@Sparrow | Video

[arcadedragon]

[The video feed opens on part of the kitchen where there's a big stockpot sitting on the counter on a towel, and a few small bowls filled with soup are standing ready nearby. If anyone has known Genji for more than five minutes it's a shock that the rest of the kitchen isn't stacked to the ceiling with dirty dishes and there isn't food literally everywhere.

He cleans up nice sometimes.

While he's not visible at any point in the video, his slightly mechanical voice is pretty recognizable, so he doesn't think to introduce himself.]

Many of us have been sick, and the weather has become increasingly colder. I made butajiru, except without miso and without dashi because we do not have such things. So I suppose it is simply pork broth and vegetables.

In any case I made a lot, please help yourself, it is in the kitchen.

[Genji is capable of making exactly four items of food: porridge, tamagoyaki, waffles, and this. It's actually good too! Spoiled rich boy has learned himself some new skills.]

Comments

[writtendestiny]

It was difficult.

[She doesn't talk about her mother much. There's a small frown on her face, but she gestures to the flour in the bowl.]

You need to make a well in the middle next, and you'll need a cup of warm water.

[arcadedragon]

Life challenges us whenever it can. If there's a reason for it, I haven't found it yet.

[He obediently scoops a hole into the middle of his bowl of flour, perplexed by this new instruction, but if it gets him bread, he'll do it.]

Why warm?

[writtendestiny]

Because the yeast likes it warm.

[She delivers this piece of information with a factual tone, picking up the box of yeast packets and sliding a sachet out.]

It's alive. Sort of.

[arcadedragon]

It's alive? Are they .. nanites?

They look like sand.

[writtendestiny]

No, they're... fungus, I think. Something like that.

[Spores? They act like they're alive, to a certain definition of living.]

You'll see it when you add the water.

[arcadedragon]

[Is it going to sprout mushrooms???? He is intrigued. Warm water it is, because while he doesn't understand he's a good student. For the most part. And especially when he gets to eat the results of his studies.]

Do I add the water into this little hole I made?

[writtendestiny]

Mhm, a bit at a time. You don't want to make soup.

[She smiles at him.]

But we can do that later, if you like.

[arcadedragon]

Soup I know. It is bread that is magic!

[He mixes it in with a wooden spoon. Intently watching to see if any bubbles start forming.]

I am glad we have all these ingredients even though this place seems in disrepair.

[writtendestiny]

Then maybe we can trade. I can show you my favourite soup, and you can show me yours.

[She'll take any opportunity to show off her mother's mushroom soup recipe.]

But... mm. Places like this, they don't seem to want the people in them to starve, at least. Though in one of them I was usually quite hungry.

[arcadedragon]

You were in another place like this? What was it like?

[writtendestiny]

Like this... no, not exactly.

[She presses her lips together for a moment.]

I've been to two places, and they were only like this one in the way that they took people from their homes. The first place was somewhere we called The Box. That was... I'd prefer not to talk too much about it.

[arcadedragon]

Ah. You do not have to tell me.

I wonder how many thousands of these places exist, and how many people know in our own worlds who have been to such places and say nothing of it. Perhaps it's common and none of us knew until it happened to us.