburst replaced them, his body decided to remind him how badly he had treated it the night before.

The cuts on his arm had healed, but the scars, as he anticipated, hadn’t gone away, now like thick red threads on his skin. There was no way in hell Mick couldn’t notice them the second he saw Vince. How stupid he had been, Vince scolded himself wearily. He should have cut his thighs, the cuts would have been hidden by pants.

Vince would gladly spend the rest of his days in this bathroom if that meant not to have any contact with Nikki in any way. But that also meant no contact with Tommy, which he found slightly upsetting, and no contact with Mick, which was really intimidating. No one knew what Vince could expect from him, and the only sure-fire way to know was to ask the demon himself. More than that, it meant no freedom which could possibly lie just behind those walls, just a door away from him. So, after about half an hour of lingering and coming up with various dialogue options in his head, Vince took a deep breath and opened the door a little.

He observed the empty corridor through the gap, noticing his bloody traces remaining on the floor. No one seemed to care about cleanliness in this house.

Then Vince dared to open the door and step outside.

His every movement was accompanied by dull pain rising between his legs and shooting upwards in sharp pangs with each step. Nikki must have fucked him up down there so much that it couldn’t heal even more than a day (Vince assumed that’s how much time had passed) after that. Even his cuts took only a few hours. Interesting how he couldn’t heal a simple, not very deep cut in his shoulder for the whole night, and now-

It’s not interesting, Vince cut himself off. It’s perfectly clear why.

Vince looked around, trying to figure out where he was and where the door out could be. The corridor seemed to connect bathroom on its one side and his cell, oh, sorry, bedroom, on the other. There was another door next to his – probably a bedroom as well. He didn’t remember any stairs on his way here, so the door out should be somewhere near. Somewhere in this corridor. He just needed to look…

There was no other door. Only two bedroom doors on the other side and one to the toilet.

Maybe the door out was somewhere in that other bedroom? It had to be, right? The demons needed one to go out anyway. Or was walking through walls their another ability Vince wasn’t aware of?..

No, Vince pushed the thought away, that was probably bullshit. The door out must be behind that closed door. Vince headed towards it. His “bedroom” door was half-open, and there he saw the bloody bed he spent so much time in. Nobody bothered to change the sheets, and all the blood he lost was there, on the sheets, on the floor, even on the wall above the bed. Damn, had he been lying there for more than a day? It looked and smelled like a butchery. He shouldn’t have survived after losing so much blood. A human definitely wouldn’t.

Vince sneaked to the other door and pressed his ear to it, trying to hear anything. The voices were muffled, but the intonations were unmistakable. Tommy and Nikki.

The second Vince heard Nikki’s husky voice the pain in his lower part of the body flared up, almost making him fall onto his knees right in front of the door. Breathing heavily, Vince managed to step back and lean on the wall, waiting for the fit of pain to pass.

It never did, because the door opened and Nikki appeared in the doorway.

“Oh my, what do we have here,” Nikki smiled like a shark, his slightly pointy teeth only adding to the image. “Who let you out of your room, angel? I’ll have to take you back. You’re still not tamed enough to walk around on your own.”

Tamed rang in Vince’s ears, louder with every second. Vince looked at Nikki who kept talking, and couldn’t hear a word he was saying. You’re not tamed enough, he only heard, again and again, and the louder it was, the angrier he became. Everything in front of his eyes went blurry except Nikki’s face – it stood out, his features precise and bright.

Like an aim.

Vince’s fist landed right on Nikki’s jaw. It shut him up immediately and made him step back to stay on his feet. When he regained balance, Vince was already waiting for him with another punch, this time in the nose. It cracked audibly under Vince’s fist, to his immense pleasure. Nikki jumped back, his hand flying up to his nose. It opened his stomach for another punch, which Vince promptly delivered. Nikki tripped over and fell onto his back, and Vince was already there, quick like an arrow, pressing him to the ground with his knees and landing punch after punch, in the nose, in the eyes, everywhere he could reach, until his knuckles bled with both his own blood and Nikki’s. Nikki’s hands tried to hold his wrists weakly and failed, falling onto his face to cover his eyes.

There was a scream at the background, and someone grabbed Vince by the shoulders and yanked back, pulling him away from Nikki. Vince twisted in the grip, adrenaline still rushing in his veins, the image of Nikki’s face that “could get him all the chicks” before his eyes. Now bloody and ruined, it was pumping him up, calling him back, just one more punch-

Vince twisted again, trying to wrest out of the grip, but all in vain. He turned his head and saw Tommy behind him struggling to keep him in place, his expression frightened. Of course, who else it was gonna be, Vince thought bitterly. Who was he to Tommy, and who was Nikki.

Vince kicked Tommy in the shin. He hissed but didn’t let go, waiting for Nikki to get up. But Nikki still lay on the ground and… what, smiled?

“Look at yourself, V-i-n-n-i-e,” he spelled out every letter of his name, speaking so clearly it seemed Vince’s punches hadn’t harmed him at all. Maybe they really didn’t. “I’m serious, look at yourself in the mirror.”

Tommy released him, turned him around and went “oh my god, dude”. And also smiled.

“What the fuck did you-“ Vince looked around feverishly, searching for the mirror, located one in the corner and rushed towards it, something in his chest going cold, because he already knew what he would see, he knew and refused to believe.

His reflection looked back at him with pitch-black eyes.

Vince only caught a second, and then his eyes turned into hazel again, and his anger faded away as quickly as came. Desperation came instead. Not a sulking and miserable desperation, but a distraught, agitated kind of it.

Vince unconsciously brought his hand up to the mirror and touched his reflection, blinked a couple of times. Hazel, still hazel. Maybe he was seeing things? But Nikki and Tommy also saw it. It couldn’t be the mirror.

Vince shattered it with his bare fist. A sharp spike of pain went through his arm, and the shards cut his bare feet. He didn’t notice. He didn’t care.

“Wow, wow, man,” he heard Tommy’s voice somewhere behind him, “cool down!”

He turned around and punched Tommy too, with his knuckles full of glass. Tommy yelped and recoiled, and then Nikki appeared in front of Vince and delivered such a powerful blow to his stomach that it made Vince’s back hit the wall as he was gasping helplessly for breath. Nikki wanted to say something, he even opened his mouth already, but a sharp, loud sound, the one Vince had heard last morning, drowned out his words. Then Vince’s shoulder started to hurt. Something little and sharp pierced it.

The whole thing was probably over in a second, but for Vince it felt like a lifetime. He turned his head and saw a pothole in the wall right above his shoulder, and then he was pushed onto the floor and pinned down to it by Nikki’s body. He could hear his broken breathing and whispered curses. Tommy fell down next to them. His hair was tickling Vince’s nose.

Then the sound repeated, and that single pothole was joined by a dozen more, drawing an intricate ornament on the wall. Vince could see this from behind Nikki’s hair that was falling on his face. It smelled something flowery. Pieces of the wall fell right on Nikki’s back who cursed quietly every time.

Then the sound stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Nikki spent a whole extra minute on top of Vince (Vince counted, trying to calm his beating heart), then rolled off carefully and crawled to the window, making sure he wasn’t raising his head too high. He peeked out for a moment and the sound went off again. Vince imagined Nikki’s forehead with the same pothole as on the wall, slowly filling up with blood which then leaked down his face, his eyes now empty, like a doll’s. The image was strangely satisfying.

Unfortunately, Nikki ducked quickly, and the new pothole appeared among those on the wall.

“Did you see them?” Tommy asked anxiously, still lying on the floor with his hands covering his head.

“They shot from a white truck. Didn’t catch anything else. Have they found a sniper for their gang or what? They weren’t nearly as precise last time.”

“Probably. Or better gear.”

Nikki once again peered into the window and immediately pulled back. This time, though, there was no sound.

“They drove away,” he said finally and got up. Tommy followed suit. Vince sat up on the floor, watching them in silent shock. “Only fucking pussies shoot from the distance and don’t get into an honest fight!”

“If not for the bullets, I would fucking show them what’s what!” Tommy flared up too. “Cowards! All angels are cowards! Not you,” – he pointed at Vince, - “you’re one crazy motherfucker. But all other angels are cowards!”

Vince blinked in confusion - was that supposed to be a compliment? – but forgot about it that very moment. Something more important was going on right in front of him, and he didn’t understand a thing.

He cleared his throat and spoke.

“What the fuck?”

Nikki and Tommy turned their heads to him simultaneously, both acting like they just saw Vince over there.

“Should I?..” Nikki began gingerly. Tommy thought for a second and nodded.

“Can’t keep him in the dark for so long. Not now that he already saw it.”

“Alright.” Nikki stepped towards Vince, and the latter had to suppress his growing desire to move away from him. Nikki’s face had already started to heal, bruises left by Vince’s fists going yellow and then disappearing in the matter of minutes.

Nikki plopped down on the floor in front of him to get on Vince’s level. Vince didn’t want to look at his face, especially so close, but he didn’t move back. It was strangely alluring at the same time, as though it could replace the mask with hungry eyes from his memories; it called, remember me instead.

No, Vince cut himself off. He wasn’t going to forget what the demon did to him, even if he saved his life after that. He might have done it for whatever reason, but Vince refused to be indebted to him. He didn’t ask Nikki to do it. He wasn’t going to let him get away with what he had done to him just because of that.

“So I’ve told you about one way a fallen angel can go. Ghosts, all that stuff. I guess since you haven’t finished the job in the bathroom,” he pointed at Vince’s scars which he had forgotten to hide in the heat of the moment, “you are not interested in going that way.”

“I’m not strong enough for that,” Vince said quietly. “I wish I could.”

“Bullshit,” Nikki cut him off. “That’s the path of cowards. Not being able to face the consequences of your crime. Not finishing the transformation. There’s another path. That one – for traitors.”

“Traitors,” Tommy giggled behind his back. Vince couldn’t help but smile a little. Nikki gracefully ignored both of them.

“They think they will never become demons if they turn against them. Can’t be the bad guy when you’re killing other bad guys, huh? So they gather together, find people gullible enough to believe their stories about angels and demons, organize cults, organizations, whatever, and start hunting us. Or, rather, try to hunt us. Not a single one have succeeded yet.”

“I guess,” Vince murmured, staring intently at a point between Nikki’s eyes. He didn’t want to show his fear, but he knew if he looked into those eyes once again, he would lose it. He was hanging on a very thin thread already, his heart beating so fast it as though was trying to get out of his ribcage. The mere sight of Nikki made the most terrible memories, the ones he thought he had cut out with the blade and left in the puddle of blood on the bathroom floor, arise in his mind.

“Listen, Nik, it’s gonna be ages until you get to the point,” Tommy interrupted him. “Cut all those pompous words out. Or better, let me finish.”

He glanced quickly at Vince, and he was almost sure he saw concern in Tommy’s eyes.

Nikki looked at Tommy long and hard, then moved his gaze to Vince, and he barely managed to keep his breath even. Breathe in and out, in and out. Concentrate on the breathing, not on those strikingly green eyes right in front of him that looked at him whimpering from pain and enjoyed it. Vince could bet they would enjoy it even now.

“Alright,” he said suddenly, moving away from Vince. It felt like a breath of fresh air. “You tell him.”

“So, long story short,” Tommy started lively, “those dudes got guns with holy bullets which are not exactly deadly but a huge pain in the ass nevertheless. And they are going round the Earth trying to find freshly fallen angels and nip the new demon in the bud. Since fallen angels are at first invincible and basically all of them try some form of suicide on arrival, it’s not hard, just look over the newspapers in search of miraculous survivals. They found you too – you had left a pretty noticeable trace of failed suicides.”

“Couldn’t even kill myself properly,” Vince murmured bitterly.

“Yeah, that’s the point, you couldn’t! Otherwise there would be no demons on Earth. God gives you time to think for yourself and choose your own fate. That’s the privilege of being a demon – a right to choose.”

Vince blinked in confusion. So he would have had a choice if the demons hadn’t found him? And after that they dared to talk about ”a right to choose”?

“So yeah, we found you a little bit earlier than they did. We saved your angelic ass from being killed pretty much immediately. You didn’t understand it then, but we were trying to be gentle.”

“Gentle?” the fight in Vince’s mind was anything but gentle. “You stabbed me!” He turned to Nikki, accidentally looked him in the eyes and had to immediately move his gaze away.

“And you stabbed me.” Nikki said from behind Tommy’s back. His voice again made Vince shudder. “We’re square.”

“For us to be square I need to cut a hole in you and fuck you in it!”

The silence that followed his words was deafening.

“Hm,” Nikki finally said. “Kinky.”

“What?” Vince frowned.

“Kinky,” Nikki repeated, openly enjoying Vince’s and Tommy’s expressions. “It means sexually arousing. But for real, if you ever wanna take your revenge, I won’t fight back.”

Vince imagined it and winced. It looked bad even in his head.

“I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t need revenge. I just want to- want to-“ he stopped. One more word – and he was going to let out hysteric sobs he suppressed in his chest up to this moment. He couldn’t be there anymore. He couldn’t see him anymore. He couldn’t separate that face, those eyes, from those in his memories, those that were soaking up his pain and tears and enjoying it. Nikki wanted to see him suffer that night. He wanted to hurt him again.

Vince sprang on his feet and stormed away to the bathroom, his only refuge.

[easyfoodnetwork]

For an NYC Chef Who’s Still Working, Home Cooking Is More Vital Than Ever

A tour of Lucas Sin’s home kitchen, where he finds relief after spending his days cooking for his Distance Dining pop-up and Junzi Kitchen

This is Right at Home, a series in which Eater explores the home kitchens and cooking habits of fascinating food people. Here now, we go inside Lucas Sin’s New York City apartment.

As New York City shuddered to a stop, Lucas Sin shifted into high gear. Sin, the culinary director at Junzi Kitchen — a fast-casual Chinese restaurant group — and a 2019 Eater Young Gun, is busier than he was before the virus struck. Four of Junzi’s five locations are still open for takeout and delivery. In addition to feeding the thousands of New Yorkers hungry for some taste of the outside world, the restaurants are now providing meals to first responders and food banks, too.

“I was a kid in Hong Kong during SARS. The one emotion that I remember is how important it was to be optimistic and how important it was to be adaptable and flexible,” Sin says. Since he can’t host the fine dining pop-ups he once organized in his already-limited free time, he’s started a new one, calling it Distance Dining. The prepared meals, delivered across Manhattan, feature collaborations between Sin and other chefs and artists, and explore the many cultural intersections of the Chinese diaspora. Twice a week, the chef takes to Instagram Live to explain the dishes’ historical importance, and virtually guides his guests through plating and enjoying their meals. This week, he cooked a three-course Chinese-Filipino dinner.

When the chef finds a moment of quiet, or gets home from the restaurant — where he now works shifts alone, to minimize contact with his employees — the dishes he craves call for only three or four ingredients. “Because the restaurant has been so busy and it’s taking so much of my time, I turned a lot of my cooking to be really, perhaps, simpler,” he says.

On Sin’s table now are many of the same dishes he ate at Hong Kong diners as a child. Then, pocket change was enough to buy toast, eggs, and macaroni soup, classic dishes Sin hadn’t given much thought to until recently.

“I’ve jumped into cooking a lot of comfort food from my childhood,” he says: “Spam, ketchup instead of tomato sauce. All of those adaptations are perfect for quick, easy home cooking. If you don’t want to go outside to buy a tomato for your spaghetti, you can absolutely use ketchup, and stuff like that. There’s a lot of pantry cooking that I’ve been doing that has brought me a lot of joy and sustenance and stability.”

When he decides to cook something a little more complex, and the sparse store shelves turn up a few vegetables and a piece of fatty meat, Sin pulls out his clay pot. Clay pot dishes are, at their simplest, highly customizable rice casseroles. The rice gently steams in the clay, while meat and greens nestle on top, imparting each grain with their flavor. Sin’s is the color of sun-bleached sand, its bottom gently blackened by constant use. When he opened his first restaurant, as a 16-year-old in Hong Kong, he called it Bo Zai, inspired by the Cantonese word for clay pot: bōu jái.

Sin has worked in and operated his own restaurants since before he was old enough to drink, but some of his most valuable lessons came from watching these layered dishes take shape in his family’s kitchen. His father’s most impressive meals were the simplest ones, and many of them came together in a clay pot. “It’s the first dish that my dad ever taught me how to make: clay pot rice with pork belly and Chinese sausage, and taro… It’s maybe my favorite dish of all time,” Sin says. “I certainly think that my father is maybe the best home cook of all time.” With Sin in tow, his father maneuvered through the markets of Hong Kong, stopping to ask an older shopper how to cook the greens they picked over, pausing again to choose a huge, gleaming crab from a favorite fisherman’s stand. Exploring these maze-like markets and watching his father turn a jumble of ingredients into a meal was a wonder.

When he gets home from Junzi, or finishes broadcasting one of his socially distanced pop-ups, Sin gently washes chubby pearls of sweet rice, and layers them into his clay pot with whatever meat he’s picked up that day. “The way I really think about how I cook at home is based not around so much even the ingredients or the dish, but the equipment. So, I like to have one dish be only made in one piece of equipment, because that’s the easiest way to cook.” Once the meal is ready, Sin brings the clay vessel to his table, where he and his girlfriend sit snugly against an exposed-brick wall climbing with vines.

When dinner parties were still a part of life, friends and family squeezed together at Sin’s table almost every night, barely six inches of space between elbows. Sin would light a bed of coals underneath a Weber grill on his small patio, par-cook a fish, then slide it onto the grill and cover it in mounds of hay, where it smoked and smoldered until flesh barely clung to bone.

Sin takes great pleasure in the amazement on his friends’ faces as he lifts the grill cover with a magician’s flare, smoke billowing out into the open air. But with less time, and no dinner invitations to pass out, he’s turning to simpler pleasures. A bowl of ketchup fried rice, for instance, which he’s eaten nearly every night this week. Egg yolk mixed into the day-old rice ensures the grains remain separate. The egg whites becoming fluffy as they cook, a generous squeeze from a jar of ketchup perfuming and coloring the rice. “What’s best about Chinese cooking is that just because it looks simple doesn’t mean that it can’t be historical and interesting and technique-driven,” Sin says. “It doesn’t have to be fussy for it to be thoughtful.”

As the exhaustion sets in each night, and Sin prepares for another day, he relies on an inventory of flavorful ingredients to get him across the finish line. “A lot of Chinese home cooking is developed around these pre-made sauces,” Sin explains. His cupboards and refrigerator shelves are packed with fish sauce, shrimp paste, chile oils, various forms of soy sauce, and a large bottle of Frank’s Red Hot. Spooned over rice or a fatty piece of charred meat, the sauces bolster even the simplest dish.

The enormous blade takes the peel off of garlic and slices through meat, as Sin expertly wields the butcher’s knife he’s been using since he was a child. “It’s the only knife in the Chinese culinary canon,” he says. “So all the cooks use it for everything. That’s the only knife I rely on, and it’s a little sentimental because the knife is made in Hong Kong. We grew up really close to the factory. I’ve always used these knives in my home and now I use them professionally, as well.”

Perhaps no tool in Sin’s kitchen gets more use than his worn-in clay pot. “It’s a perfect one-pot meal,” he says. As the pot heats up and the rice within begins to steam, the air fills with the smell of warming clay. “It’s a super unique taste. You steam the rice very gently until the water has evaporated. And then you keep moving the clay pot around the stove, inch by inch… so that you can get the nice golden crust on the bottom and the rice itself is perfectly cooked.”

And as most New Yorkers shelter in their homes, Sin finds himself in his own less than ever. Most nights, his girlfriend washes rice for the clay pot, or lights coals under the grill so they’re burning hot when he gets home. Once back, Sin shrugs off his jacket, drops his knives, and gets to work. “It feels very different to cook at home,” he says. “It’s like a totally different mindset. I genuinely love coming home to cook.”

An Rong Xu is a photographer based in New York City and Taipei.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2SbP7gx https://ift.tt/2KHA4a0

A tour of Lucas Sin’s home kitchen, where he finds relief after spending his days cooking for his Distance Dining pop-up and Junzi Kitchen

This is Right at Home, a series in which Eater explores the home kitchens and cooking habits of fascinating food people. Here now, we go inside Lucas Sin’s New York City apartment.

As New York City shuddered to a stop, Lucas Sin shifted into high gear. Sin, the culinary director at Junzi Kitchen — a fast-casual Chinese restaurant group — and a 2019 Eater Young Gun, is busier than he was before the virus struck. Four of Junzi’s five locations are still open for takeout and delivery. In addition to feeding the thousands of New Yorkers hungry for some taste of the outside world, the restaurants are now providing meals to first responders and food banks, too.

“I was a kid in Hong Kong during SARS. The one emotion that I remember is how important it was to be optimistic and how important it was to be adaptable and flexible,” Sin says. Since he can’t host the fine dining pop-ups he once organized in his already-limited free time, he’s started a new one, calling it Distance Dining. The prepared meals, delivered across Manhattan, feature collaborations between Sin and other chefs and artists, and explore the many cultural intersections of the Chinese diaspora. Twice a week, the chef takes to Instagram Live to explain the dishes’ historical importance, and virtually guides his guests through plating and enjoying their meals. This week, he cooked a three-course Chinese-Filipino dinner.

When the chef finds a moment of quiet, or gets home from the restaurant — where he now works shifts alone, to minimize contact with his employees — the dishes he craves call for only three or four ingredients. “Because the restaurant has been so busy and it’s taking so much of my time, I turned a lot of my cooking to be really, perhaps, simpler,” he says.

On Sin’s table now are many of the same dishes he ate at Hong Kong diners as a child. Then, pocket change was enough to buy toast, eggs, and macaroni soup, classic dishes Sin hadn’t given much thought to until recently.

“I’ve jumped into cooking a lot of comfort food from my childhood,” he says: “Spam, ketchup instead of tomato sauce. All of those adaptations are perfect for quick, easy home cooking. If you don’t want to go outside to buy a tomato for your spaghetti, you can absolutely use ketchup, and stuff like that. There’s a lot of pantry cooking that I’ve been doing that has brought me a lot of joy and sustenance and stability.”

When he decides to cook something a little more complex, and the sparse store shelves turn up a few vegetables and a piece of fatty meat, Sin pulls out his clay pot. Clay pot dishes are, at their simplest, highly customizable rice casseroles. The rice gently steams in the clay, while meat and greens nestle on top, imparting each grain with their flavor. Sin’s is the color of sun-bleached sand, its bottom gently blackened by constant use. When he opened his first restaurant, as a 16-year-old in Hong Kong, he called it Bo Zai, inspired by the Cantonese word for clay pot: bōu jái.

Sin has worked in and operated his own restaurants since before he was old enough to drink, but some of his most valuable lessons came from watching these layered dishes take shape in his family’s kitchen. His father’s most impressive meals were the simplest ones, and many of them came together in a clay pot. “It’s the first dish that my dad ever taught me how to make: clay pot rice with pork belly and Chinese sausage, and taro… It’s maybe my favorite dish of all time,” Sin says. “I certainly think that my father is maybe the best home cook of all time.” With Sin in tow, his father maneuvered through the markets of Hong Kong, stopping to ask an older shopper how to cook the greens they picked over, pausing again to choose a huge, gleaming crab from a favorite fisherman’s stand. Exploring these maze-like markets and watching his father turn a jumble of ingredients into a meal was a wonder.

When he gets home from Junzi, or finishes broadcasting one of his socially distanced pop-ups, Sin gently washes chubby pearls of sweet rice, and layers them into his clay pot with whatever meat he’s picked up that day. “The way I really think about how I cook at home is based not around so much even the ingredients or the dish, but the equipment. So, I like to have one dish be only made in one piece of equipment, because that’s the easiest way to cook.” Once the meal is ready, Sin brings the clay vessel to his table, where he and his girlfriend sit snugly against an exposed-brick wall climbing with vines.

When dinner parties were still a part of life, friends and family squeezed together at Sin’s table almost every night, barely six inches of space between elbows. Sin would light a bed of coals underneath a Weber grill on his small patio, par-cook a fish, then slide it onto the grill and cover it in mounds of hay, where it smoked and smoldered until flesh barely clung to bone.

Sin takes great pleasure in the amazement on his friends’ faces as he lifts the grill cover with a magician’s flare, smoke billowing out into the open air. But with less time, and no dinner invitations to pass out, he’s turning to simpler pleasures. A bowl of ketchup fried rice, for instance, which he’s eaten nearly every night this week. Egg yolk mixed into the day-old rice ensures the grains remain separate. The egg whites becoming fluffy as they cook, a generous squeeze from a jar of ketchup perfuming and coloring the rice. “What’s best about Chinese cooking is that just because it looks simple doesn’t mean that it can’t be historical and interesting and technique-driven,” Sin says. “It doesn’t have to be fussy for it to be thoughtful.”

As the exhaustion sets in each night, and Sin prepares for another day, he relies on an inventory of flavorful ingredients to get him across the finish line. “A lot of Chinese home cooking is developed around these pre-made sauces,” Sin explains. His cupboards and refrigerator shelves are packed with fish sauce, shrimp paste, chile oils, various forms of soy sauce, and a large bottle of Frank’s Red Hot. Spooned over rice or a fatty piece of charred meat, the sauces bolster even the simplest dish.

The enormous blade takes the peel off of garlic and slices through meat, as Sin expertly wields the butcher’s knife he’s been using since he was a child. “It’s the only knife in the Chinese culinary canon,” he says. “So all the cooks use it for everything. That’s the only knife I rely on, and it’s a little sentimental because the knife is made in Hong Kong. We grew up really close to the factory. I’ve always used these knives in my home and now I use them professionally, as well.”

Perhaps no tool in Sin’s kitchen gets more use than his worn-in clay pot. “It’s a perfect one-pot meal,” he says. As the pot heats up and the rice within begins to steam, the air fills with the smell of warming clay. “It’s a super unique taste. You steam the rice very gently until the water has evaporated. And then you keep moving the clay pot around the stove, inch by inch… so that you can get the nice golden crust on the bottom and the rice itself is perfectly cooked.”

And as most New Yorkers shelter in their homes, Sin finds himself in his own less than ever. Most nights, his girlfriend washes rice for the clay pot, or lights coals under the grill so they’re burning hot when he gets home. Once back, Sin shrugs off his jacket, drops his knives, and gets to work. “It feels very different to cook at home,” he says. “It’s like a totally different mindset. I genuinely love coming home to cook.”

An Rong Xu is a photographer based in New York City and Taipei.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2SbP7gx via Blogger https://ift.tt/2Yh60KJ

[sweetmaple]

Badagala has Gas; In Other News A Handy Mage Falls into a God and is Interrogated by Squid

Badagala has Gas; In Other News, A Handy Mage Falls into a God and Is Interrogated by Squid.

“Um, is Manstein, ape!”

The handy mage in silk stocking licked the mud off their fingers and said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

The tall, balding artificer squiggled a pendant over the rack for effect.

“Squashy little foreigner. Get back on your lizard, little man, and go back to Tevelele!”

The lizard in question urp’d noisily, blowing a large, dirty brown bubble from one nostril. The handy mage patted its flank.

“Go gentle, old gal.”

The artificer banged a large drinking vessel with a barely legible inscription on its side in some archaic script onto his workbench and said, “I challenge you to a contest.”

“I challenge you in turn. Fuck yourself.”

And with that the handy little mage swung up on to his lizard and balustraded off through the tower market, setting the artificer’s shop swaying with the oomf of Badagala’s mighty swaying stride.

Ok, it was more of a wobble, and the little towers in which all the mages kept their arts and crafts shops only swayed a little bit.

“I’m artificer Roan!” yelled someone from the ground.

Squash! went Badagala. It wasn’t really her fault. She disliked people who wore hats that hissed and spat rocks at her.

“Oh dear,” the handy mage said, pulling up his stockings. “I was so hoping to make it to the Cad and Coward for supper.”

Badagala urp’d again, but brought up some pre-digested bonagol leaf and bits of bug for the handy mage. He took it from her tongue and snacked.

“Dinner is served. My thanks.”

The police pounded down the scrolled stairs, having heard the mighty Squash! of Badagala and smelled the subsequent splatter. Badagala wobbled a little faster.

“Giddy up old friend!” cried the mage, whose name was Chipsetea but who generally answered to ‘Hey you!’.

“Hey you!” the police hollered from the bottom of the stairs where they had arrayed all three of themselves in a wedge of yellow that made them look like an amatuer interpretive dance group on Bualgivian Cheese Night at the Flowing Skirt downtown.

“Oi, not I!” Chipsetea hooted as Badagala put her head down and started a jolting, heaving, scramble for the gates. The onlookers gradually moved out of the way. Badagala was not fast. In fact, the mage had once seen her outrun a cat walking slowly towards a bowl of milk in a barnyard. When the cat got to the milk, it had seemed very surprised to see Badagala. Eight by twelve feet of crusty skin, loose scales, toenail fungus breath and gas was not a feature of its quiet daily existence.

The police, walking at a leisurely pace that showed off their comely ankles and hairy shins beneath their serge police skirts, were rapidly gaining.

But before they got too close, the specter of stench that always trailed Badagala, and seemed practically to be a second entity engaged in some sort of obscure symbiotic relationship with the lizard, wafted off of her and towards the pursuing police. It was capable of moving much faster than Badagala and thus was a defense mechanism Chipsetea had relied upon to escape many squashy, sticky situations.

The police hit the Stench like a wall, and went down just as fast. Bystanders fled. Looking through the discolored air around them made their images wobble like heat coming off of paving stones. Badagala heaved towards the tower gates, put a dent in their solid wood with her headspike, and then shouldered her way through the abused doors and spilled onto the trampled earth of the ground outside the mobile tower.

“Freedom!” Chipsetea whooped, as they tumbled down a tunnel whose walls were spirals of clayey earth and whirling, cloying magic.

Free of the Tower Markets’ antimagic shields, there was nowhere they couldn’t go.

“Oops,” he muttered as one of his hands brushed the wall and turned a nasty green color. They fell out of the tunnel as suddenly as Chipsetea’s hand blackened and fell off, which is to say, about four bears. His hand would grow back in a day or so. There wasn’t a lot he hadn’t grown back after his curse all those years ago in elementary transfiguration. But what can one do when one is a pariah wizard, wanted for accidental crimes and chaos in almost every city-state in Piccolo?

He promptly fell in love with a flower, who didn’t mind that he only had one hand. They were getting down to the enjoyable business of pollination when the island they’d landed on caved in and was swallowed by an angry god.

The god’s trachea was lined with guileless red eyes, and they slid into the universe of the being’s stomach. Chipstea was not quite as handy a mage as he had been previously, so the bubble he had placed around the island to stop it from being chewed to bits was beginning to turn strange colors. An extinct bird with bad eyesight flew into its side and the bubble shattered. Aside from a slight pressure difference and a smell of acidic fish, the air was breathable.

Chipstea and his flower lover fell through pinked clouds and splashed down into a murky sea. The island put down roots that wormed into the lining of the god’s stomach, and this is when Chipstea found out the island was actually a giant parasite. The sea shook with a low, annoyed groan. Badagala urp’d.

Strange fish swam in the sea below them, looking to be made up of random parts pulled from other universes. A gay whale breached the waves, humming Queen songs to itself. Another clouded island was visible in the distance.

“Well adrumps!” Chipsetea the not-as-handy-as-he-used-to-be mage swore. “This is a trip.”

“You’re tellin me, man. Like a whole big family of trips got together and had a big baby trip, and we’re the trip baby! The humungus, swirly trip baby in the middle of a whale’s universe stomach!”

Brilliant, searing white light. Smoke. The smell of ethanol and lemon. A booming voice of no direction or gender saying:

“That didn’t even make sense. Hit them again.”

Chipsetea’s head lolled forward. Badagala urp’d mightily and he jolted awake. He looked around at the remnant universes churned away under the islands billowing digestive lace fringes. A statue of a rock floated past, rolling side over side. He knew, somehow, that is was a statue of a rock and not a real rock. It had that airbrushed craginess. No real rock had moss that lush and dewy and perfect. Maybe it was an egg? He waited to see if it would hatch but it encountered a subcurrent caused by a minor five chord and sank into the bilious sea before the mage could see. Something ran into him. A muscular man with long searchlight-white hair and worried white eyes was dangling from the claws of a giant chicken-dragon hybrid. He looked more confused than scared, and the chicken-dragon was having so much difficulty with its wings that it had completely forgotten to be terrifying, if it ever knew how. Somehow it just didn’t seem important.

Chipsetea waved. The man waved back, then turned into a wisp of mist and floated into the body of chicken-dragon-thing.

Chipsetea didn’t see what came next, but it involved a great deal of squawking.

The god took a sharp right to avoid an unexpected comet piloted by pillaging avocado-fanatics and Chipsetea was abruptly drenched in several tons of stomach-ocean-bile-galaxies. The man with white hair whipped past him, looking resigned with his arms crossed, and smashed into a giant hairy ear which trailed delicate pink tentacles.

Chipsetea abruptly realized he was a story being written, and he didn’t like it. Then he forgot, because those realizations are usually accidental and fleeting because the present universe is a method actor and likes to pretend that reality is normal and that plot holes are minimal.

He was cloaked once more in meddling darkness, and when he opened his eyes there was no more god’s stomach, if there ever had been one. He was lying in a spa, with cucumbers over his eyes and his face smeared with exfoliating green goop. Little silvery fishes nibbled delicately at the dead skin on his feet. Badagala was getting a dry-skin treatment.

He was being attended by a flower he felt he had met before. She didn’t act as if they knew each other and he didn’t work up the courage to ask.

He fell asleep.

He woke up at sunset. Badagala was snoring lightly next to him, and a plate of cold cuts was sitting next to his lounge chair. He sampled one. It tasted of slightly acidic fish.

Feeling freshened, he walked up to his lizard companion and admired her newly supple hide. He woke her, offered her a cold cut, and left some credit units on his side table. They left with one hour til moonrise.

Or at least one of the moonrises. There seemed to be several, and they were all happening fast enough that Chipsetea could see his shadow sliding over the smooth pink marble floor as though pushed by a silent wind. He felt a little motion-sick. A small blue moon dipped below the horizon. He turned around and saw a larger, silvery one rise and begin to glide soundlessly through the sky.

Light like needles stabbing at his eyes. An odd, cold, liquid feeling on the back of his neck.

And that voice again. “Now we’re getting somewhere! Send in the squid!”

Maybe it only sounded like the voice said squid because Chipsetea patted Badagala’s newly smooth and louse free hide and looked around. No squid nearby. Just moon-cactus, snowy desert, and too many moons.

He started to skip along, watching out for gods and squid and odd voices and rather hoping he would meet another gay whale. He’d heard they were excellent conversationalists.

It was a pleasant walk. The footpaths were well-tended and clearly marked. It was never day, but it was never night either. The atmosphere consisted only of a sort of cool-toned bath of light under that peculiarly busy sky. A couple of times, boats spangled with millions and millions of stars crossed the sky instead of moons and once, there was a hopeful cloud of elven souls that whisked across the sky and promptly crashed into the horizon. The moons slipped by them without comment, checking their watches and deciding they didn’t have time to help.

Badagala chose a convex rock and curled up. Chipsetea did too, hoping for pleasant dreams of hydrangeas, honeysuckles, and assorted exotic flora. He was not disappointed.

In his dream, the flower he had seen at the spa had dyed her petals in eye-catching washes of pink and cyan. She took his hand and rainbows burst around his field of vision as if they had been badly Photoshopped in. They walked a ways, about twelve bears, her airy perfume trailing behind her and across Chipsetea’s face. He breathed it in. It left a mysterious pink aftersmell in his nose.

She brought him to a bed of passionflower petals where they laid together and she whispered the creation story of her people in his ear. It involved a deity who grew universes in his stomach like children, and then his skin split open and he released them to the cosmic void where sometimes they locomoted on the backs of elephants who were themselves on the backs of turtles. Other times they were released to dark, wet, organic spheres filled with sparking electrical connections and wired by fine nervelike sinews to the outside world through orifices that held ovoid visual processors and tympanic auditory data-gathering systems held in place by delicate pale bones. Chipsetea was somewhat overwhelmed by all this and by his nascent but strong-willed sense of deja vu. He leapt up from the bed of petals, and followed the scent of hydrangea along a footpath to an innocent-looking bush. However, it grew eyes that regarded him balefully from under their heavily-mascara’d lashes, and he wandered around some more, feeling displaced.

He eventually sat beneath a palm tree and contemplated the meaning of his life. The palm waved its fronds consolingly and Chipsetea was somewhat calmed. He eventually dozed off, and when he drifted to wakefulness again he woke to whirling moons and the comforting scent of Badagala’s morning gas.

***

#Whoevenknows #Badagala #Manstein #Ape #Chipsetea #Chipseteaisconfused #Iamconfused #Everyoneisconfused #Whatisthis??? #Gaywhales #MagicIGuess #Witcherreference #TerryPratchettreference #Flowers #Flowersex #Impliedflowersex #Friends #Imagination

[dracox-serdriel]

Lament of the Asphodels - Chapter 31: Roses for Harpocrates

Lament of the Asphodels

Title: Roses for Harpocrates Author: Dracox Serdriel Artist: @liamjcnes Artwork: Post 1 | Post 2 Word count: ### Rating: NC-17/Explicit (except on FF) Warnings: Graphic descriptions of violence, Graphic sexual content, Declaration/threats of sexual violence, Minor character death, Social stigmatization/abuse, Detailed descriptions of hopelessness/depression/inner turmoil, Descriptions of the effects of extreme phobias/social anxiety, including anthropophobia, thalassophobia/hydrophobia, and hylophobia/dendrophobia, Descriptions of shipwrecks and storms at sea

Read Lament of the Asphodels on FF, AO3, LJ, or start at the beginning on Tumblr. Written as part of @captainswanbigbang.

Chapter 31: Roses for Harpocrates

Killian and Emma stood, stunned by Hades' words and abrupt departure. They waited in his aftermath for some kind of retribution to come, too exhausted to speak or even move, until the weariness of their days finally collapsed them together. Sweet relief followed as they plied one another with kisses and light, feathering touches.

"I thought I'd lost you," she whispered.

"Haven't I told you already? I'm a survivor, Swan," he replied.

The reprieve of reunion was short-lived, for the wind picked up with an icy thrill to its airs, lashing out in a furious tempo. Killian had experience many a storm brewing or a tempest nearing-to-pass, but these winds belonged to neither. He wrapped Emma in his arms, wondering after the unforgiving stone against her bare feet, which surely would turn blue if she spent another minute outside. He readied to lift her up and carry her inside to the warmth of his chamber, only to be stayed by a fearful tremble from below.

"Bloody hell," he mumbled.

A braying whiney cascaded from above, and Emma cast a confused look up to the sky. It gave him a foolish notion, yet one that persisted in his mind despite all doubts.

He braced her against the wall, but it proved no point, as the shaking continued beyond the interval of uncertainty, boding a far greater ill in the offing. There would be no way to scale the outside of the lighthouse safely, but with any luck, they might have time to ascend the stairs within.

"Emma, love, we need to make it to the roof," he said.

"But, the boat - "

"We're too close to shore for any vessel to be safe on the water," he interrupted. "Run, love. We need to run."

Beyond the hunger and thirst, Emma had poured nearly everything she had into the blast that cast Cora away. She barely understood how she remained standing. She couldn't imagine ascending the stairs in her current state, and even if she succeeded, what then?

Would he ever put you in danger? she thought, and she knew the answer without consideration.

She swallowed hard and nodded her head, yes before walking swiftly to the door. It opened with hardly any strength and closed behind them just as readily, despite the movements of the earth. She hesitated at the bottom of the stairs for a moment, overwhelmed by the memory of dozens she'd climb before even reading a proper ladder. But it was only a moment, truly, and in the next instant she steeled herself, deepening her breath, and then raced up the stairs as if she were freshly rested and untouched by any need.

Killian hadn't noticed her reservations, for his eye fell on the large hiking pack. It was the only one they hadn't taken on their journey, but only because they had no need for its great size. It was folly to risk his life for a few spare trinkets, yet as Emma began the long climb up the stairs, he caught a glimpse of her poor cold toes and grabbed the bag without further thought.

Thus, as she ascended with the speed of Hermes, he stumbled about the bottom floors, collecting items from whatever storage closets he dared enter. His attempts weren't entirely successful, for many of their stores that hadn't been upset by the tremors were being shaking from their shelves even as he entered, forcing him to quit after the six door, when the bag was still quite empty. He ran to the midline so quickly a stitch formed in his side, forcing him to double over to catch his breath.

He stumbled into the kitchen and knocked anything he could reach into the pack, not caring if the next item might crush or tarnish it.

"Killian!"

Her voice was so hoarse, it pained him to hear it. He cursed himself as he returned to the stairs, worried that his request to run had been too much for her, but instead he found her leaning over the railing by his chamber door, the concern on her face so palpable that he could feel it even at this distance. He couldn't blame her. He had been so focused on gathering supplies that he failed to register the degree of the vibrations, which had intensified fivefold since they came inside.

"Go, love! I'm right behind you!" he shouted up.

There was nothing for it. Whatever he had acquired would have to see them through to their next destination. He tied the back tight around him, securing it as soundly as possible as he caught his breath. The panic in his belly threatened to consume him, but he reminded himself that a measured step was better than a rushed injury. He thought of Emma, how sickly pale she looked, how strong she must've been to climb in spite of her recent trials, and it was easy to calm himself. Then with a sure step, he climbed, and his only thought was that the pack was heavier than he anticipated.

Emma hadn't ascended the last ladder yet, for she couldn't leave without him. Neither did she dare stand on the roof without aid, for she was sure to faint. When she finally saw him appear from the hatch below, she nearly did.

"Emma?" he yelled. "Go, love! I'm right behind you. You'll need to get on first."

She didn't understand, but she still nodded her head, yes. She proceeded to climb, though her shaky arms slowed her considerably. By the time she popped open the hatch above, Killian was nearly on her heel.

Together they stumbled out onto the roof. It was a truly odd and terrifying sensation, for the lighthouse swayed as if with the wind, shifting constantly underfoot while shaking. The great winged horse Pegasus paced it, however, as if the beast were so surefooted even the dancing of the earth could not beset him.

She took his hand, and they raced over to the steed. She hardly had a chance to register finding her seat before she found herself leaning forward. Killian joined her, blanketing her body and wrapping his arms firmly around her. Had she not known better, she would've thought they were curled up together on some couch.

She didn't have time to protest the awkward position, for Pegasus took off at a canter, racing in circles for a few laps before leaping into the air.

The heavy beating of his wings muffled the sounds below, yet nothing could silence such a thing. For that reason alone, they knew the earth yet shook, yet its constant wavering no longer troubled them.

Emma dared not look down at first, fearing that she might be overwhelmed at the sight, but after some time of constant comfort in Killian's arms, courage spurred her to peek over the great stallion's shoulder.

She immediately regretted her decision. Had her mouth not already been dry, it would've lost all moisture in that instant, for the world beneath them churned like a great vat of milk transforming into butter. She couldn't see the lighthouse nor any true form above the water that might be land, but then again, it was all very, very far below. It was so far down, in fact, that she wondered how close they were to the sun, but a quick glance up showed her that her assumption had been wrong. They seemed nearly level with Stagrock's height in the sky, which meant they hadn't flown high at all. Rather, the earth had merged into the ocean, and the waters were falling deeper and deeper into whatever lay beyond them.

She closed her eyes and gripped Pegasus even harder, for all she knew, there was naught left in this realm save for she, Killian, and their steed.

Pegasus was unlike any steed in all the realms, though not for, as many would claim, the strange nature of his birth, wherein he sprung forth from the blood of the decapitated head of the gorgon Medusa, for many a splendid creature quickened into life upon the death of a fiendish and lethal beast. His from could've proven a burden, cursing him to live as an ungainly and therefore undesirable mount, but some otherworldly mercy granted him potency and grace enough to instead become the finest steed both on land and in air. Even so, that which set him apart came neither form his birth nor luck's fickle favor but rather his feat of ascending to Mount Olympus.

In the end, that was what made him the steed of the gods. He became the lightning barer of Zeus for a time, but he quickly grew restless of such a position and began to wander, seeking adventures of his own among the living. As for how he came to be in the Underworld, well, that remained a tale only whispered sub rosa, for reasons mortals have been left evermore to ponder.  

Time lost its meaning and feeling, so neither Killian nor Emma knew how long they were in flight. When either looked for any sign of land, they saw nothing but an endless expanse of a blackened ocean stretching out in every direction. Though they never spoke of it, they both wondered if they had fallen back into Morpheus's Realm, where fantasy and the illogical conspired to delight and to terrify the soul. It seemed a fitting thought at a time when exhaustion persisted as the air around them numbed their hurts, but all the while, sleep remained elusive.

They attempted conversation more than once, but it was a difficult thing to hear over the whooshing rush and great thumping emanating from Pegasus's wings. So they said as little as required to prevent straining their voices.

And so it continued for a very, very long time, but as with all things, it did not last forever.

For an isle of rock emerged in the east, appearing to stretch from the depths of the inky sea to the sun itself. Its height, however, seemed its only attribute, for otherwise it was a thankless piece of onyx with nothing but a single tree that gleamed and glowed. Had it not stood in its precise location, the cavernous opening along the western side of the endlessly rising column would've been entirely concealed, even from Pegasus.

Thankfully, however, the steed did not miss his mark, and so he dove down to meet his landing with ease. The abrupt motion in the otherwise monotonous journey shocked both riders to attention, which was fortuitous, as they were alert and aware before his hooves touched the unforgiving surface of rock.

"Thank you, Old Boy," Killian said before he dismounted.

He offered his assistance to Emma, but as soon as her feet touched the ground, they both collapsed onto the solid surface of stone, their muscles taught and tired after so long a ride. They somehow made it away from the edge and into the beginnings of the mysterious black cavern, where Killian riffled through his pack, producing stockings and shoes, then bread and cheese, and then a few carrots and a bag of grains.

He offered Pegasus the last pair of these, perhaps unaware that the steed could live for a very long time with no sustenance. More than that, unlike Tamara and Cora, the two mortals before him now were worthy of the steed's trust, and the stallion favored the flavor and crunch of carrots and had no quarrel with grain. Thus he happily ate up the only food Killian had been able to gather for him.

Meanwhile, Emma produced a number of water skins from under her outer coat, and Killian nearly laughed in relief. She had thought enough to grab the water skins they kept in the kitchen on her ascent to the roof, which was why they weren't there to fill his pack as he followed her up. It would not last them long, so they only took measured sips, no matter how much their thirst demanded.

To forget their thirstiness, they turned to their stores. In normal circumstances, they would've separated the cheese and bread into cuts and crafted sandwiches, but so voracious was their hunger that they simply bit into the loaf and brick without ceremony. Brick and loaf both were soon gone, but at least for now, they had taken their hunger with it.

They must've fallen asleep, for they woke in one another's arms to find Pegasus standing outside the cavern. They did not discuss their lot, nor did they ask how the world had come undone save for this pitiful spot of land. They waited, and they rested.

"We should ration what we have," Killian suggested. "Let's see it then."

They unpacked the pack and discovered a pair of clean socks, two clean shirts, gloves, hats, and a number of small tools attached to a thick belt, which Killian donned as soon as he found. There was also a very squished dish of cooked beans and rice, a few vegetables, and another loaf of bread. Everything else - including a bag of dried beans and another of rice - required water, which they had precious little to spare. Still, he laid it out with all the rest, that they might consider their options.

Emma laughed a desperate, mirthless laugh that filled the cavern with a ghastly sound that echoed on and on, as if the cave went miles deep.

"Swan?" he prompted as he reached out to her.

"What's the point?" she asked. "Killian, the entire world just crumbled around us. Literally. This rock is probably the only solid ground. Whatever we have, it's not enough. It can't be."

"Don't lose hope now," he replied. "We have each other. That's always enough."

"Not always," she countered. "It wasn't enough to prevent you from - from coming here."

"Aye, I died," he said. "If that didn't stop you, I hardly expect the world turning to soup to have any effect."

She gave him a weak smile before she collapsed into his arms, her strength and will escaping her without notice. He was right, of course he was right, but she had no more stamina for optimism. And she saw no way through the misery that engulfed them, no way home from this mire of a wasteland.

"Do you hear that?" she asked.

The question left her lips before she truly conceived it, yet it neither confused her nor put her off. Her instincts had already sensed a spot of light, and she was keen to follow it.

"The echo," he remarked, turning his head to follow the sound. "This cavern must run to the core of the earth."

"Let's find out," she said.

She started for the edge of darkness, but he grabbed her arm to halt her. When she turned with a confused look on her face, he felt compelled to explain himself.

"We'll hardly see anything without light," he pointed out.

Emma nodded her head, yes, before she looked over the few things at their disposal. None could serve as a match, flint, nor torch, and she worried her bottom lip at the prospect. If only they hadn't left the Unending Flame behind...

"Your magic, love," he whispered. "There's nothing else to light our way without casting a fog."

Killian felt as if he was pulled in a thousand directions, and Emma's outburst had mirrored his own inner demons all too clearly. He hadn't lived as a good man, so he deserved to be mired in never-ending punishments. The redemption he had scraped out in his last life had been too precious and too late to change his fate, but his faith in Emma never wavered. If there was some way out of this horrible place, she would be the one to discover it.

So when she hesitated at the suggestion of magic, his only thought was to support her, to remind her that she and she alone was capable of anything. Words felt woefully inadequate, and in the muddle of his thoughts, he reflexively reached out to her, reassuring her with a firm yet gentle touch, clasping her left hand in his right. No sooner had their fingers woven together then a great, hissing rumble sounded. With the next breath, a spark rose out of Emma's free hand, coiling around and around like a great, fiery serpent winding itself into a wheel. It continued until it took the shape of a tiny, fist-sized sun that cast light in every direction as it floated about seven feet from the floor, shining, as it was, just overhead between them.

His eyes fell on her face, and despite her disheveled hair and the dirt of several long journeys, the light revealed her beauty, though true be told, her smile radiated far more than the floating torch. It cast decades of hard labor from her, and no amount of grime could tarnish that sight. His lips curled against his will, and he regretted nothing of it.

Emma went first, her right arm aloft with her palm up, somehow guiding the light so as to keep it in front of them, that it might illuminate their way. She squeezed his hand as she tugged him along, and he stepped behind her, forgoing a comfortable distance and following on her heel.

The cavern was narrowed till it was but a tunnel that was passable for anyone on foot, but it was too tight for a horse, even one of a normal size, let alone the likes of Pegasus. Killian wondered if the Old Boy was waiting on their return or if he was out flying through the clear, serene skies.

The pass opened up into an enormous cavern. The abrupt change made them both stumble over their own feet. She raised the light higher, increasing its luminosity so that when it floated twenty feet from the floor, just a few feet from the ceiling, it lit up the entire space, from the tiny passage to the circular edges. There was no other exit, but the walls had ornate roses carved in intricate patterns from the base at the floors up to the bowl-shaped ceiling where the designs continued and eventually entwined.

Beyond the peculiar decor, the cavern was empty, save for a stone statue of a young woman adorned with finery and clothed in resplendent dress, which contrasted her bare feet. For some reason, the statue captured her in an odd position, standing upright with her hands held out and cupped together. Whoever the subject, she had surely been a beautiful woman, for the statue could be called nothing if not stunning.

Sorrow lingered in this place, seizing the splendor and tainting it with sadness, much as it does in memorials or tombs.

Killian found the words carved into the floor around her feet, in a manner similar to the roses that covered the wall and ceiling. The message must've been chiseled into the rock by hand, and a very fine and steady hand at that. The lettering had an obsessive protection to them.

"What does it say?" Emma asked.

He found it a strange thing that a sailor would know a language that a princess would not, but then again, she was no ordinary princess. Perhaps she'd never had the inclination nor the time to learn the classical languages like Latin and Greek, but the Royal Navy had instilled it in every officer, which was why he read the words as sure as if they had been writ in English.

"The Eternally Beloved Queen Persephone who brought True Love to the Underworld," he read out loud. "May her rest be peaceful."

"This is someone's grave?" she asked.

"Not just anyone, love," he replied. "Persephone, goddess of the spring time and wife of Hades. There was a tale of her being turned to stone with the head of the Gorgon Medusa, trapping her in the Underworld and assuring that the next spring would never come."

"Is that true? Has there been no spring since she's been here?"

"No," he replied. "I heard that tale as a young sailor, around the time my brother and I received our first commission."

"You mean, in this life?" she asked.

"No, from before," he replied. "The dastardly plot to strand the world in an eternal winter was thwarted. If you believe the things sailors say when too much ale has passed their lips, the full thaw came nearly a month late the year she was imprisoned, but even with the spring time goddess unable to return, her bounty reached the world."

"Because someone thwarted the plot?" she inquired. "Who? How?"

"No idea, love," he replied. "I always believed it to be a particularly boring tale. There was no reason to believe a word of it."

"So, Hades drops in on us, and then the entire world disappears, except for us, a flying horse, and his dead wife," she summarized. "Why would he do that?"

"You heard him, love," Killian said. "We've only one trial left to complete. Whatever the bloody hell the other nine were, I've no idea, but one more, and your deal with him ends in your favor. He can't have that."

"But he said he wanted us to succeed."

"Aye," he said. "Then he went on about some nonsense, vanished, and cast everything into the sea."

"And he said we were out of chances," she whispered. "He seemed truthful, but... he wasn't. Not entirely."

Killian shook his head, unsure of how such sentiments could help them now. It was clear that his cavernous space was all there was, with no passage anywhere else. Here they were, stranded in the middle of a wasteland where there was naught but a single grave and all the lamentations that came with it.

End-of-chapter notes: Harpocrates was the deity of silence and secrets in Greek mythology. Eros, the god of love, presented Harpocrates with the rose his mother Aphrodite had given him so that the indiscretions of the gods would remain secret. Thus, the rose became associated with confidentiality, which gave rise to the Latin expression sub rosa (literally, "under the rose"), indicating secrecy.

For next and previous chapters, proceed to the Lament of the Asphodels main Tumblr page.

[ecotone99]

[SF] The Last Show

You're old. Terminal. Codependent. With the last of you remaining will, you sign up for an assisted suicide program sponsored by a new age space ministry as a means for peaceful release. There is a station roughly 1 1/2 light years from your home that will only take a few weeks to travel to and it sits relatively close to a very docile black hole. Routinely the ministry will escort clients as near as possible to the black hole, and then jettison them into it as a means of delivering visuals and experiences unlike anything else in existence. There are options.. encapsulated, free fall (in a space suit, of course), couples, etc. You opt to free fall and get the greatest sensory input you can allow in your final moments. The trip is quick and easy, the staff is friendly and professional. It feels more like a vacation than a galactic funeral. Times have changed and this is a more modern way to go.. at least that's what you hear. If not something of this grandeur, then what? Die in a hospice bed? Clutching a heart attack walking to get the few groceries you can still carry? TRILLIONS of people have died that way before me and were buried, burned, and forgotten. Death isn't about what's left behind, it's about what you have before it gets here. My funeral might as well be for ME. A life of experiences culminating to a final, unobtainable experience like no other. You are anxious, but an aged, weary mind like yours doesn't worry about these things for very long. There are huge viewing windows along much of the station and there is an amazing view of the black hole itself in the near distance. It's massive. One of the more massive in our galactic corner, might I add. It had likely been sitting there hiding for many, many years before it stumbled upon a white dwarf and ripped it apart. Now the remaining disc wraps the girth of the onyx god and tells on its position. Being so close allowed for much debate before the scientific community moved on to other frontiers and the general space pop sort of decided what to do next. Vacation destination, 43rd wonder of space, and other trivial things like that. Now we have a mortal exit strategy that costs relatively little and you can go on your own terms. The sight is a wonder to behold from the viewing balcony on the orbiting station. After making your final preparations, they usher you into a room where they strip you naked, soak and scrub you, relax your body and dress you in the finest, smoothest silks from across the quadrant. This is purely for final comfort with silk being more of a comparative term than a specific noun, but you get the idea. They begin to suit you up into a space suit of your choosing and take the last steps toward moving you into the vessel that will carry you toward the event horizon. The small ship in automated and has room for just you. Upon reaching a certain distance from the horizon, you will have the option to ride it down into the darkness or to remove yourself from the pod and allow yourself to "fall" into the vastness freely. You feel light and limber as you take a deep breath and kick away from the pod that delivered you. The massive emptiness nestled in the center of the remains of the star is both terrifying and amazing. The fear of death creeping up your spine fighting with the bewilderment of the visual input is unsettling. But float on is all you can do, this ride is yours forever now. You begin to sink toward the event horizon and the black hole is warping and shaping all of the light of the cosmos around itself to meet you. Your field of vision has turned from a blackened mass blocking your view to the entirety of existence whipped up and at you. You see a yin and yang, of sorts, in the stars. That is everything "below" you is black and "everything" is above you. For a short while this is in perfect harmony and the horizon itself IS existence. As you fall deeper and deeper into the majesty of your grave, the view shifts from a universal horizon to a kaleidoscope with every light, star, and galaxy shoved into a large spotlight above your head. Almost as if in an actual hole in space except every light from every direction and reach of the galaxy is falling down into the hole on top of you. Like sunlight through a crack in the window but on a cosmic scale that encompasses all that is and may ever be. This leg of your journey can take hours to pass and the depth of beauty is immeasurable. The universe blessing and washing you with it's light as the circle begins to get more and more distant. Less and less defined and more of a singular culmination of light beaming down onto your face. In your moments here you have time to reflect on the reaches of existence. The purposes, the meanings, the reasons any of us have or will BE. Waiting to be ended by one of the natural cleansing bodies in the universe.. the consumer of not life, but of matter, mass, existence. The Destroyer. You have soaked in all that you will, or could ever, see and now you see nothing but a blip of light in the sky. You have only yourself now in the darkness and you meditate on your final moments to come. Here it is easy to get lost in yourself. In time. Nothing is or can be here. Your thoughts do not exist outside of this place and never will. Are they dead already, then? Are you? What is death, really? The removing of definable characteristics from an otherwise specific entity. I am me, and when I am no longer me that person will be dead. We die in life all the time. We die with finality when our bodies go through this same transition. Truly though is the child I grew up from dead now? That person is gone. My own children grown and different than they were before. I have grown and regrown myself on a cellular level MANY times over in my life time. Has my previous body not died then? None of this matters though, because regardless of the internal struggle I have with any of my logics here, everything I am and will ever be is sinking to the bottom of a cosmic end. This IS finality. This is where everything will cease to be. I am the punctuation on billions of years of growth and change. Here, I AM the end.

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[widdle-ol-me-blog]

World Of Warships Aimbot Download

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[robertmcangusgroup]

The Daily Thistle

The Daily Thistle – News From Scotland

Thursday 23rd March 2017

"Madainn Mhath” …Fellow Scot, I hope the day brings joy to you…. Gusty winds greeted Bella and I this morning as we left the house for the morning walk.. strong winds off the Atlantic hurried clouds across the night sky obliterating the moon and stars and left us with only the street lamp lite for company.. but nevertheless, we, as always, enjoyed our moment in the early morning on the Costa del Sol… back at the house coffee in cup and thoughts in order.. ”Who said that will make a change!” and the news groups open so let’s take a look at the things that caught my fancy…

HOLYROOD REFERENDUM DEBATE HALTED AFTER WESTMINSTER SHOOTING…. The Scottish Parliament has suspended a debate on whether to call for an independence referendum following an attack outside the UK Parliament. Presiding Officer Ken Macintosh said the incident in London was affecting the contributions of MSPs, and that the debate would resume at another time. Four people - including an armed police officer, a woman and a man thought to be the attacker - have died. Scotland Yard is treating it as a terrorist incident. The woman was among several pedestrians struck by a car on Westminster bridge, before it crashed into railings. The officer was stabbed in the Houses of Parliament by an attacker, who was shot by police. Police said 20 people have been injured, including three other officers, and a "full counter-terrorism inquiry" is under way. News of the London attack broke as MSPs were spending a second day debating whether or not to seek permission from the UK government for a second referendum on Scottish independence. A vote had been due to be held at 17:30, but politicians including Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson called for the session to be suspended. Politicians and staff immediately left the chamber once the debate had been suspended. Parliament officials initially ruled that the debate should continue as planned, before Mr Macintosh decided that it should be halted. The presiding officer said: "The fact that our sister parliament has had a serious incident is affecting this particular debate, and is affecting the contribution of members. And so it is for that reason we are deciding to suspend the sitting.

‘HUMAN SWAN’ PLANNING FLIGHT OVER HEBRIDES…. A conservationist who made headlines when she made a 4,500-mile paraglider flight following a route used by migrating swans has revealed plans for a similar journey over the Hebrides. Sacha Dench, a biologist and head of media for the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) will fly ‘from tip to toe’ of the Hebrides as well as bringing her aircraft to the Dumfries-based Wild Film Festival Scotland. Ms Dench is hoping to complete her trip over the Hebrides in May this year, where she will be supported by a team on a tall ship. Speaking to the BBC, Ms Dench said the Hebridean flight would be ‘amazing’, adding: “I have been to Harris and Skye and have always wanted to explore more of the islands. “I love Scotland and have spent a lot of time there working on WWT projects and doing aerial photography. It’s such a beautiful country. “It will be a brilliant way to enjoy those really challenging environments - the rugged peaks and the sea.” Last year, Ms Dench followed the migration route of the endangered Bewick’s swan in a bid to raise awareness of the WWT’s conservation work.

ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND POSTS 9TH CONSECUTIVE ANNUAL LOSS…. Royal Bank of Scotland has posted nine consecutive years of losses after the taxpayer-owned group set aside another 4 billion pounds ($5 billion) in the fourth quarter of 2016 to cover the costs of misconduct during the financial crisis and targeted a return to profitability in 2018. RBS on Friday reported a fourth quarter net loss of 4.44 billion pounds, compared with a loss of 2.74 billion pounds in the same period a year earlier. That means the bank has racked up more than 50 billion pounds in losses since 2008, when the government rescued it from collapse with a 45 billion pound bailout. "The bottom line loss we have reported today is, of course, disappointing but given the scale of the legacy issues we worked through in 2016, it should not come as a surprise," Chief Executive Ross McEwan said in a statement. "These costs are a stark reminder of what happens to a bank when things go wrong and you lose focus on the customer, as this bank did before the financial crisis." Since its 2008 bailout, RBS has worked to refocus on the British market, shedding overseas operations, cutting costs and reducing its portfolio of risky assets. The bank reported 1 billion pounds of restructuring expenses in the fourth quarter and said it would spend an additional 2 billion pounds on the effort over the next three years.

SCOTLAND STEPS UP CAMPAIGN TO ATTRACT MORE CRUISE SHIPS…. SCOTLAND has its biggest representation yet at Seatrade Cruise Global in Florida - targeting industry operators as they plan itineraries several years ahead. Scotland’s ports have returned to the cruise industry’s major annual show with a strengthened sales pitch, thanks to increased membership of their marketing organisation and another record-breaking season underway. Since January, the organisation has added four full members – Fort William, Port Ellen, Northern Lighthouse Board (Oban), and Scalloway/Shetland Islands Council – bringing its ports around Scotland to 20. Another two new associate members – Dunvegan Castle and Visit Aberdeenshire �� have added to the four associates and two groundhandlers from the support and service sector. Cruise Scotland chairman Andrew Hemphill said: “The additional membership and record activity demonstrate that the attractions and potential of Scotland are being recognised increasingly at home and abroad. The package on offer and the successes of the last decade are a great message.” In an eighth successive record-breaking season, almost 810 cruise ships and over 656,000 passengers are set to visit Scotland in 2017, following 676 vessels and around 484,000 visitors last year. The value to the Scottish economy is expected to top £72 million. Mr Hemphill added: “For many passengers, it will be their first visit to Scotland and, significantly, we know from experience they often return to enjoy again the stunning scenery, culture and heritage, and the hospitality. Participation at Seatrade Cruise Global will ensure we keep the momentum going.”

COUPLE TAKE LEGAL ACTION AGAINST DIAGEO OVER ‘WHISKY FUNGUS’…. A couple have won a landmark judgment allowing them to proceed with legal action against one of Scotland’s largest whisky distillers over the blackening of their home caused by fungus created in the production of the spirit. Thomas and Gail Chalmers want drinks giant Diageo to install “abatement technology” as they claim their home in Bonnybridge, Stirlingshire, has been stained black by the Baudoinia compniacensis fungus, a by-product of the whisky maturation -process. The couple’s home is near warehouses belonging to the firm. Mr and Mrs Chalmers say the “whisky fungus” experiences accelerated growth when exposed to ethanol vapours – commonly known as the “angels’ share” – causing anything outdoors in the surrounding area to be coated with a black mould and have requested Diageo install a “thermal oxidiser” in their maturation sheds to stop the fungus flourishing. However, despite the Court of Session ruling the distillers do have a case to answer, Diageo denies the mould is the cause of blackening buildings. David Short, of Balfour and Manson, leading the action for the claimants, called on Diageo to be “good neighbours,” and admit the mistake. He said: “I am pleased the court considers the evidence produced in support of the case is sufficient to allow a full hearing of all of the evidence. “This includes scientific evidence comprising of DNA test results which conclude, without doubt, the cause of the fungal growth and subsequent blackening of the buildings is caused by ethanol released from buildings where whisky is matured.” Residents of Saint Croix in the US Virgin Islands are also pursuing a class action lawsuit against Diageo, along with the manufacturers of Cruzan Rum, citing similar issues with the fungus. Bourbon makers in Kentucky are also embroiled in a long-¬running battle with residents of the town of Shively over the spread of the mould.

SCOTLAND'S WEATHER: NEW ICE AND SNOW WARNING ISSUED FOR TONIGHT …. Two crashes halted westbound traffic on the A8 and M8 at Newhouse in North Lanarkshire this morning. Motorists face further difficult driving conditions across much of Scotland tonight from a new severe warning for ice and snow. A yellow - "be aware" - alert was issued by the Met Office for 8pm until 9am tomorrow. The ice and snow warning covers most of Scotland tonight. Picture: Met Office It covers the whole country apart from southern Scotland and parts of Aberdeenshire and Tayside. Freezing conditions overnight are forecast to persist across much of Scotland until Thursday, before temperatures rise at the weekend to 13C in parts. A Met Office spokeswoman said: "Wintry showers will become confined to the Northern Isles and northern Scotland overnight, with icy patches forming. "There is a chance of difficult driving conditions on untreated roads and slippery conditions on pavements. "A further 1-2cm of snow is likely locally, mainly across higher ground of the north, with locally 5cm over higher parts of Sutherland and Wester Ross.

On that note I will say that I hope you have enjoyed the news from Scotland today,

Our look at Scotland today is of the sunset at Loch Morlich...

A Sincere Thank You for your company and Thank You for your likes and comments I love them and always try to reply, so please keep them coming, it's always good fun, As is my custom, I will go and get myself another mug of "Colombian" Coffee and wish you a safe Thursday 23rd March 2017 from my home on the southern coast of Spain, where the blue waters of the Alboran Sea washes the coast of Africa and Europe and the smell of the night blooming jasmine and Honeysuckle fills the air…and a crazy old guy and his dog Bella go out for a walk at 4:00 am…on the streets of Estepona…

All good stuff....But remember it’s a dangerous world we live in ….. Be safe out there…

Robert McAngus

[easyfoodnetwork]

A tour of Lucas Sin’s home kitchen, where he finds relief after spending his days cooking for his Distance Dining pop-up and Junzi Kitchen This is Right at Home, a series in which Eater explores the home kitchens and cooking habits of fascinating food people. Here now, we go inside Lucas Sin’s New York City apartment. As New York City shuddered to a stop, Lucas Sin shifted into high gear. Sin, the culinary director at Junzi Kitchen — a fast-casual Chinese restaurant group — and a 2019 Eater Young Gun, is busier than he was before the virus struck. Four of Junzi’s five locations are still open for takeout and delivery. In addition to feeding the thousands of New Yorkers hungry for some taste of the outside world, the restaurants are now providing meals to first responders and food banks, too. “I was a kid in Hong Kong during SARS. The one emotion that I remember is how important it was to be optimistic and how important it was to be adaptable and flexible,” Sin says. Since he can’t host the fine dining pop-ups he once organized in his already-limited free time, he’s started a new one, calling it Distance Dining. The prepared meals, delivered across Manhattan, feature collaborations between Sin and other chefs and artists, and explore the many cultural intersections of the Chinese diaspora. Twice a week, the chef takes to Instagram Live to explain the dishes’ historical importance, and virtually guides his guests through plating and enjoying their meals. This week, he cooked a three-course Chinese-Filipino dinner. When the chef finds a moment of quiet, or gets home from the restaurant — where he now works shifts alone, to minimize contact with his employees — the dishes he craves call for only three or four ingredients. “Because the restaurant has been so busy and it’s taking so much of my time, I turned a lot of my cooking to be really, perhaps, simpler,” he says. On Sin’s table now are many of the same dishes he ate at Hong Kong diners as a child. Then, pocket change was enough to buy toast, eggs, and macaroni soup, classic dishes Sin hadn’t given much thought to until recently. “I’ve jumped into cooking a lot of comfort food from my childhood,” he says: “Spam, ketchup instead of tomato sauce. All of those adaptations are perfect for quick, easy home cooking. If you don’t want to go outside to buy a tomato for your spaghetti, you can absolutely use ketchup, and stuff like that. There’s a lot of pantry cooking that I’ve been doing that has brought me a lot of joy and sustenance and stability.” When he decides to cook something a little more complex, and the sparse store shelves turn up a few vegetables and a piece of fatty meat, Sin pulls out his clay pot. Clay pot dishes are, at their simplest, highly customizable rice casseroles. The rice gently steams in the clay, while meat and greens nestle on top, imparting each grain with their flavor. Sin’s is the color of sun-bleached sand, its bottom gently blackened by constant use. When he opened his first restaurant, as a 16-year-old in Hong Kong, he called it Bo Zai, inspired by the Cantonese word for clay pot: bōu jái. Sin has worked in and operated his own restaurants since before he was old enough to drink, but some of his most valuable lessons came from watching these layered dishes take shape in his family’s kitchen. His father’s most impressive meals were the simplest ones, and many of them came together in a clay pot. “It’s the first dish that my dad ever taught me how to make: clay pot rice with pork belly and Chinese sausage, and taro… It’s maybe my favorite dish of all time,” Sin says. “I certainly think that my father is maybe the best home cook of all time.” With Sin in tow, his father maneuvered through the markets of Hong Kong, stopping to ask an older shopper how to cook the greens they picked over, pausing again to choose a huge, gleaming crab from a favorite fisherman’s stand. Exploring these maze-like markets and watching his father turn a jumble of ingredients into a meal was a wonder. When he gets home from Junzi, or finishes broadcasting one of his socially distanced pop-ups, Sin gently washes chubby pearls of sweet rice, and layers them into his clay pot with whatever meat he’s picked up that day. “The way I really think about how I cook at home is based not around so much even the ingredients or the dish, but the equipment. So, I like to have one dish be only made in one piece of equipment, because that’s the easiest way to cook.” Once the meal is ready, Sin brings the clay vessel to his table, where he and his girlfriend sit snugly against an exposed-brick wall climbing with vines. When dinner parties were still a part of life, friends and family squeezed together at Sin’s table almost every night, barely six inches of space between elbows. Sin would light a bed of coals underneath a Weber grill on his small patio, par-cook a fish, then slide it onto the grill and cover it in mounds of hay, where it smoked and smoldered until flesh barely clung to bone. Sin takes great pleasure in the amazement on his friends’ faces as he lifts the grill cover with a magician’s flare, smoke billowing out into the open air. But with less time, and no dinner invitations to pass out, he’s turning to simpler pleasures. A bowl of ketchup fried rice, for instance, which he’s eaten nearly every night this week. Egg yolk mixed into the day-old rice ensures the grains remain separate. The egg whites becoming fluffy as they cook, a generous squeeze from a jar of ketchup perfuming and coloring the rice. “What’s best about Chinese cooking is that just because it looks simple doesn’t mean that it can’t be historical and interesting and technique-driven,” Sin says. “It doesn’t have to be fussy for it to be thoughtful.” As the exhaustion sets in each night, and Sin prepares for another day, he relies on an inventory of flavorful ingredients to get him across the finish line. “A lot of Chinese home cooking is developed around these pre-made sauces,” Sin explains. His cupboards and refrigerator shelves are packed with fish sauce, shrimp paste, chile oils, various forms of soy sauce, and a large bottle of Frank’s Red Hot. Spooned over rice or a fatty piece of charred meat, the sauces bolster even the simplest dish. The enormous blade takes the peel off of garlic and slices through meat, as Sin expertly wields the butcher’s knife he’s been using since he was a child. “It’s the only knife in the Chinese culinary canon,” he says. “So all the cooks use it for everything. That’s the only knife I rely on, and it’s a little sentimental because the knife is made in Hong Kong. We grew up really close to the factory. I’ve always used these knives in my home and now I use them professionally, as well.” Perhaps no tool in Sin’s kitchen gets more use than his worn-in clay pot. “It’s a perfect one-pot meal,” he says. As the pot heats up and the rice within begins to steam, the air fills with the smell of warming clay. “It’s a super unique taste. You steam the rice very gently until the water has evaporated. And then you keep moving the clay pot around the stove, inch by inch… so that you can get the nice golden crust on the bottom and the rice itself is perfectly cooked.” And as most New Yorkers shelter in their homes, Sin finds himself in his own less than ever. Most nights, his girlfriend washes rice for the clay pot, or lights coals under the grill so they’re burning hot when he gets home. Once back, Sin shrugs off his jacket, drops his knives, and gets to work. “It feels very different to cook at home,” he says. “It’s like a totally different mindset. I genuinely love coming home to cook.” An Rong Xu is a photographer based in New York City and Taipei. from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2SbP7gx

http://easyfoodnetwork.blogspot.com/2020/04/for-nyc-chef-whos-still-working-home.html