HON3YPOT

Sook stared up at her elven lover dragging a steak as wide as she was tall through the balcony door on a sled. Her jetbike hummed to itself outside. The cityscape behind her was lost in the morning fog. Her ears were long and floppy from exertion. Her black hair was pinned back with a single shard of grey bone. She wore naught but a battered white tank-top and a pair of black joggers with WITCH ASS written on the, well, ass.

Sook suppressed the primal emotions that surged through her at the sight of her magical partner and looked down at the handwritten recipe in a language she didn’t speak.

“Are you sure this calls for mammoth meat?” Sook asked.

“Oh yeah, this is my grandma’s recipe.” Nil said. Her ears perked right up, twitching at the tips from excitement. “My mom wrote it down centuries ago, but I’ve never made it myself.”

“I thought mammoths were extinct…” Sook said, staring down at the table-sized slab of red meat, dripping through the layers of parchment paper it lay upon.

Nil brushed her bloody hands together. “Hm? Maybe on your world. We had plenty. God, they used to chase them into canyons to kill dozens at a time. We stopped doing that, obviously. But a few herds came over in the Pulse, and I have some friends who still hunt them. Burned a favor to get this, but it’s worth it.”

“Are you sure?” Sook said. She had been raised on the hautest of cuisine, the fare only billionaire heirs could afford. There was always talk of cloning mammoth meat, but it’d never been done to anyone’s satisfaction. Besides, she didn’t eat elephant—why would hair make any difference?

“Aren’t mammoths intelligent?”

“All animals are smart.” Nil said with a shrug. “It’s just different scales of smartness. I feel just as bad for digging up an anthill, or having chicken wings. We don’t actually value a life on intelligence. If we did, we wouldn’t eat mushrooms or cut down trees. And don’t talk to me about how the mushroom is just the fruiting body,” she said, apparently reading Sook’s mind. “The point is that fungi are smart.”

“Alright, alright!” Sook said. She looked to Nil’s less-than-spotless kitchen for the next step. Besides cleaning it, which she had spent the better part of the morning doing. The lack of any cleaning materials had made it more difficult than she’d expected, but it was good enough for government work, as her father had always said.

“I’ll just tidy up the kitch a bit here.” Nil said.

“Oh, I already—”

Nil strode forward, uttered a few intangible phrases and whispered the scent of a spring breeze across the flat. The kitchen jiggled for a moment, then popped into cleanliness, as though it had never been dirty in its life.

Sook stared at the literally sparkling kitchen with daggers figuratively shooting from her eyes. “Could you have done that the whole time?” She asked.

“Hm?” Nil hauled the steak inside, evidently not noticing Sook’s increasing rage.

“I just spent two hours cleaning that kitchen and you sparked it to pristine in a second.”

“Ohhh, sorry!” Nil said, scrounging through the cupboards. She disappeared inside one for some time, then re-emerged carrying the largest dutch oven  Sook had ever seen. She set it on top of the stove and turned every single burner on.

“That’s my bad,” Nil said. “I should have told you not to worry about it. It takes energy to cast that spell so I just don’t bother most of the time. For you I wanted it to be clean.”

“Then why didn’t y ou clean it last night?” Sook asked, arms crossed.

“Well, we weren’t using the kitchen…” Nil said, with the most infuriating smirk twisting across her face.

“You are insufferable.” Sook said, but the taste of Nil was still on her lips. She still felt Nil’s skin pressed against her own. The way she’d taken control, the way she’d made Sook beg and plead and moan…

She could forgive a little mess.

Nil rattled off a list of ingredients and where to find them. Sook found herself travelling across the flat back and forth in a haphazard trot. Salt was next to the sacrificial altar. Flour was in the pantry, next to the box of grenades. The spices were all growing in what had been the master bedroom but was now a makeshift greenhouse, lit with a combination of modern SAD lamps and luminous sprites.

“Oh, fuck, we need tomatoes.” Nil said.

“You had those on Khesper?” Sook asked, dumping an armful of herbs on the marble kitchen counter.

“Oh sure, the ancestors brought a lot of cuttings through the gates. Stupid not to. Can you run down to the store and grab a few cans?”

“What, you can’t magic some up?” Sook said, mostly joking.

Nil shook her head. “Not without paying in blood. Food is expensive, moreso than moving stone or changing temperature. Food is life. Not only is it calorie-rich, but the concept of sustenance is a powerful one, a basis of the most elder spirits. Eating it staves off death. Growing it makes new life. Stealing it can either sustain or destroy, sometimes both.” She opened a drawer and began digging through onions. “I don’t fuck around with food.”

Sook threw up her hands in defeat. “Alright! Food is more dangerous magic than fireballs. Got it. I’ll go buy tomatoes.”

Nil’s apartment, much like the rest of the Entertainment District, was abandoned to the point that the elevator no longer worked. Like everywhere else around here, the basement and first floor were flooded. She had to go out and ask the bike for help. Fuse, Nil had called him.

“Um, can you take me to the store?” She asked. Fuse whirred his thrust vector flaps in assent, displaying a bunch of dollar sign and pixellated store emojis on his handlebar screen. She somewhat hesitantly climbed aboard—she’d never ridden him without Nil and her magical safety precautions. But Fuse did not screech to Mach 5 or flip her upside-down. He gently took off from the balcony and drifted down the building like a hot-dog shaped balloon. At about five-storey height he angled his thrusters down and back and puttered to a corner store on a pier whose name was an incomprehensible combination of sputtering chinese neon lights, orkish graffiti, and the word MART.

The storekeep, some kind of moss-colored halfling or gnome or goblin, Sook wasn’t really sure which, didn’t look up from their tablet until she came to the till with every can of crushed tomatoes they had.

“You’re not Miss Shadow.” The storekeep said.

“No…” Sook said.

“But Fuse dropped you off. Hm.” They nodded at the door. “Off with you then.”

“I haven’t paid.”

“Miss Shadow don’t pay. And you’re runnin’ her errands.” They said. They looked back down at their tablet with a finality she understood well.

Sook climbed back aboard Fuse with a bag full of cans and pondered just who she’d fallen in with on her way back. She was a billionaire. She could’ve paid. Should’ve, considering the state of the shop and the neighborhood. But that storekeep didn’t want the money. They didn’t care about a few cans of tomatoes. They cared about whatever it was Nil did for them.

Sook rode back through the dilapidated towers of the district, over little water busses and kayaks, over piers bustling with flea markets and people looking to trade trash for trash. She wondered what these people would eat for dinner. Probably not braised mammoth. Maybe not even real food at all.

Fuse dropped her off on the balcony. Sook opened the door, and steam rushed past her, carrying the scent of spices, fried meat, and hot oil. She promptly began salivating.

“Okay it smells delicious in here.” Sook said. She dumped the bag of tomatoes down next to a pile of skulls with runes burned black into their bleached bones. One tumbled down onto a separate pile of old phones, some of which were growing a strange orange fungus that gave off an aura of disquiet and craving. She tried not to think about that.

Nil screamed and grunted. Sook almost asked what was wrong, then saw that Nil was simply trying to heave the mammoth steak over to brown the other side, and failing.

“Sweetie, let me.” Sook said. She reached into the pot, ignoring the steam, and manually flipped the steak over with a single fluid motion. The steak sizzled in the pot. She held her hands out to Nil.

“Cleaning, please.”

Nil waved her hands. “Of course, my gallant knight.” Then, instead of casting a spell, she leaned forward and sucked on Sook’s fingers, gently teasing the spices, blood, and oil from Sook’s fingers with her tongue, warm and moist and strong.

Sook gasped for more than one reason, and pulled her hands back.

“That’s unsanitary!” Sook said.

“Mm, darling, but you aren’t cooked either, and I ate you last night.”

“THAT IS VERY DIFFERENT!”

Nil laughed, a high, haughty thing, and grinned at her evilly. “My love, you have no idea what elves do for food, do you? It’s either the blood of the hunt or something that’s stewed for three days. This is a quick lunch I’m making here.”

“I’d hate to see what’s a family meal for you.”

Nil’s black-painted lips curled up in a smirk.

“You’ll see.” She said. It sounded more like a promise than a wisecrack.

 Sook went to the sink, found a long-abandoned bar of soap, and washed her hands with a jug of water. She grabbed a can of tomatoes and plunked it down next to the pot.

“Hey, so. I was thinking. This meal is huge, right? We can’t possibly eat it all. This district is poor as shit, right? Shouldn’t we share it? I mean, you’re a fucking wizard, and I’m rich. It feels wrong to keep this to ourselves. I just feel guilty. I feel like I’m not even part of this world. We got the tomatoes for free from the shopkeep because apparently they owe you. I just… I’m tired of taking all the time. I want to give.”

Nil cocked her head quizzically, like a dog that had just heard the letters W A L K. Her expression softened as she saw Sook’s sincerity. She reached up and tenderly cupped Sook’s cheek.

When the ground had stopped shaking, he resumed brightly: “Couldn’t be helped, I’m afraid. This has been your third crossing and you know what they say: three is a pattern.”

Ŗ̷̣̗̖̞̠͛̓͆̆̓͜E̷̼͇̽̈́̿̊̚͝L̸͖̤̯̘͂̏̌̅͒̚͝Ę̶̧̛̱̙̣̲̖͙̮̈́͊͌̂͐̌͐̉Å̶̠̈́̈́̎͌͊̂͛̉͝͝Š̴̠̯̖͖̣̄̒̑͑̾̂̚̕͜Ȩ̸̲͙̜̪̜͗̒̎̎̄͌̕ ̴̛͙̦̂̓͛̒̑͊̇̈́͐̄M̴̡͙̜͚̲̥͊͊̇͛̓͋̌͋E̶̛̗̞̖̦̬̪̗̞̒͗͒̉ͅ

“I think you know I cannot do that, Your Eldritchness, since you do seem particularly insistent on coming over here and in your current form,  if you’ll forgive me the expression, you do an absolutely disastrous amount of damage to our general existence. ”

The screeching resumed and he had to lower his voice to a whisper to reach the creature at all. “However— If it’s a stay in the human world you want, we can help you with that.”

The silence that suddenly took over was almost more painful than the sound it replaced.

w̷̡̦̺̹͈̥̗͔̭̉̉̕͜ͅe̸̛͇̓̅̏̏̊͌̍̏?̵̡̢̢̞͈̙̼̜͇̯͙͑́͌̈́̆͒̀̋

Oh thank goodness, that sounded almost like a reasonable speaking voice. “My associates and I, from the Eldritch Relocation Initiative,” he replied cheerfully. “We can walk you through the process of creating a suitably stable human appearance, get you the necessary paperwork for a residence on earth, and can even find you some charming mortal accommodation to house you, if you wish. You will be assigned a personal case worker to help you with any problems you may encounter. On the condition, of course, that you stop subjecting my fellow creatures to unspeakable horror and tearing at the fabric our of reality.”

The past couple years he had become quite good at gauging whether his offer was being considered with curiosity or contempt. Even without any conventional facial features to read. The current doubtful jittering vibrating at the edge of his hearing definitely sounded intrigued. So much the better. It always broke his heart when they had to go through the whole banishment procedure. Mason had also stopped screaming by now, which was a decided improvement.

“Perhaps you’d like to tell me what drew you to our little corner of time and space in the first place?” he invited. “I’m sure that whatever it is you are interested in, you’ll be able to enjoy it much more from a human perspective, as it were. Really immerse yourself, you know?”

There was something deeply, profoundly confusing about receiving a form of communication that was beyond language, words, or sounds, and yet have it appear decidedly shy and embarrassed.

.̷̡̦̗͙͈̺̻͚͍̦͍̆͊͒̒͂́̑̔̚͘͜.̴̛̫̫̫̣̝̪̤͆̃.̷̪̗̠̤̯̫̰͈̥̩͖̺̿̓̏̽̾̽͗͛̍͠y̸̨̭̻͈̠͐͒̽̈́͗̕ơ̸̛̭̮̬̜̮̱͕̜̩̽̅̎́̓̊͂̀̍͜ų̸̨̛̟̫̳͔̻̬̹͇̘͊́͗̀̄̓͗ ̴̨̞̪̬̪̗͍͚͛̈́͌̋̈́͑̃̃͘͘h̶̖̉̑͛̋͌̕͝͠a̵̭͓͍̮̘̬̹̺̩̮͎̓ͅv̸̤̬̯̯̊̀̀̈́̓̍̋̀͝ȩ̶̻̙̫̙̯͌̀̈̈́͗.̴̪̺̊̀͛̌̑͑͜.̷̮̞̠̼̥̮̗̫͚̈́̅͊́͒̕.̶̛̪̳̪̣͙̥͉̞͙̳̱̎̈̔̏̅̓̄͛̽͐͝ḇ̶̢̰̞̗̠̠̝̄̿͒͜͜ͅö̶̧͖̩̰́͑̐́̅̉͂̚͝͝͝͝ã̴̢̨̧͎̩̼͖̬͐͗̀̀͘t̸̬̄̈́̋͝s̴̛̜̮̖͚̞͍͈̓̐́̈͌̄̑͠?̵̧̫͙́

His smile broadened. “We most certainly do have boats, yes. It did say in your file that all your previous sightings have taken place at sea. So, you’re interested in boats! Excellent choice of hobby. A marvel of human invention, if I do say so myself. And you’ll be please to know that there are many humans just as interested in them as you are, and they’ll be more than happy to teach you all about them!”

The lights in the reinforced basement, which had previously barely been able to stay lit, stopped flickering.

ȧ̶̮̼͈̯̝͕̉͗n̴̨͈̗̪͑d̷̢̢̗͉̗̗̜̭̝̒̀̊̀̽̀͐̂̉͜͠͝.̵̛̭̺̠̪̇̂̀͌͌̐͝.̷̨̙͔̬̥̣͙͔̈́̿͆͗̄͐͠ͅ.̷̢̣͕͓͋͑̓̈̐̑̇͜s̷̼͕̳̻̚ͅą̵̢͍̪͔̠̼̼̜̝͆̐̎̀͊́i̸̯̥͚̫̘͐͐́̑͌̑͆̅́͐͝͝ļ̴̺̦̻͈̱̦̜̝͎̤̿̑̒́̀̃̈̅̏̂̈́̈͜ ̷̧̡̳̘͙̤̞̻̭͉͂̈́̀̿i̶̢̨͉͍̲͚̱̼͌ͅǹ̴̢͛ ̸̡͕͎̩͓͠ḯ̶̡̨̨̱̟͙̥͎̙̘̠̒̈́̈̈́͜t̶͉͙̭̬̟̦͖̳͗̾̂̀̀̈̃͠?̴͍͇̣̳͇̤̺̬̬̬́͘ͅ

“Well, if you would be willing to adjust your shape, size, and general destructibility, I would say that the least we could do is take you for a boat ride!”