plan (so that i don't forget about it) turkey hearts stuffed with breadcrumbs, nuts (pistacchios?), chopped hibiskus, spices (kinda persian spice profile) with risotto cooked in pomegrante juice with star anise. ETA: i can braise the hearts in the pome juice and then use that now-meat flavoured juice to make my risotto. for maximum use of the ingredients
Spoiler He comes to with a gasp. There's a memory of pain there, rapidly fading. It gets replaced immediately when he tries to sit up and nearly brains himself on an unfortunately placed rock. "Fuck!" The word echoes in the vastness of...A city, by the looks of it. Well, it used to be a city, at least. Now it's torn apart, building only bare suggestions around him, crumbled and slumped over into the red Martian dust. The dust seems to be everywhere on him as well, making him cough. He'd look around but suddenly there's something in front of his face, white, angular shell spinning this way or that. Oh hey, you're awake! Good! I'm so glad i found you! The little white thing sounds entirely sincere about it, completely overjoyed, and before he knows it, it's nuzzled up against his face with a sound almost like a happy cat. His hand comes up automatically to support it. Its so warm. Not soft, the shell is metal, but it's warm and just feels right to lean against, nuzzle back until the little white thing loops away from him again. Oh! I should introduce myself. I'm your Ghost, I was looking for you for so long. Do you want to give me a name? You don't have to right away, just...if you want to. But he finds that he wants to. The name springs to his tongue from...somewhere, he can't quite recall, but it feels right, the same way cuddling the little white thing has felt right. "Modgudr. You're Modgudr." There's another not-memory at the heels of this one, something solid in his mind that just settles with the same sort of weight as her name has. "And I'm Matt." Modgudr and Matt, I like that! But we gotta move now, it's not good for you to be out here in the open. C'mon, I know a place. She circles around his head again, shoves at the back of his shoulder and alright alright, he's getting up and patting the dust of his clothes and out of his hair with another suppressed cough. Mod is spinning in front of him, still making that pleased little purring sound as she goes, like she's just enjoying the fact that he's here with her now.
Spoiler: Geme She'd been to the temple before, of course. But this was different. The temple of Innana had... send her away. Not cast out, not when a Goddess had chosen her, and offending a deity, even if you didn't worship her, was a terrible idea. Now she stood in the shrine of Erishkigal. Its insides were covered in glazed tiles, the deep blue of lapis lazuli patterned with snakes and water waves and plants picked out in white clay. Gold accenting the eyes and highpoints of the relief. The oil lamp's light played over them, making it look like the wall's moved. In the center stood a statue of Erishkigal herself, finely worked from stone and covered in ivory, ebony-haired and eyes of glowing carneol. Her expression was calm, waiting, almost cold. The blood of the last sacrifice has been painted on them, now brown and flaked. Golden snakes wound around her legs and arms. Geme-Enlila had never seen anything like it. The eyes of statue seemed to follow her as she stepped closer. The bouquet of flowers she carried for a sacrifice seemed terribly small now, but she took the next steps anyways. I have been chosen, Geme told herself as she laid the flowers down at the feet of the statue. You don't need to be afraid. You have. Geme-Enlila's head jerked up. The statue was looking down at her, a smile curving lips that were now dripping blood again, fresh enough to still shine in the lamplight. Spoiler: Matt The fact that he was sitting in his own attic, hiding way from the world was ridiculous. This was his house, he should not have to do this. But for all it was his home, there was plenty of judgement to be had from the undead inhabitants, never mind the fact that Mod in true cat fashion would absolutely judge him. So. He was sitting in the attic, in a ratty t-shirt and washed out jeans, some old crime series running in the background on a grainy tv screen that was the complete opposite of 'flat. on his crossed leg he had a large tub of double chocolate cookie dough ice cream. It was halfway empty already. There was extra caramel sauce pooling into the divots he'd dug into it. A can of whipped cream was in easy reach. Look, if he was to deal with all the undead of London, Asher, Glowfish, the end of reality as they knew it, and Asher's mum on top of things...then he deserved to eat an entire goddamn tub of ice cream if he had a craving for that, and fuck everyone else.
Spoiler It was loud. It was crowded. He hated the London public transport system with the power of several thousand suns, but he had a court case, and you couldn't do those from home. So he'd braved it, gotten the strongest mints he had and made his way downtown. It didn't help. The moment he was out of his car and in the streets, he was surrounded by people. The mint couldn't cover the taste of everyone around him. Sourmilk anxiety from the young man beside him. Job interview, going by the clothes. Honeysweet, lemonade-bubbling infatuation from the couple a little further down, holding hands and giggling over something on their phones, brightly dyed hair mixing together with how close they stood. Cooked cabbage boredom from the old lady sitting across from him, knitting away on a sock without paying attention to it. Blistering chili heat from a young woman further behind him. Something on her phone clearly had her boiling away. And that was just the people right around him. There were more, stressed and angry and happy and bored and excited, daydreaming and reading or listening to music, all the things that made people feel. All the things that made sitting in the tube a torture to him. The tastes mingled in his head, and he fought down the urge to retch. It wouldn't even help any. He'd just have to bear it until his stop. Tax law at least tended to not cause so many conflicting emotions at the same time.
Spoiler The Forest was pretty damn scary. She wasn't going to tell that to anyone, but that didn't mean she didn't hesitate at the slowly spinning gate to the Forest. But well, nothing for it. Ency was in there. She had to go and make sure they were okay. Sure supposedly Osiris would have an eye on them, but. Well. Osiris was a stranger, so really how trustworthy could he be? Never mind that whole 'exiled from the City' thing which was really not helping her assessment here. She took a step forward and stopped again. The gate was spinning still, every steady rotating in its triangle frame. The stomach she no longer had dropped. She could...just go back, annoy Vance a little. She could go back to the City - making sure the Vanguard didn't know, lest she become Vanguard - and nobody would know she'd chickened out on stepping in. Nobody but her. She couldn't do that. Ency was in there and even if - big if - Osiris took care of them, she wasn't going to leave the only really trustworthy person she knew in the Traveler forsaken forest. Her fans were spinning hard enough to make her cloak billow in the Mercurian air. She pretended it was the wind instead. Just two more steps. She took them, and the glowing gate was just a faint tingle over her plates, the faintest touch of electricity. It'd be almost pleasant if it wasn't what it was. Still, now that she'd crossed the threshold... now it was easier to move. She was in motion and getting faster, jumping over the ledges and sailing past a statue, dodging around enemies that weren't there - not yet! the Forest would be full of them - and by the time she burst through the other side of the first hallway, she had her staff in hand. The first gaggle of Vex never knew what hit them.
Spoiler Mod squeezed her way into the bedroom through the window. The door was closed. The door was never closed, unless things were very wrong. So she found another way in, only to find her human squished in the corner of his bedroom, curled up over his knees and shoulders shaking. He smelt like misery and salt and graveyard dirt. That wasn't acceptable, and when pawing at his legs or hands didn't help, she indeed squeezed her little body between his legs and his chest. That he noticed, and leaned back to look at her. He looked as mess, face wet and eyes red and she'd be worried about needing to kill something for him, except he didn't smell like blood. Just miserable. "Oh hey sweetheart." His voice was wobbly in a way it almost never was. That wasn't okay. Mod braced herself on his chest and noofed her head against his. See, not alone. Which of course he wasn't, she was always here with him, but sometimes humans forgot about that, even really good humans like him. So. He needed to noofings to remind him. There was a moment of silence and he shifted, arms carefully coming to hold her close as he pressed his face into the soft fur on her side. His face was still wet and getting wetter as he started sobbing hard enough to rattle the both of them. But he didn't smell like misery anymore. She would deal with the wetness if that meant he wasn't miserable anymore.
Spoiler It was, without a doubt, the greatest injustice ever done to catkind. Mod had been out and about, patroling her territory - as one did as a dutiful familiar - when she'd caught sight of a very interesting thing. Chickens. Big ones. She knew those tasted very good, even if her human insisted on cooking them before hand, and clearly a bigger chicken had a bigger and therefore better taste. She'd done it perfectly: squeezed under tge fence, climbed the food enclosure all the way to the top, scouted out an entrace, squeezed through that....a true example of feline hunting skills. She'd snug up on the biggest of the chickens, wiggled her feet in for optimal pouncing purchase... And then suddenly a second, giant chicken was sitting on her!! She'd tried to twist around to defend herself against this ambush except, well. It was a very big, very heavy chicken. And she was a very small cat. Rolling around had been a true struggle, except now everything was feathers, and she couldn't leverage herself against the ground anymore. Her yowling and spitting hadn't fazed the chicken at all - truly a coldblooded enemy, this one - but it had attracted the chicken's humans. A shout of 'mum look how cute!!' had heralded the witnesses to her shameful defeat. Sure they chased the giant feathery fiend off her, and applied many cuddles, but...they had seen her bested. By food. It was unacceptable. The fact that they brought her home where Matt laughed at her only made it worse. That chicken would have to look out for her revenge.
