#irradiatedcookiejar

“Nah, you gotta go rounds against Giant Radscorpions before she’ll even think about bringing out the Deathclaws. Or so I heard.” >.>

send “▶▶️” to get a glimpse at a scene from my muse’s future. 

“You need to rest them first, it allows the juices to redistribute and improves the taste as well as texture.  Five minutes, minimum.  Don’t poke it, either. We didn’t poke it while cooking, and we’re not gonna poke it now, alright?” Sam went about the kitchen, gathering up the other ingredients and items for tonight’s dinner. He had been somewhat nervous throughout the night; this was her first time cooking since her accident, and while the Followers did an excellent and, to him, seemingly impossible job, there was still going to be an adjustment period.

If she makes a mistake, it’s fine.  Nobody gets it right the first time, there’s going to always be something here and there that could be done just a little better. Learning process.  She’s fine.  She’s also hungry.  Been long enough...

“Alright, see all the bits in the bottom of the pan?  Pour a little of the wine in there, roll it around... that’s it, now on to the steak, nice and slow. There ya go.” He set the pan aside and watched as she gingerly picked up a fork in her new hand, all the little pins and discs working together smoothly as the steel fingers meshed together as they should.  She cut into the steak and took a bite, clearly savoring it as she beamed up at him.

27 A personal project is undertaken.

Sam looked up from the tattered manual weighed down to the workbench with an assortment of tools, all strange and unfamiliar and mildly intimidating.

“So, are you ready for this?  Are we ready for this? I want to think I am, but you… well, I don’t speak for others.  That’s rude.”  He took what was allegedly a wrench from the bench, and approached his subject. “A more prudent question is are you going to behave this time?”  Sam eased the teeth of the wrench on a wayward stud and gently tightened it.  “So far so good…”  He worked carefully and methodically, checking the faded pages in the booklet multiple times before tightening a nut here, loosening a belt there.

“Home stretch.  I’ll go slow this time, and you do your thing when you’re good and ready, ok?  On three… two… one…”

The wrench slipped off the stud as easily as it went on, and Sam gingerly turned a knob atop a gas tank.”

“Slow and steady now, you can do it…”

Had he been standing an inch to the left, Sam would’ve taken the a bolt to the skull.  The refrigerator he’d been working on for what seemed like an eternity refused to hold a charge of coolant.  He stood in place, tapping the wrench against his thigh.