The honey here is black. It fights her spoon; she stabs it in several places with the blunted end, and then leverages up a chunk that she wrestles into the bowl. It is pungent, with notes of a spice she does not know. With the edge of the spoon, she carves it, the ventricle of some strange hive’s heart, into pieces which slowly begin to thaw, to slough apart. The lid of the jar, when tapped, melts back into place; she could juggle with it and risk not so much as a drop[1].

The butter is orange, thick, and just as pungent in its own way. She takes a knife, carves off slabs, and flicks them into the bowl with two fingers. They scatter in the bowl, fallen pillars among the dark humped shapes of the honey[2].

Beat until blended. Harder to do here; Skotos sets to it with gusto and a strong elbow. In the other kitchen, the butter was daisy-yellow and the honey was golden, and they swirled together until it was all one sweet shining sea. The pestle comes back colored like a bruise, and if this is a sea, it is one at sunset, and a storm on its way.

Then the eggs, overlarge, speckled, cracked one by one and then beaten again. Then the sour yogurt and the almost-familiar vanilla, beaten again. She probably shouldn’t be setting the bowl down every time she needs a new ingredient, but she never used to need to. When she reached for something, it was right there to hand; the whisper of lace and the click-clack of heels and the creak of the cabinets[3].

Flour, powder, salt: whisk them round. Skotos hums a far-off song, meaningless without its context, most especially to her. There’s no reason to sing the verses, even if she could get at them; there’s no one here to sing the [i]high[/i] notes, clear as crystal.

Mix all together, pour out into the greased molds, set into the oven.

And now she’s the one who has to prepare the fruit, too. The ones to hand are red as rubies and have a white, firm flesh within, but the rind is thick all around, dimpled like the surface of a moon. She is obliged to dig at the rind with her fingernails and peel it away by hand before she can cut the slices and arrange them on a platter. Dark, bittersweet berries roll into the hollows left between slices. Finally, a last step, she takes another chunk of the black honey and squeezes it in her fist.

It drips from her fingers like the blood of a king, drizzled onto the fruit. Her lashes are wet and her body is warm. She is, for a moment, alive. And this is what she chooses to do, simply because it’s what’s in front of her. Because how can she hurt someone with honey cakes and a platter of fresh fruit?

***

[1]: just like in the kitchen back home, for all that the design of the jar is unfamiliar, with the smooth curves of an organ rather than faceted sides, good beneath the fingers.

[2]: as above, so below. The ruins of what came before are inescapable even in the kitchen.

[3]: here there is only Rusty, getting underfoot, leaning heavily against her thighs, sparing glances up at the infinite distance between him and the strange glories of the countertop.