Writing Challenge - Taste

[in_the_blue]

Those of you who know me understand that I tend to get random inspiration for writing in the shower and yes, there is a physiological reason for that and no, I won't go into it here because it's been done before. Today's inspiration: the senses, particularly the sense of taste.

Since so many of you who read this journal are writers, I thought a drabble challenge was in order.

It's not a contest, it's a challenge. Read that as an exercise in concise writing. I was thinking primarily for roleplayers as a way of getting to know tiny details about your characters, but you don't have to be an active roleplayer to join the challenge. Everybody is welcome.

Rules (Captain Barbossa reminds me that they're more like guidelines):

• Fandom: any, so long as it's one you know well. I play at Dogstar with Harry Potter characters and milliways_bar with HP, Cowboy Bebop, and Twin Peaks characters; for my purposes I'm keeping it to one or more of those worlds because really, doesn't FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper just cry out for talking about a damn fine cup of coffee and his quest for the world's best cherry pie?


• Word count: 300 or less


• Main theme: sense of taste


• Ratings: No restrictions


• Duration: 1 week. Challenge opens today and closes Sunday, April 24.

Post your drabbles as comments to this entry. And yes, you can comment on other peoples' work. Feedback is always nice.

Ready?

Go.

Comments

Fandom: Bebop / Spike

[in-the-blue.livejournal.com]

Smoke.

They say smoking is bad for you, that it kills your lungs one tiny bit at a time. I’ve been smoking since I was fifteen and I’m not dead yet.

Well, fuck, that’s up for grabs, I guess. Depends who you talk to.

I like smoking. I like the way unsmoked tobacco smells and I like the feel of a smoke between my fingers and I love to watch the way a girl plays a cigarette between her lips, so sensual. But mostly, I like the way it tastes.

What does smoke taste like? Close your eyes and let me explain how it is for me. It tastes like places you’ve been but know you shouldn’t have gone. It tastes like everything that’s forbidden and every cold damn planet with a fake manmade atmosphere. It tastes like back streets late at night and snow as it’s melting and stuffy rooms with fireplaces burning into embers.

It tastes like power and control.

If blood was an ethereal thing, it would be cigarette smoke and I’ve been shot enough times to be able to make that comparison. They’re both metallic and they’re both fluid and they both numb your tongue, and they both make you think about fear and shock and mortality.

Smoke tastes like struggle and lust and passion and like getting thrown out a church’s stained-glass window and falling. Falling. Falling like that tastes like smoke in my mouth and looking up at the sky fading away is like watching the smoke from your last cigarette leaving your mouth and dissipating into nothing.

Into nothing.

Smoke’s like that.

Re: Fandom: Bebop / Spike

[erised1810.livejournal.com]

I th nk iwatna cigaret now. NO really .This ws very stylish and ful lof the good kind of Metaphores 9as uppsoedt snflakes falin lie khe teas of pfill i ngreek goddess] if you get my drifts.) and i"M glad your'ealso conecting taste to actiosnand memries.
I toppeld over withe smoke-blood connectin though (that's also what I meant with good metaphores. or is it comparison. or simili? euphorism? I'm lostin terms now...)
I liekd htis!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_our_king_/]

Forgot all the info and such

by psychicsaphie
Fandom: milliways_bar--HP and BtVS
Rated: G
Theme other than the main one: Ron and Xander frienship, la.


Raspberry jam with peanut butter and bananas. That was one of his favorites so far and what Bar had given him when he asked for a "bloody good sandwich."

But even though he could have all the candy and peanut-butter, banana, and raspberry jam sandwiches he wanted, however, his favorite, very favorite, was vanilla ice cream with sour cream and onion crisps. Vanilla ice cream was…vanilla. It was creamy and good and not horribly fancy, and you could just sit there for a minute and have it melt in your mouth and let it slide down your throat and it made you forget everything. And the crisps were sort of tangy. For some strange reason, Ron did and always had, liked the two of them together. It had started as one of those things he'd done to make Ginny go "Eeeyuck! Ron, that's disgusting!" and had turned into a taste he just genuinely liked.

But after Milliways, he started to like it even more, after one night when he'd come down for a late-night snack, and a young man with an eyepatch had seen him eating it and said, "Uh...who goes there?" and then, "Mind if I join you for a late-night unhealthy snack?"

Ron spent most of his time at Milliways worrying over a bespectacled boy he'd met on a train--one who'd given Ron candy without making him feel bad that he was too poor to get some for himself. He missed easy friendships--especially ones that had started on trains over chocolate frogs and Bertie Bott's beans.

Even though it hadn't stayed easy.

"What's that on your ice cream?"

"Crisps. Sour cream and onion."

"That actually sounds really good right about now...can I try?"

But easy friendships over ice cream and crisps weren't so bad.

[erised1810.livejournal.com]

sounds like He always meets new and interesting folks over food doens't it/ ;)
Eww...you made me want to try the combo now. hmph...and I now remember a dream where i had to fill half-hollowed out onions with vanilla pudding. NO really.

and its amazingly original tat you let Ron develope a taste for something weird. Andalso it soudns liek yo ualluded to hsfriendship with Harrybeing over? Interesting stuff...

[nepheliad.livejournal.com]

Fandom: My Sister's Keeper, and milliways_bar, although he has no entrance yet.
Character: Campbell Alexander (backwardname)

When time is passing too fast, I just need to sit down and have a salad.

The day when everything started to go wrong, I know what I ate. It was a caesar salad, with extra toppings - oregano and thyme. Oregano always makes me think of Julia, too - my Jewel, who didn't deserve what I did to her and never will. I miss her like I've never missed before, but ... she doesn't deserve it happening to her again.

The taste of oregano brings her back to me for a moment. How her collarbone, the one thing besides salads I could never keep my lips from, used to taste. How her hair used to smell. How we used to share, yes, caesar salads with extra oregano topping. Julia Romano never liked thyme, and in her presence I hesitated to sample it. Perhaps it aught to be compared to time. I don't like time, and Julia wasn't ever fond of thyme. The passing of time, the herb of thyme, and perhaps the passing of, well, thyme? It would be the strangest thing to be able to go back and fix everything that went wrong just because we decided to have thyme on our salads.

That morning, I had been planning to go back and find Julia. I never could stand house parties. It wasn't going to change - nothing would ever make me like house parties. Especially since nothing would ever make my family like Julia. And at that point, all I had to live for was Julia.

I missed Julia.

I had a salad. I put extra thyme on it, because thyme was something I loved when I was by myself. And extra oregano, because it made me think of Julia. Like a sort of awkward aromatherapy, the combination of the thyme and the oregano, I felt, made a whole - made us, Campbell and Julia, together forever.

I got in the car. I had no idea what was going to happen to me. I shouldn't have been so foolhardy.

When I woke up from the accident, so many weeks later, with a sure diagnosis and not a fix but a way to just keep going, I still had that taste on my tongue - oregano and thyme.

I never saw Julia again. But I am still sitting here, in my corner booth at Rosie's, Judge at my feet, eating a caesar salad with oregano and thyme.

I drop a piece of chicken on the floor. Judge gulps it up.

I wonder if chicken always makes Judge think of me.

Together, we remember.

[erised1810.livejournal.com]

OK I' mcrying silentl yinside now...
I ht nkwhe I ever tase those two spices together i'll remember this-one.

[leapin-jot.livejournal.com]

Hi, I hope you don't mind, but I friended you.

[in-the-blue.livejournal.com]

Welcome aboard. I hope you enjoy the insanity.

Fandom: Milliways/Scary Go Round. Word count: 300. *Looks pleased with self*

[shelley_winters]

For as long as she could remember, the taste of tea had made Shelley feel comforted. It likely came from growing up in a small English town with middle class parents. Of course, growing up, she had started drinking coffee more. Coffee was just... more than tea. More strength, more caffeine, more aroma. More of a cool factor, which to a teenager was everything. Old people drank tea. So the coffee addiction came more or less in the night, and with Starbucks Corporation Taking Over The World, it was too available for her to stop.

But whenever she was lonely or frightened or worried, a cup of tea was always Shelley's first refuge. Food as comfort is generally considered to be anything filling, easy to eat, and usually sweet. But she drank tea for the associations it held; warmth, safety, her family.

As she got older, she accumulated other associations to certain types of food. To her, port always tasted like Christmas. Although it was alcoholic, it still made her feel like a little girl waiting for seasonal magic.

Her most recent would have to be Oreo cookies, like she's eating now. They are remarkably easy to eat, especially with tea. They are comforting because they taste like... Well, chocolate. They are a happy taste. They remind her of normality in Milliways. Normality being ticklefights and cookie-throwing, of course.

She nibbles the edge of one. Tasty. A slight smile crosses her face. She wraps her cold hands around her mug of hot tea, and sips it. It's incredible how much you can appreciate flavour and warmth when you no longer have any natural body heat. The unwilling undead continues to sip her tea and nibble her cookies as she watches the bar. The tastes remind her of less complicated times.

Re: Fandom: Milliways/Scary Go Round. Word count: 300. *Looks pleased with self*

[erised1810.livejournal.com]

right .that's i. I'll have one of my us minions,/s> lj friends SEND ME a package of that stuff because after fifty moments of 'now I'm really curious' reads about different flavors* "NOW i want to know more' and this last one of 'and now I am REALLY REALLY craving' thank you for the rec. and I can so see how this and tea soothe the mind togeter and make you think of easier stuff.
And again with the connecting food to memories. yay!

Scent and Taste

[no-more-chianti.livejournal.com]

Clarice likes the taste of morning air in her mouth, its cool rushing in her lungs. She’s running near the edge of the forest, nimbly dodging sprawling roots and fallen branches. How long she’s been going and how long she’s going to keep at it, she doesn’t know. Probably until the sweet air starts to cut into her throat and shorten her breath. She likes it, likes the monotony of running and the long, slow buildup of pain in her muscles that tells her she’s working. Most of all, she likes the air. Its freshness, coming alive and clearing her head as she inhales. Its purity. She can taste all that as she breathes it in, and wonders briefly if this is how Hannibal uses his sense of smell. She’s not sure why she should think of that, or why it should make her stop to breathe deep of the air, savor it. It’s cool and sleek over her tongue and teeth, and as she tries to categorize its taste to remember later, another sensory memory takes hold: apples and peaches in a creamy, ambrosial broth. Lecter watching as she sips. She feels his eyes on her like the caress of the breeze, like the wind in her mouth; she shivers.

It’s a well-known fact that the senses of smell and taste are intricately linked.

Re: Scent and Taste

[sff-corgi.livejournal.com]

Wicked. :D

[balletrat]

It's just a croissant.

There's no earthly reason it should taste so good - butter, flaky pastry, little crumbs falling into her tutu and possibly through, to feed the monsters that live in todash space who can't help but be made a little bit more pleasant by a taste of real French baking.

She nibbles it, bit by bit, one end slowly disappearing, and part of her wants to gobble it all up, straight away, and obliviate her secret shameful guilt that she knows anyone would tell her is silly, anyone who's not a dancer, but she is a dancer and it is shameful and her mother understands. She squashes the primitive urge, nibbling away slowly and steadily, because who knows when the next croissant is going to come and it would be a shame to waste a second that might be spend enjoying the rich buttery taste food when it's going to cost so much (and every croissant, every bite, costs something.)

She's nearly a third of the way through when she hears the footsteps in the front room and it's just Andrew, he likes seeing her eat, and so she stifles the urge to shove the rest of it into her mouth and takes another, tiny, casual bite.

And it tastes so good.

[erised1810.livejournal.com]

oh i want one i want one i want one!!!! /gut thought

[prydeful]

Kitty doesn’t, actually, hate tea.

When she was little, she drank quite a great deal of it, actually.

But coffee has become familiar over the years, with it’s scent, as much as anything, and tea doesn’t have the same carry to it.

Coffee’s almost bitter, and she likes that, too.

Things don’t always have to be sweet.

Sometimes they're better when they're not.

She mentioned this to him, once, and he nodded a bit, like he understood.

Maybe he did.

And maybe he didn't.

But, she added, after a pause, that sweetness has its place too.

Afterwards, she leaned back and licked her lips.

She doesn't, actually, hate tea.

But she'll still only enjoy it with the flavouring that's completely him mixed with it.

[erised1810.livejournal.com]

hmmm...Interesting .is i tthe memory or hte taste of is lips hat makes it better?

[elseculpepper.livejournal.com]

Written as "Else", the inimitable witch with a penchant for pregnancy ...

-o0o-

Pregnant again! Strange cravings … again.

Leastwise this time I’ve managed to keep the urge for munching those Black Beetle-Eyes to a sensible level. Oh, but what a strain, let me tell you. The very though of them has sent my stomach into a symphony of loud secreting. My jaw aches as my salivary glands put in their opinion and drown my mouth in expectant juices.

Just one … I’ll just have a couple … or three.

A cooling charm. Best served cold. A small sphere the size of a match head on the tip of my tongue. As yet, it tastes blank. Like glass. I roll it around for a while and delight in the feel of it warming slowly.

Then the sharp crack it makes between my front teeth.

An explosion of a warm, metallic taste. Not quite like blood. It doesn’t have the saltiness of blood. It tastes like crushed geraniums would smell. It has spiciness to it. The orb’s oily liquid coats my teeth. My resolve is crumbling.

Just a few more …

[erised1810.livejournal.com]

hmy god *laughs and cringes* This is suc han origina lwayto focus these weird cravings. Id naver came t me to tink about the stuff witches woul go fr in a situation like this.

[zahdi.livejournal.com]

"I'm not real, you know."

"Not real? You're sitting right in front of me."

"No, sadly you are mistaken."

...tap pencil. tap. "Hmmm...?"

"None of this is real. I'm a monkey for crissakes."

Extra! Extra! Extra!!

"A... monkey."

"Yes." Sigh.

"I see a healthy teenage girl."

"No, sir, Mr. Doctor. I'm a monkey."

"A monkey."

Nod.

---- Sigh.

"I'll prove it..."

...tap pencil. tap. "Hmmm...?"

Peeling the doctor's rind down isn't hard. It's what monkeys do.

He screams a lot.

"Just a second, doctor." Gulp, swallow.

His legs dangle in the air.

"JUST A SECOND, DOCTOR!" Chewchewchew........

She tosses his large, yellow peel into the too-small wastebasket in his office.

"I told you. You taste like banana."


(they all taste like banana. Poor C-ko-chan. Another banana-flavored human.)


[You have to keep trying till one crunches.]

[zahdi.livejournal.com]

Oops. And because I don't do these often I didn't realize *coffs*:
Fandom: Shoujo Kakumei Utena
Character: C-ko

^_^ *blushes*

[ravensnape.livejournal.com]

I never followed the rules in school either. So, instead of one sense, I touched on all five. You didn't say it had to be only one after all.

He could hear the silver bubbles as they domed slowly out from the viscous liquid and popped open with a gentle wiffle of sound. Thin vapors escaped from each burst bubble, and then drifted, slowly upward, following the current of heat vapors as it cycloned around the cauldron and into the chilly air surrounding him.

Inhaling deeply, nostrils dilated in pleasure, Severus wondered, not for the first time, why the brewing of potions didn’t appeal to more wizards. He knew from an early age the power they held. The power of both Heaven and Hell. The power to heal and to harm. The power to bewitch the mind and ensnare the very human senses used to create them.

He watched the slowly rising bubbles reflect silver parodies of himself as they rose, burst and then rose again. Ever changing, ever moving, the potion swirled round as he stirred with a counter-clockwise rhythm that could mesmerize him if he allowed it.

No, not quite hot enough he decided, testing the temperature of the large iron cauldron with the calloused palm of his hand. The horsefly wings needed to melt as soon as they touched the hot liquid, and Severus decided to let it continue to heat up for a few more minutes. Then, the two cat whiskers, provided with an angry hiss and yowl by Mrs. Norris, could be added. Return to a boil, and stir in the rose thorns, immediately extinguishing the fire. Yes, he needed to finish de-thorning the rose stems before the cauldron reached peak temperature.

Picking up the stem, he made to snap more thorns off only to have one embed itself into the fleshy pad of his thumb. Raising his thumb to his lips, he sucked hard and tasted of the coppery liquid that gave every living thing life. Only now, he reflected, he brewed a potion meant to deliver death. All that needed adding were Barberry leaves; three handfuls added to the potion, then it must steep overnight. Pore one goblet over half a handful of Black Hellebore, add Shredded Slippery Elm and the soul of an unborn angel is returned to heaven.


Author's Note...Barberry, Black Hellebore and Slippery Elm were used throughout history by wise women/midwives/witches etc., to induce a miscarriage. I needed this info for the story I'm currently writing.

[erised1810.livejournal.com]

I think I wantto read the rest of your work. Yo useem to hae asnape withouthesterotypical gratuitous darkness adn ape-loup idn of snark.
To be able to have him entrance in the smell sight and sounds of bubling potion, then suddenly focus on the taste of blood when he cuts himself on something (and it sounded like apositive sensation to taste that) and then to see this whole surrounding that one "..even topper death." remark, now i FINALLY was how much he acutally wasn't boasting when he said that. This just shows that it's believable to have him capable of brewing something like this, or a poison.
Good luck with your story.

Blanche Malfoy: Dogstar RPG

[blanche-malfoy.livejournal.com]

Vodka

When she was in Siberia, it was vodka twice a day, if not three times.

Of course, everyone thought she was older there. But she got a taste for it. Even prescribed it for herself.

Two inches, twice or three times a day, as needed, for pain.

It was easy to increase the dosage, as well.

Of course, two things start to happen when you increase a dosage. Side effects and immunity.

Side effects? After a few months, she could barely taste it without getting a stomach ache. Immunity? She tolerated it too well. It didn’t do its job anymore.

That was when she began inflicting pain on herself to combat pain. It was easy enough to hide and no one really looked at her, not even Karl. A ghost in the manor.

Now. Safe. Presumed dead. No one looking for her. Anxiety comes rarely, but when it does there is the craving not for pain, but for vodka.

The need for affection comes more often than she would like, and always she can taste it in the back of her mouth, the need for vodka to stop the need for affection.

She doesn’t know what Peter thinks of her. She’s beginning to think she’ll never know.

Blanche avoids vodka at all costs, these days.

[maid-of-astolat.livejournal.com]

Beer

Elaine has an excellent memory.

She remembers the first time she tasted beer.

She was three. Or thereabouts. And it was a “big girl” drink, and it was a Sunday, after Mass.

She’d made a face, and then the aftertaste, bready and sweet-bitter, hit her. Father had laughed and asked, “Not a nice drink, Elaine?”

Elaine thought carefully before answering. “I think I need to tathte it again.” Elaine’s baby teeth had come in slightly crooked in the front, making her lisp.

Elaine has such a good memory.

She remembers the honeyed mead, made with her own hands, that she’d served Lancelot. How she’d not allowed his cup become empty, and how she’d dwelled on the lines of his face. How he’d given her to drink from his own cup, and it was sweet, sweet, too sweet to stay.

And now, years later, dead and alive at Milliways, Elaine sits at the bar, drinking beer and it’s almost like the first time she’s tasted it each time. She avoids mead, but beer is different.

It’s a nice drink. Sweet and bitter like life. And memories.

Fandom: Harry Potter / featuring Sirius Black

[in-the-blue.livejournal.com]

Depression inhibits appetite. There are degrees of depression: sadness, anxiety, anger, hatred. Twelve years quantifying that left a bitter taste in one’s mouth.

He remembered the first thing he craved after the long swim and the subsequent three days spent hidden, sleeping for the first time without fear of dreaming: chocolate. A hint, just the barest taste of it on his tongue, and the supreme irony of it all: no one fed chocolate to dogs. Poison: common knowledge.

And so he paced back and forth, back and forth, staring in at the candy shops and if he tried hard he could get enough of a whiff of that magical elixir to taste it in a canine sort of way: sharply, human memory and desire overlaying the clear lack of chocolate in his mouth.

Chocolate stimulates the senses: it enables the body to produce endorphins, those complex chemicals that stimulate happiness. For twelve long years there was only the memory of chocolate, of happiness, and any time he dared think it the thought was sucked away. But finally, after months of focused desire for cacao, cocoa, chocolate -- syrup, candy, baker’s: sweetened, unsweetened, bitter, dark, or milk -- salvation appeared in the form of a toddler whose ice cream fell off its cone amidst far too many tears, and one very large black dog became one very large black opportunistic dog.

Sweet, sweet: as if everything good that had ever happened flooded back for the duration of that scant minute or two. The savour of it, the heady goodness of it all: like dying and going to heaven.

Had he been in human form, he’d have shed tears of absolute unbridled joy.

Chocolate. Just a hint, just a taste, just a tiny, tiny bit. Enough to feel human and whole and alive.

Alive.

Re: Fandom: Harry Potter / featuring Sirius Black

[ravensnape.livejournal.com]

Oh you little sneak, I've been reading these one by one and I got to this and was just so excited because it was soooooo good that I wanted to make a comment. And it was you. *humph* I already know YOU can write. :D By the way...I noted your short on the Quill. Nice piece ;] Thought you'd slip it by did ya?

200 words exactly, because it fit just right.

[medeni-ci-jones.livejournal.com]

‘Try this.’

‘No, thank you, I don’t need any potions.’

‘It’s not a potion dewin ffôl, it’s a fruit drink. Harmless. From America. Well, as harmless as anything ever is from America. Tryyyyy iiiiit.’

She was dismissed with a spate of distracted Welsh, tumbling over her like a melt stream in the Brecon Beacons. Hmph. There was more than one way to skin an Animagus, diolch yn fawr.

She took a big gulp, enjoying the tangy richness of the pulpy blended juices, swishing it around her mouth. She swallowed, then took another, smaller sip; with a bit of careful juggling, she said ‘Cariad?’

‘Ie?’

She swooped down and kissed him, parting her lips enough to allow the tinge of berries to suffuse the mutual caress of mouths. Nearly losing herself in the sensation, the taste of his mouth slowly building in the background of her attention. She found it hard to describe, other than it being unmistakably him – a sort of smokiness, a dark brown taste, rich and elusive.

And a hint of sandwich.

They finally parted, eyes locked on each other’s, smiling. He licked his lips. ‘Mmmmm... sweet.’

‘I told you you’d like it.’

‘I meant you, fy angyles.’

Re: 200 words exactly, because it fit just right.

[sosirius.livejournal.com]

I look at you and I sigh.

my fandom has fewer males than your fandom

[lostinapapercup.livejournal.com]

I've had my share of good food.

Really. And none of it was that crap we served on flights.

I know the best Italian restaurant in Richmond, the coziest little cafe near the Georgetown campus that makes these chocolate chip croissants that are buttery and deliciously dry, and where you can go in DC for onion rings that are so good that eating them has got to be a sin.

And I make kickass bruschetta. Used to, anyway.

For a long time after the crash, nothing had much of a taste. I couldn't appreciate any of it at all: not that sweet juice that seeps into your mouth as you crunch into an apple or the steaming goodness of a soup chock-full of vegetables or even that clean, refreshing lack of flavor in cold water.

Until today.

It's Spam. It's fucking Spam that I'm eating, savoring it like it's some kind of delicacy.

But I've got the only man I've seen in two years sharing it with me, and it's taking everything I've got to keep from staring at his hands and his mouth, his stubbled chin and those totally unfeminine shoulders.

And this Spam is somehow the best damn thing I've ever tasted.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_chappy_/]

Cigarettes kill taste buds. It's a fact.

Ryan never cared much though.

After smoking so long he became accustomed to the duller taste of foods. He became accustomed to the taste of tobacco and smoke in his mouth. It was worth it for the the sense of relaxation the cigarettes gave. Especially while at work.

It's not like the food he ate had much taste. He rarely cooked for himself and after Vicky died and his daughter moved out - he hardly cooked at all. It was all tv dinners, fast food or usually whatever he found in the vending machine at work. After spending ten, twelve or fourteen hours at work he barely cared what food tasted like. He usually ate too fast to even notice.

But when he came to Milliways he had the time. He could sit and relax and enjoy a meal and not hurry out to a meeting. It was something he had to get used to. He could sit down now at a table, not at his desk or standing at a counter and eat.

It was simple thing but it was took getting used to. He had meals now and conversations that didn't revolve around work.

Ryan hadn't had a cigarette in weeks. He had quit before but it was always unbearable. Here, he didn't miss them. He didn't need the artificial calm they provided when he was coming closer to true peace of mind.

Food tasted better. People always said that after quit smoking but he never believed them. He knew it was the truth he just didn't think it made that big of a difference.

That was before his taste buds grew back.

Any excuse for ...

[nymphtonks.livejournal.com]

... and In-Character dig at our beloved Dogstar Site Potions Master.

Best you let your dinner settle before reading this, just in case it makes a curtain call!

-o0o-o0o-o0o-

Re: Any excuse for ...

[erised1810.livejournal.com]

ha!!!! hahaha!!! Huray for rhymes!

Lexi Stuart: Dogstar RPG

[lexi-stuart.livejournal.com]

Pumpkin Soup...

With Nutmeg...

It was surprising how a taste could affect the emotions and memories of one person. For Lexi, just eating pumpkin soup would give her good memories. But it was also just the soup that made her feel good. On the days when it was so cold that it felt like her nose would fall off or her fingers become unusable with frost, a mug of pumpkin soup made everything better. The nutmeg was just an added touch her mother added. Even now, when the days drew closer to the inevitable leaving of childhood forever, just the taste of pumpkin soup calmed her frazzled nerves.

Lexi stirred the slowly bubbling pot before her, it was nearly ready. She lifted up a small spoonful of the orange misture to her lips and tasted...
"Perfect..."
She turned and picked up a ladle.
"Soup's up!"

Milliways, Tony Almeida

[buongiornodaisy.livejournal.com]

The Amateur Cook

Tony/Michelle, G, more to do with cooking than taste.

----

Burnt foods were a delicacy. He took each bite slowly, trying to appear as if he was ravaging the too-black chicken. A quiver of the lip gave him away. Michelle threw a napkin at him and took his plate as she stormed to the sink. Tony was never a good liar. He scratched his face and strode over to her, placing his hands around Michelle’s waist and nuzzling his face in her neck.

She was tense. He could feel it. He wrapped his arms around her waist and started rocking her gently. She calmed down, stopped tossing the dishes in the sink, turned, and tried to distance herself from Tony. “I can’t do this. I can’t cook,” she said.

“Michelle.” He cupped her face in his hands. “It’s not a problem. My mother couldn’t cook, either.”

“But your mother was…” She bit her lip. He knew what she was about to say. His mother was depressed and often forgot to check the food while she daydreamed. And Michelle had worked hard, too hard, to cook dinner. Michelle looked down. “I’m sorry, Tony. I thought I could make things a little more comfortable but…”

“No, no, Michelle, that’s all right. Listen.” He stepped aside and stood next to the drawer full of cooking utensils. “Why don’t you let me cook tonight? You’ve been pushing yourself too hard ever since we got married and I don’t think that’s what you really wanted to do. So just go sit down, relax, watch some TV, and I’ll call you when it’s ready, all right?”

Michelle nodded and smiled. “All right.”

As she left, Tony reached for pots and pans and spices and herbs and other such flavorful things he knew would make a good meal. The amateur cook had left the freestyler to play.

Jake Chambers of <lj comm=milliways_bar>

[faelhach.livejournal.com]

Every book that he’s ever read describes it as the taste of copper on your tongue.

What they don’t take into account is sweat and grime and something unerringly primal that overlays the metallic. It is satisfying in the basest of ways.

He wipes away the thin trickle at the side of his mouth and spits to the side. More blood fills his mouth and he rolls it across his tongue, feels it mingle with phlegm and warm to a feverish temperature.

The wolf lies not ten paces before him, eyes closed and body limp as if in the throes of a lazy summer nap. Ochre creeps across the sticky asphalt to lap at the tips of his boots. He takes a step forward and grinds it into the dust and road grit until it’s impossible to tell if it was ever there at all.

He closes his eyes, tilts his head back and lets the bloody ooze burn down his throat. The cool void waits for him, seductive. He knows that a mere thought will call the vision forward and allow him to study it, bask in the certainty and purpose it gives to him.

When he opens his eyes again several moments later nothing mars the shimmering black expanse aside from the never-ending broken yellow line that directs him to the place where sky meets land.

Not a cloud in the sky nor a breeze in the air nor another pair of eyes to mark his passing. Only the dusty, majestic cornrows and the open road. The taste lingers on his palate just as he knows a man with devil eyes watches from afar.

Jake blows hair the color of angels’ out of his eyes, places one foot in front of the other and is on his way.

[vivien]

For young_tmriddle at milliways_bar:

The first week I was at Milliways still blurs together for me; it likely always will. Stumbling into this strange place, meeting people from my world, finding out what I’d achieved and how I’d failed. I didn’t know what to do with myself, but I knew a change was on the horizon. I didn’t know what it would be.

Then I met Door, and the world came back into sharp focus.

She gave me a drink that night, something from her world, a drink the Velvets liked to make. I remember how it smoked and glowed red within its glass – red as blood.

The drink was good. It tasted rich and strongly alcoholic with a bright flash of raspberry flavor masking the more potent ingredients. It popped on my tongue, light and thick at the same time, it seemed. There was an aftertaste, however, that I thought was bitter and almost unpleasant. It reminded me of swirling fog trapped in liquid form. Door laughed and told me it was wiser not to wonder what the actual ingredients were – as with most edibles of London Below, it was better, sometimes not to know exactly what one was consuming.

I mostly stuck with scotch after that.

I’d forgotten the Velvets’ drink until the night in the ritual room of the House of Arch. I stood there, facing Door as her blood bled into my palms, as my own was tested for worthiness. That’s when I tasted it again, that swirling, bitter tang. I knew then what it was.

It was the magic of London Below. It was the taste of home.

Fandom: Harry Potter via Dogstar Academy. Mary Frances McCarthy (OC)

[in-the-blue.livejournal.com]

First and foremost, I’m a student of his.

Remus’s, that is. Professor Lupin: if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be here. He's the only one who ever wanted to teach me.

But first, standard introductions are in order: hullo, I’m Mary Frances. I turn sixteen on 30 April, and I’m a werewolf. So we can get it all out of the way, I received the bite when I was ten. I’m the eldest with three sisters and after I got bit, my father left. You see, he didn’t want a sick daughter.

I’ve never bit another soul in my life. I wonder how it feels, how it tastes to have their flesh between my teeth, the taste of their blood in my mouth. I can’t imagine it’s a taste I’d much favour; I far prefer sweets.

Professor Lupin: Pity sugar makes it useless. Drink up, Mary Frances.

I detest the taste of Wolfsbane Potion. Have you ever been out berry picking, idly popping fresh fruits into your mouth, and had a leaf or bug get in by accident? In all its bitter glory? It rather makes one want to vomit. Wolfsbane potion is much the same. I take it seven times a month: every day in the week before the full moon, every month of every year and unless someone finds a cure for lycanthropy, I’ll be repeating that same hideous cycle for the rest of my days.

Until all the world are werewolves and it no longer matters. Because then we will die out, finally, with the taste of human flesh rotting in our mouths.

Re: Fandom: Harry Potter via Dogstar Academy. Mary Frances McCarthy (OC)

[sff-corgi.livejournal.com]

Ghhh. Still creepy. So... close to despair.

[the-woodpecker.livejournal.com]

Cinnamon
by muffinbutt
Fandom: milliways_bar, Still Life With Woodpecker
Rated: NC-17-ish

She always tastes of cinnamon.

He knows it's a wizarding thing, magic soaps, whatever. He doesn't care.

January afternoon. Mended door she's pinned up against. Shirtless, both of them, breathless and moaning into each other's mouths. His lips on the soft, pale skin of her breast--

Cinnamon.

It's not subtle, either. It's hot on the tip of his tongue, alchemized into something other by the salt of her sweat. It doesn't matter where he kisses, licks, bites her. It's always there, somehow. Curve of her shoulder. Curve of her hip. The tip of her littlest toe.

And at that point he's just getting started.

It's an odd choice for her, he thinks at first, that January afternoon. He's the redhead, of course.

Oh, but then. Then, he hadn't truly known what she was like. He found out.

It was like making love to a fucking flame.

That first Saturday, the first Saturday of the rest of his life, he thinks of it, because of course they've spent every Saturday since then together, in bed if they can manage it, Bernard waking up to a mouth on his cock, Nymphadora writhing below, above, in front, behind, and always the taste of cinnamon on his tongue.

The back of her ear. The nape of her neck. The juncture of her thighs.

Always, faint or overwhelming or merely there.

Gil made cinnamon-raisin bread, one morning early in March. Bernard had to go to his room.

He tastes it when she's nowhere near, and has to distract himself with bombs and babies and Bar and the other thousand things a day he should be thinking of instead of the sound of her moan at the flick of a tongue.

He should be. But he's not.

Valentine Wiggin-Skywalker - Milliways Bar. 276 words

[empath-wiggin.livejournal.com]

Lemonade.

Never liked the stuff when I was little, but, as tradition states, Ender and I had a little lemonade stand by the road once. Everyone came by. Come on, a seven-year-old girl and a five-year-old boy make excellent salespeople. We sold out in an hour. Ender wanted to make more, but I just wanted to go in, because I hate sunburn.

Then life went on. I'd drink it every so often as tradition and summer stated. When Ender and I went off on our ship, someone wasn't paying attention when they packed provisions, as the only powdered drink we had was lemonade. We drank it, making fun of it the entire time.

And then I came to the bar. Luke drank lemonade. Frell, he drank it all the blessed time. I've never really figured out why. It was then that I really thought about it. Lemonade, the sharp sourness of the fruit, contrasting with the sweet sugar, and perhaps a hint of the quiet taste of mint. Only the right combination will make people happy. The drink I made when I was little was too sweet, too saccarine, but people drank it nonetheless. Powdered drink has a tang, an odd taste of dehydration that will never really go away, as if something's wrong with it. And the bar's lemonade, well, I don't think I've ever really had better. Sweet, but the tang cuts through it.

So, I guess one could say that the taste of that drink parallels my life. Odd. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Or in this case, life is like a glass of lemonade. Maybe I just think too much.