Meats & Madness
Thought I should actually, you know, post something.
I've great heaping piles of material I could post, but I'm just not going to. So there.
This takes place shortly after Vivian enters the Neitherworld, and is staying at the Throckmortons' house with Aquilla, before they head off. This is the morning after they've arrived.
--------------------------------------
Descending the stairs, Vivian heard a great rumpus towards the back of the house. Not just a rumpus of noise, but of scent, too. A great wafting hullabaloo.
She managed to find a cramped hallway, just past the parlour, that led straight to the commotion. She could see people dashing back and forth through the door at the end, and when she reached it, she had little choice but to stand and watch what played out before her.
Madness. Utter pandemonium. A ruckus and bluster like no other she’d witnessed. Throckmortons were flying here and there, weaving in and out, sliding past each other, between chairs, around tables, through clutter and children, all in what appeared to be a kitchen.
From what she could see of the room, through the gaps in the thick crowd, it was all heavy hewn stone with large marble-topped counters pushed up against most of the wall space. The middle of the room was occupied by a long wooden table strewn with great heaping plates of food. Piles of this and that and every which what.
Slices and slices of soft pink matter heaped on plates everywhere. Picked up in great chunks and slapped onto plates, stuffed into bread, or slid down gullets.
Great bowls of fruit, red and green and blue; whole and sliced and squashed; dried and squeezed and steeped. Piled into pyramids, bobbing in broths, mixed into multitudes of the dishes lighting up the table.
The breads in particular intrigued Vivian. Huge loaves cluttered the spaces between plates and other foodstuffs. Most were just heavily grained and thick with meal, sliced to toast or wedge things between. Some, though, were marbled and veined with all sorts of flavours, and wafted trails of bakeries blasted with spice. Several Throckmortons had sliced huge, thick pieces of them and tucked into them on their own, never having to add a thing to it. She even spotted a few overeager children pulling off chunks of it, not content with the wait required for someone to slice it.
Members of the family were sitting at the table, eating and talking to just about everyone else. All the others were moving here and there, tending a stove one minute, rummaging the cupboards the next, moving on to help with the dishes, then back to the cupboard or stove or pantry or something else entirely. The children stood up on tiptoe to see over the table in the middle; the adults ducked to see under the great clusters of wooden utensils and copper pots hanging above it.
The pots and pans were being used over and over; filled, emptied, washed, filled again. The room was heavy with the hiss of kettles on a constant ebullient boil. Every time someone ate something, the empty space would be filled instantly for the next person. The food seemed never ending, produced by a work ethic only possible from a rotating staff of mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, and countless little ones running amongst the seething ocean of legs and scents.
The huge din of scents had become noisier. Savoury and sweet and tart and salty, it made her head froth and her stomach leap in anticipation.
Vivian had never seen so much … life all in one place. Not of this magnitude.
Aquilla, who had been attending something simmering away on one of the many iron stoves, noticed her at the door. ‘Vivian!’ he said, motioning to the man next to him to govern the pot. ‘Come in, we were just having Breakfast.’ And as she could very well see, it was indeed Breakfast. With a very capital B.
He pulled her up to the table and gestured she sit. He shooed away a small pile of children and took off his apron to sit beside her. ‘Good to see you up, Vivian, much rest?’
She nodded vaguely as she looked around at Breakfast some more.
‘You are welcome to anything. You still look a bit frazzled, though. You can pop off back to bed. Breakfast will still be going later. We’ll probably pack up around tenish.’
‘Ten? It’s only just turned seven,’ she said. But Aquilla didn’t hear her; he was too busy helping clear part of the table to make room for another mound of platters.
And so Vivian never learnt that she had witnessed only a sliver of the creature. The Breakfast creature which lasted six hours long.
A Throckmorton Breakfast began at four in the morning, when the first Throckmorton woke. Not long after they had pulled out the pots and begun to cook something, another Throckmorton or two would join. As newcomers would gather, they’d take over the cooking to let others sit and eat. And, bit by bit, Breakfast would build upon itself, people coming and going, joining and breaking off, helping wherever they could and eating in between. Breakfast would become a life of its own. A great behemoth constantly changing shape.
--------------------------------------
I hate formatting with Live Journal.
I will never, NEVER post any of my creatively formatted stories with characters who talk in miniature font or narration that falls apart and slides off the page. I would die.
I will stick to my good old indents, tabs, and leading, thank you very much. I'm not picking up HTML any time soon. Don't even try to convince me otherwise.
Anyway, that's the basic scene there. I wrote it for the second part of my second installment of Applied Writing 2. 22222222222222222222
The end kind of mumbles a bit and repeats itself and becomes clunky, but I don't care right now.
It ends up moving on to Vivian actually joining Breakfast, so I can describe the foods even more (things like some of the meats actually turning out to be slices of pink fruit and such). Also, some Throckmortons talk to her, making some of them actual characters, rather than parts of a huge hive sort of thing.
Plus Aquilla plays a bigger part. I'm still getting inordinate amounts of request for 'more Aquilla', but never get around to it.
Oh well, all in good time.
I've great heaping piles of material I could post, but I'm just not going to. So there.
This takes place shortly after Vivian enters the Neitherworld, and is staying at the Throckmortons' house with Aquilla, before they head off. This is the morning after they've arrived.
--------------------------------------
Descending the stairs, Vivian heard a great rumpus towards the back of the house. Not just a rumpus of noise, but of scent, too. A great wafting hullabaloo.
She managed to find a cramped hallway, just past the parlour, that led straight to the commotion. She could see people dashing back and forth through the door at the end, and when she reached it, she had little choice but to stand and watch what played out before her.
Madness. Utter pandemonium. A ruckus and bluster like no other she’d witnessed. Throckmortons were flying here and there, weaving in and out, sliding past each other, between chairs, around tables, through clutter and children, all in what appeared to be a kitchen.
From what she could see of the room, through the gaps in the thick crowd, it was all heavy hewn stone with large marble-topped counters pushed up against most of the wall space. The middle of the room was occupied by a long wooden table strewn with great heaping plates of food. Piles of this and that and every which what.
Slices and slices of soft pink matter heaped on plates everywhere. Picked up in great chunks and slapped onto plates, stuffed into bread, or slid down gullets.
Great bowls of fruit, red and green and blue; whole and sliced and squashed; dried and squeezed and steeped. Piled into pyramids, bobbing in broths, mixed into multitudes of the dishes lighting up the table.
The breads in particular intrigued Vivian. Huge loaves cluttered the spaces between plates and other foodstuffs. Most were just heavily grained and thick with meal, sliced to toast or wedge things between. Some, though, were marbled and veined with all sorts of flavours, and wafted trails of bakeries blasted with spice. Several Throckmortons had sliced huge, thick pieces of them and tucked into them on their own, never having to add a thing to it. She even spotted a few overeager children pulling off chunks of it, not content with the wait required for someone to slice it.
Members of the family were sitting at the table, eating and talking to just about everyone else. All the others were moving here and there, tending a stove one minute, rummaging the cupboards the next, moving on to help with the dishes, then back to the cupboard or stove or pantry or something else entirely. The children stood up on tiptoe to see over the table in the middle; the adults ducked to see under the great clusters of wooden utensils and copper pots hanging above it.
The pots and pans were being used over and over; filled, emptied, washed, filled again. The room was heavy with the hiss of kettles on a constant ebullient boil. Every time someone ate something, the empty space would be filled instantly for the next person. The food seemed never ending, produced by a work ethic only possible from a rotating staff of mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, and countless little ones running amongst the seething ocean of legs and scents.
The huge din of scents had become noisier. Savoury and sweet and tart and salty, it made her head froth and her stomach leap in anticipation.
Vivian had never seen so much … life all in one place. Not of this magnitude.
Aquilla, who had been attending something simmering away on one of the many iron stoves, noticed her at the door. ‘Vivian!’ he said, motioning to the man next to him to govern the pot. ‘Come in, we were just having Breakfast.’ And as she could very well see, it was indeed Breakfast. With a very capital B.
He pulled her up to the table and gestured she sit. He shooed away a small pile of children and took off his apron to sit beside her. ‘Good to see you up, Vivian, much rest?’
She nodded vaguely as she looked around at Breakfast some more.
‘You are welcome to anything. You still look a bit frazzled, though. You can pop off back to bed. Breakfast will still be going later. We’ll probably pack up around tenish.’
‘Ten? It’s only just turned seven,’ she said. But Aquilla didn’t hear her; he was too busy helping clear part of the table to make room for another mound of platters.
And so Vivian never learnt that she had witnessed only a sliver of the creature. The Breakfast creature which lasted six hours long.
A Throckmorton Breakfast began at four in the morning, when the first Throckmorton woke. Not long after they had pulled out the pots and begun to cook something, another Throckmorton or two would join. As newcomers would gather, they’d take over the cooking to let others sit and eat. And, bit by bit, Breakfast would build upon itself, people coming and going, joining and breaking off, helping wherever they could and eating in between. Breakfast would become a life of its own. A great behemoth constantly changing shape.
--------------------------------------
I hate formatting with Live Journal.
I will never, NEVER post any of my creatively formatted stories with characters who talk in miniature font or narration that falls apart and slides off the page. I would die.
I will stick to my good old indents, tabs, and leading, thank you very much. I'm not picking up HTML any time soon. Don't even try to convince me otherwise.
Anyway, that's the basic scene there. I wrote it for the second part of my second installment of Applied Writing 2. 22222222222222222222
The end kind of mumbles a bit and repeats itself and becomes clunky, but I don't care right now.
It ends up moving on to Vivian actually joining Breakfast, so I can describe the foods even more (things like some of the meats actually turning out to be slices of pink fruit and such). Also, some Throckmortons talk to her, making some of them actual characters, rather than parts of a huge hive sort of thing.
Plus Aquilla plays a bigger part. I'm still getting inordinate amounts of request for 'more Aquilla', but never get around to it.
Oh well, all in good time.