[OTA] comfort foods

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Emma had spent more of the last four days in front of a fire with her cards than she wanted to admit to herself. She wouldn't even let herself think what Sabine or Dani would've said if they'd seen her. When not there, she'd been curled up in a blanket nest she made in one of the twin beds upstairs, crying until she felt dryer than the desert outside. It still felt too empty to sleep until exhaustion didn't leave her a choice, but it was better than the king bed would've been. She'd left that for her roommate. He'd been back sometime while she was upstairs, gotten his bag, and left again. That was okay. She didn't really want to people, and she'd only hurt him with her face, and her not knowing what to say or not make things worse just by existing.

Four days of only leaving the room long enough to get a bite to eat she wouldn't even taste was ridiculous, and when lying there unable to sleep got to be too much, she showered and dressed. Chop vegetables, boil water, Dani would've said. Shortly before dawn, the hotel kitchen was empty. Emptier than the castle's would've probably been that time of night.

With no appetite, she looked at what was available to decide where to start. Plenty of venison... a confit maybe, since it was so early, and would take time to cook. Once that was in the oven, she was lost for a moment, and grabbed a bag of onions. If a few tears formed as she sliced them thin, it was just the onions, that was all, and once she started them caramelizing, she felt steadier, and maybe ready to think of eating herself eventually. Soup later, from the onions.

Aligot. That was what she wanted. So she gathered her ingredients, and started to peel potatoes, dropping them whole into water with lemon juice. By the time sounds of the inn started to filter through, and others came into the kitchen she had more potatoes than she had any need for, and she started thinking of all the ways she could use them, each dish sounding as welcome as the last. Putting the peeled potatoes in the walk-in to keep cool, she went looking for a small chalkboard she'd seen in the café. In neat even letters, she wrote:

Today's Specials

Potatoes All Day

Latkes
6-11AM
Gratin Dauphinois
11AM-3PM
Raclette
3PM-7PM
Tartiflette
7PM-10PM
Aligot
12N-1PM, 8-9PM
Disco Fries
all day, made on order

DINNER SPECIAL

Confit de Venaison, Pané

Soupes du Jour
Potato Leek
French Onion


She added some scrolling designs in the margins and looked over her work. That would keep her busy. Busy was good. Feeding people, feeling like she was doing something useful, that was even better.

((OOC: Find Emma in the kitchens or the café, any time throughout the day. She's shy and sad, but always willing to talk about food, and willing to take requests.))

Comments

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"London," Sunny answered as she took up the ricer and began putting the potatoes through. "I was there for school. We met at midnight mass. Because lapsed Catholics or not, the pressure of family looms large at Christmas and Easter."

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That made a kind of sense. Emma could imagine going down to visit Sabine at Christmas, and they would've attended the midnight mass. It was part of their tradition. But Sunny seemed like she knew the other Emma better than some brief encounter.

"My cousin moved to London to be with her boyfriend." A boyfriend who didn't care for Emma any more than she did for him, but they managed polite tolerance. "I was on my way to see her when..." She looked around to suggest this place.

If they met in London, though, that gave Emma another thought. "Do you know a guy called Jag?"

[st_igmatized]

Sunny's hands paused momentarily. She nodded as she resumed her task. "Yes. Not well, but fondly."

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Emma missed the nod, her eyes on the warming cream. She didn't want it to scorch; what other reason could she have for not risking even glancing eye contact when talking about this guy she didn't even know? Oh, right. Guilt, possibly misplaced, but still felt. Concern. Just to name a couple.

"He's here," she told Sunny in a rush, before hesitating over the rest, "And, um, I feel like he could use a friend? Or at least a familiar face who actually knows him."

[st_igmatized]

Sunny's hands froze. Things like this were why she'd decided on the potatoes rather than the cream, because with her head where it was, she probably would let it scorch. "Oh." She supposed she must have thought that Em had heard about Jag via Coby. A misplaced question or comment. This? Oh damn.

"Oh, poor thing."

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"I don't know where he's staying. I haven't seen him since that first night, and he came back sometime for his stuff, but I think I was actually asleep then. They put us in the same room. Whoever they are, who'd do something that cruel." Emma didn't blame him for avoiding her. And there was nothing she could do to help, when who she was (or who she wasn't) was the problem. She was just worried.

[st_igmatized]

Who would be that cruel? Jag loved Em. He loved her madly, it was laced through his whole being. She had known her coven for a decade now, and yet the idea of them not knowing her, of Orlu not knowing her... "He'll turn up," Sunny said as evenly as she could manage. "I'll see what I can do."

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"Thank you." Emma lifted the saucepan from the heat and swirled its contents lightly. Not quite warm enough yet, but she didn't want to bring the temperature up too quickly.

Don't ask questions if you aren't prepared for the answers. It was a lesson Emma had learned a long time ago. So. Was she prepared for whatever answer would come?

Prepared enough, and she needed to know. The cards hadn't been as clear as she would like, and more confused by the Knight of Wands every time. "Was he.. Were they... He and the me you knew, they were together?"

[st_igmatized]

Sunny was silent for several heartbeats. How exactly did you answer that?

Directly. Without unasked for frills. "Yes."

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It made it more real, hearing it out loud, but Emma had known. The way Jag had looked at her before he realized she didn't know him... Pyro had looked at her like that, before Bobby was gone.

"Fuck." Emma didn't swear often, but this deserved it. "Should I..." She shook her head. "Never mind."

She glanced over trying to see how close Sunny was to being done with the potatoes. There was a shimmer above the crème fraiche that said it was almost to the temp she wanted.

[st_igmatized]

"Fuck," Sunny agreed as she put the last of the potatoes through the ricer before she passed them Em's way. She swore more than she used to, but she tried to keep away from the hard ones unless absolutely necessary.

This seemed to a correct occasion.

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After spooning out the garlic, Emma poured the warm cream over the potatoes and put it all back on the heat, where she beat them together until smooth and glossy.

As she worked, wanting to get away from the tough topics, she asked, "What were you studying?" If Emma had really wanted to go to university, Dr. MacTaggart probably could've worked it out, even though she'd dropped out of school at thirteen. But Emma never could narrow it down to one thing she wanted to study enough to justify the extra effort. Especially when she was safest staying in Duninnean.

[st_igmatized]

"English lit and language," Sunny answered in a way that said she was used to having to get defensive about it and was trying not to. "My parents wanted me to go pre-med or pre-law, but just thinking about that makes my eyes cross."

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"Language and literature could be good." She might could have seen herself studying that, if she'd gone to school. "I don't know that I would've wanted to stick to just English. But I'm more pick a topic, read everything I can on the subject, move on to the next thing that seems interesting, or that I didn't know enough about to understand the thing I was already studying."

[st_igmatized]

"My other languages weren't exactly on offer," Sunny answered with a wry little smile. "At least not outside of a class here and there."

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"Was it as dead old white guys as it seems like it would be?" Emma had spent enough time in bookstores to know what she was likely to find in classics sections. Enough she was glad being largely self-taught meant she could read what she wanted, and still get some analysis in just by talking with Sabine, who read as much as she did.

[st_igmatized]

"Now, now, sometimes it was dead white girls," Sunny pointed out teasingly. "But yeah, basically. The only accepted Igbo presence in classic literature is Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. Which is a fine book and all, but it's not the only one."

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I should read that was followed by oh right, no Amazon here, and not a wide selection of books at all from what she'd seen.

"My formal education was very white, in a city that really wasn't. And after that, more European than it probably should have been," she admitted. "I want to say it was proximity and ease of access, but..." She shrugged. Broadening horizons took effort, and she hadn't put in as much as she would've liked.

[st_igmatized]

"Yeah, I know," Sunny answered with a little sideways smile. She did know. Her time in America and London had been very educational in this regard. It had in some ways seeped into Nigeria as well. Her education there had been completely derived from the British schooling system.

She couldn't judge individual people too harshly.

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"Do you have a favorite book?" If someone was a reader, and if you were going to study literature at university, you'd have to be, Emma thought, a favorite book could be a good shortcut to learning about them. And it was a lot easier to talk about than some things.

[st_igmatized]

"Oh, God," Sunny laughed a little at the list of books that all tried to crowd in at once. "I'm partial to the work of Helen Oyeyemi, since going to school in London. Yoruba author, loves Emily Bronte, both things come through loud and clear. And Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. For most people, I'd have to say my favorite current book is Americanah... But I've also got a fondness for Virginia Hamilton's Her Stories. And I've read The Witches more times than I can count."

[st_ackeddeck]

Those all sounded really interesting, probably because Emma could tell how much Sunny liked them. The only one she'd read was The Witches, and, "Ugh. Even Duninnean, as tiny as it had been," before mutant refugees swelled its size, "Had a bookstore. And the castle library. And Amazon."

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Sunny sighed. "I know. God, I miss the internet."

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Sometimes it was easier focusing on the little things, like books, the internet, rather than the black hole of missing people and home. "I know. I've lived places where cell service sucked and I had to depend on libraries or cafes with public wifi, but nothing like this. Still, it could be so much worse."

Mariko hadn't talked a lot about the last world she'd been on – it was too painful, Emma thought, with how deeply Mariko missed MJ, a heartbreak Emma had to learn how to live with now. But as much as Mariko said they were rebuilding, it had been a much worse world than a kitchsy hotel in the desert.

[st_igmatized]

"Yeah. As far as alternate dimensions go, you could definitely do worse than this." Sunny grinned, emphasizing the humor over the potential horror. "My first magic lesson? We had to go into a soul-eating death forest. I'll take this over that any day."