Ioan Bălan — 2346
The dinner that Do I Know God After The End Waking had prepared for them was…rustic. That was the first term that ey had come up with to describe it, and no matter how else ey tried to nail it down further, ey was left with little else.
-It was a venison stew with parsnips and onions, thickened with tack and stretched with some barleycorns. ‘Woodsy’ was not quite the right word, and neither was ‘simple’, for the skunk had spent the better part of an hour doting over the kettle ey’d hung over a low fire, adding salt in what Ioan felt were needlessly small pinches, as well as pepper and nutmeg as though they were the most precious items in the world to him.
+It was a venison stew with parsnips and onions, thickened with tack and stretched with some barleycorns. ‘Woodsy’ was not quite the right word, and neither was ‘simple’, for the skunk had spent the better part of an hour doting over the kettle ey’d hung over a low fire, adding salt in what Ioan felt were miserly pinches, as well as pepper and nutmeg as though they were the most precious items in the world to him.
When asked where he got the spices, barley, and tack in a forest, the skunk had shook his head and said, “I am not a fucking ascetic, Ioan,” and gone back to cooking.
So, rustic stew it was, that night. Very, very good rustic stew. End Waking had explained that, as he had no way to store leftovers, they would need to finish the entire pot that night. It turned out to be no stretch for the small gathering — Ioan and May, Time Is A Finger Pointing At Itself, Douglas, and End Waking himself — as they all went back for seconds. The ranger skunk even swirled in a little extra water once the pot was empty, using a fingerpad to wipe what stew remained down into that to make himself a thin soup to finish out of the battered mug he’d been using as a bowl for the night.
They’d each brought their own contribution for the night, as well. After dinner, A finger Pointing pulled out a bottle of over-proof white whiskey that they passed around the circle. Ioan and May brought with them a short, two-person play that they put on for the other three, full of crude jokes and self-deprecating humor. Douglas, having picked up music as a hobby since uploading, performed a trio with three instances, one on flute, one on a mandolin, and one on a cajón.
@@ -72,7 +72,7 @@“How heavy must that madness be, then, to crash through so many failsafes and allow someone who has been within the system for more than two centuries? This is what we fear.”