Almonds, Honey & Sage

“Sage! Let’s play Truth or Dare. The real version.”

“What is the ‘real version’ of Truth or Dare?” Sage asked, sitting down next to Lyra on her fuzzy gray rug.

“It’s when the Truths are personal and the Dares are hard.”

Sage gulped and said, “Okay, who’s gonna go first?”

Lyra pointed to Sage. “I’m not going first.”

Sage shrugged while Lyra asked, “Truth or Dare?”

“...Dare.”

“I dare you to cook. And make an original recipe that doesn’t taste like sand.”

Sage laughed at the sand part but inside was crumbling into dust, because she had severe Mageirocophobia, the fear of cooking, and her mother had lost 2 fingers due to burns from an oven. Sage had been afraid of cooking and stoves forever, so she wasn’t looking forward to this.

Lyra looked at Sage like she was sure Sage would back out, but Sage jumped up and said, “I’ll do it.” 

Lyra’s eyes widened and she asked, “Really?” 

Sage nodded but said, “But you have to go. I’m not letting you embarrass me any further.”

Lyra smirked but got up and went through the door, calling, “See ya!” before closing it shut.

Okay, thought Sage. Here we go.

                                . ⋅ ˚̣- : ✧ : – ⭒ ⊹ ⭒ – : ✧ : -˚̣⋅ .

Sage had been planning to start cooking that day, to get the fear over with, but she wanted a fancy cookbook to write her recipe in so she wouldn’t forget it. Her mother had told her the local bookshop sold those, so Sage had been hunting all day for the perfect one. It was old: the pages were a pale yellow and fraying, with a ripped black leather cover. Half of it was already full of handwritten recipes and it was cheap, so Sage got it.

Arriving back at her house, Sage got a pen and the book laid open in the kitchen and thought.

And thought.

...and thought.

After sitting there for an hour, unable to think of anything, Sage decided to flip through the cookbook for inspiration. There was raspberry lemon meringue, fluffy coffee, spicy beef casserole all written in swirly cursive, sticky letters or messy writing. Sage flipped through them all, wafting the smell of old books up to her face.

Sage decided to make a simple almond honey cake, because there’s not much heat handling in baking. She got out the sugar, butter, salt, baking powder, flour, almonds and honey but then realized you had to heat the oven first, so she did that and wrote it down. When she started mixing together a vague amount of flour, baking powder and salt, the ink from the pen spread onto the pages, leaving a black splotch on the page. Sage got out the whisk and mixed together the sugar and the butter, which was unmelted, and turned out being a pasty mix. The black splotch of ink on the book kept spreading, now covering a quarter of the page. Sage threw the pasty butter-sugar mixture into the garbage and melted some more butter while switching over to brown sugar. Once she had mixed them together, she went over to her cookbook to write it down when she noticed the ink, and that’s when it started talking.

“Hello Sage: in the kitchen for the first time in a while, hmm?” the ink wrote in elegant cursive on the page.

Sage was stunned so she just nodded. The ink wrote, “What are you making?”

Sage said, “Almond honey cake.”

The ink wrote, “The normal kind? Because I have a recipe to make it unique.”

“You do?”

“Yes, it’s just a slight variation from the original: won’t be hard for a newbie like you.”

“But Lyra said it was supposed to be my recipe-“

“She didn’t mean actually original because all these recipes in here aren’t original. They already exist. She meant to make your own version of a recipe that already exists. Lyra’s not expecting you to come up with your own original recipe, due to your phobia.” Sage had the sudden urge to prove Lyra wrong, but then sighed because that would never be accomplishable from where she was now.

All great things supposedly started small…

“What's your idea then, ink?”

“I’ll only affect the end of your recipe, so don’t worry; please make sure you give this book to Lyra, because she’ll like to see how much progress you’ve made.”

“Okay…” said Sage and closed the book as the ink vanished into the paper, trying to remember what you did after whipping butter and sugar.

Lyra, sitting in her bedroom, looking at Sage through her cameras, chuckled lightly.

Everything is going to plan.

                       . ⋅ ˚̣- : ✧ : – ⭒ ⊹ ⭒ – : ✧ : -˚̣⋅ .

The next day Sage woke up with sore arms from beating eggs, butter and sugar because she had thought you used a wooden spoon for that, so she had to remake multiple batches to get one that looked somewhat okay. She switched from wooden spoon to wooden spork, then metal spoon, then normal fork, and then finally to a whisk. Sage might’ve thought that watching the Great British Baking Show, excluding the oven parts, for 4 years would’ve helped.

Apparently not.

After mixing the dry and wet ingredients together, Sage went investigating the cabinets for a pan while Lyra stood up to stretch in the darkness of her bedroom. One side of the room was covered with TV screens, projecting the different rooms of Sage’s house. The walls were covered with yellow fairy lights, and a pink fluffy rug sat on the floor. As pans clanged loudly through microphones, Lyra went to check on her jars. She walked over to her desk opposite the TV’s where little mason jars were sitting, entwined with more fairy lights, but for more than just aesthetic purposes. They were to make sure the subjects inside them didn’t die of lack of light, so they could suffer slowly, just how Lyra wanted them to. 

“Miss, could I have some water?”

“I’m a bit hungry Miss, could I have a cracker?”

“Miss, how much longer?”

“Till what?” Lyra asked, poking at the jar whose contents had spoken. It was the girl who made the raspberry-lemon meringue, shrunk into the size of a pixie and stored in a jar, just as all the others who had used that cookbook.

“Till this torture is over.”

“Hmm. I don’t know. Preferably forever.”

The girl sighed and slid down the inside of the jar, was about to say something else but then a loud CRASH sounded from the TV’s, and Lyra sat down to observe.

Sage finally brought out a 9 inch circle pan, set it on the counter and sighed. Finding pans was tiring. She then sprayed it with oil and poured the batter in, scraping it down with a spoon, and quickly realized that you do not use spoons for scraping down batter and switched to a silicone spatula. Sage turned around to face the oven and gulped. She had to put the cake in the oven. She found a set of pink oven gloves and slipped them on hesitantly, her hands slightly shaking. The oven sounded beep, beep, beep with the red number 350 glaring back at her, urging her to just do it. No one else had this fear of cooking, of making something you could eat from scratch. Why couldn’t she do it? That’s why Lyra had given her the dare, right? To eradicate this fear? Sage took a deep, rickety breath and opened the oven, hot energy blasting her in the face. Trying to work as fast as possible, Sage got a slippery grip on the pan and almost dropped it, memories swamping her brain. 

Her mother with a pan just like her’s, putting it into the oven. Sage hadn’t seen exactly what happened, since she was behind her, but her mother jumped up and dropped the pan on the floor, screaming out in pain while grasping her fingers. Sage had called her father and they had driven to the hospital, where three days later her mother had those two fingers amputated. Sage had always considered the kitchen as a monster: one with big, hot scary teeth that would chomp her up whenever she got close. Sage had stayed away from any kitchens since she was four years old, because she just couldn’t risk it.

She couldn’t risk going near the place which had changed her mother’s life, which had stopped her from them baking together, which had stopped her mother from playing the violin so beautifully.

Sage had quite liked that music.

Snapping back to the present, Sage looked at her childhood monster whom she was now playing with. After blinking a few times, Sage didn’t seem so afraid anymore. Of the object who had ruined her life, but also brought joy to many others.

Maybe cooking wasn’t so bad after all.

Sage slid the pan in the oven, closed it and dusted off her hands. The hardest part was finished: but for Lyra, it had only just begun.

                                 . ⋅ ˚̣- : ✧ : – ⭒ ⊹ ⭒ – : ✧ : -˚̣⋅ .

“Miss, how will you capture her? When you do, will you let us go?” the boy who had made the casserole.

“Hmm...how long have you been here?” Lyra asked, “I’ve forgotten.”

“Well, I’m the newest,” said the raspberry lemon meringue girl, “I came in six months ago.”

“I might release a few of you, only if you’re good.”

All the little pixie humans inside the jars nodded eagerly. “When will you capture her? And who will you release?”

“I’m not sure yet, but I know I will soon. Don’t get your hopes up though: I can change my mind.”

The pixie humans slumped over. “Why are we here in the first place?” the girl who had made the fluffy coffee said, “I forgot.”

“Well, you won’t be able to tell anyone, but remember this time. I don’t like to repeat myself.” Lyra said as the pixie humans nodded. “So, I’ve been sent by Death to get revenge. Revenge for all the people he had to take care of once they had passed. So many that he got tired of it, so he’s sent me to capture everyone who is still living and make them suffer as much as he did. And then when I release you, you’ll become Death’s servants, until everyone is gone and there will only be me, him and all of you.”

One of the pixie humans raised their hands. “Yes?”

“What will we become when you release us?”

“Just a soul. Nothing more, nothing less: a leftover of the person you used to be.”

As the asker nodded, another one raised their hand. “Yes?”

“Are you a soul?”

Lyra shifted in her chair. “No.”

“So then what are you?”

“I’m Death’s daughter.”

“Pardon me for asking, but wouldn’t Death’s daughter have multiple names? Not just one?”

“Yes, you are correct, but my father likes Lyra the most, so that’s what people call me by.”

They all nodded and as another one raised their hand, Lyra announced, “That’s enough questions for today, save some for tomorrow: you’ll have a new neighbour.”

And the pixie humans went to sleep in their little jars, dreaming of a life before they were captured.

                                 . ⋅ ˚̣- : ✧ : – ⭒ ⊹ ⭒ – : ✧ : -˚̣⋅ .

Sage stayed up late baking, because she had thought it wouldn’t take much time and had started at 8:00 pm, so with all her mishaps it was now 9:30, and she was about to top off her cake with a honey-almond mix when she realized she hadn’t written anything down in her book. She went looking around the whole house for it and came back to the kitchen with the cookbook lying open on the counter, next to the honey. 

Not even thinking, Sage started to write down her recipe but the talking ink reappeared, and said, “I have the last step for you!”

“Wouldn’t it be the second last, since the topping is the last?”

“Well, yes, it would be.”

“Pardon me for asking, but who are you?”

“Ah yes - I’m Death.”

Sage blinked. “Could you repeat that?”

“I’m Death.”

“What does that exactly mean?”

“That doesn't matter right now: would you like to know the last step? To prove Lyra wrong?”

Sage nodded.

“Close your eyes and hold this book up to your face; I know it might sound a bit silly, but it will help. I know it.”

“Okay...” Sage opened the book to her mostly blank page, closed her eyes and gently touched the book to her nose. 

Then she got sucked in.

The book slipped away from her hands while she was sucked into the very book itself, tumbling and swirling and falling into nowhere exactly, but then suddenly landed on a hard surface, making a loud thunk!

Sage looked up and saw a warped room, with fairy lights stringed across the walls. All around her were jars interlaced with more lights, with humans inside of them. 

Why were humans inside of jars?

Everything seemed to be as if she was looking through glass: and then Sage realized she was. Lyra’s giant face peered back at her through the jar, eyeing her like a new bug that she had added to her collection.

“Lyra?”

“Sage! Welcome to the community! Better get used to them, because you’re not leaving anytime soon.”

Sage looked around at all the other pixie humans and realized they had come to the same fate as her. They all smiled back at her, sober, soft little smiles. Monachopsis smiles.

“Hi Sage! I’m Zoey!” said the raspberry lemon meringue girl, waving excitedly.

“I’m Ezra,” said the casserole boy.

“I’m Cleo,” said the fluffy coffee girl.

They all introduced themselves, making Sage feel less lonely. The rooms on the TV’s switched, broadcasting another target, and in the cookbook, Sage’s cake recipe slowly inscribed itself into it’s pages, identical to Sage’s process, except for one detail.

Added to the almond honey topping, the cookbook added a sprig of sage to be put into the recipe: adding a little piece of Sage, so no one would forget her, or anyone else, but be prepared: you might be next.