strangetrip | [OTA] comfort foods

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[OTA] comfort foods

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.))

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"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.

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.

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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.

"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."

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.

"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.

"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.

"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."

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."

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

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.

"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."

Emma's eyes widened at that. Sunny made it sound funny, but the way you did when something really was as terrible as it sounded, and humor was the only way to cope. "That would definitely be worse. I've fought demons from Limbo? But they can't usually come through to my world, so it was just the once for me."

Another time she'd been left at the castle, having to watch on tv and in her visions as Rome and people she called family were attacked by demons, but that was a different kind of horrow.

"We few, we privileged few," Sunny said wryly. Normal people always thought having powers would be the coolest thing ever, and she couldn't lie, it was super cool, but it also meant that you were exposed to all manner of things you wished you'd never seen.

The cream had all been beaten in, while Emma and Sunny talked, and she hadn't started adding the cheese. Oops. She started that then, dropping the grated cheese in a small handful at a time, then beating it in thoroughly. "And now we're here, in our own, very real Hotel California... I wonder if they got stuck here too, whoever wrote that song." That would be weird, but maybe that meant they got home again afterwards.

"I'm actually not very familiar with that song," Sunny admitted, a bit sheepishly. "I've heard of it, but I've never heard it."

Emma probably wouldn't be all that familiar with the song either, except Stevesy, who ran the milk bottle game for Fuqua Brothers had been obsessed with it. She thought for a minute, then instead of singing, because any musical talent in the family had been on Sabine's side, recited:

Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back to the place I was before
'Relax' said the night man,
'We are programmed to receive.
You can check out any time you like,
But you can never leave!'

She shrugged. "I don't know. It sounds... more like this place than I would like."

"Worse, they may have inspired or even created this place with that," Sunny mused. "It's always hard to tell, once time breaks down. Either way, pretty damn creepy."

"Time is never as straightforward as it's supposed to be." Not when you had precogs and time travelers and reality warpers and parallel universes that impossibly seem to cross.

"And everything about this place is creepy. Even without the... room assignments." With the cheese all incorporated, Emma continued to beat the mixture vigorously, occasionally lifting the spoon to check the texture.

"I'm pretty sure the inn or whatever's behind it enjoys being terrible," Sunny answered flatly, arms crossing over her chest. "I'm not rooming with a strange man, but they did stick me in a room called Safari."

Rooming with a completely stranger, a male stranger, was pretty awful, but Emma kept thinking how much worse it must be for Jag, rooming with an alt of his girlfriend and her not knowing him at all.

"Safari?" She winced at the thought of how a place like this would decorate a safari-themed room, and how it would feel to be Nigerian and assigned it. Especially since most of the people Emma had seen here – the little she'd been out to notice – seemed to be white. "Terrible is a good word for it." Just... deliberately awful.

"It is every bit as magical as you're imagining," Sunny assured her.

She nodded at the aligot. "But that's what food we probably shouldn't be eating is for."

[OTA] comfort foods

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