Dolce beams, wreathed in the steam of simmering milk and sugar.

“I’m glad my obvious mental breakdown isn’t causing you any undue stress.”

And returns right back to stirring. Did you know, that one must stir dulce de leche almost constantly until it’s ready? Improvements in ingredients and technique can only get you so far. At the end of the day, it must be carefully, so carefully attended to, lest it burn and ruin the whole batch. But Dolce does not mind the chore. See his perfect smile, not budging an smidge as he works, and works, and works, and works at the mixture. If the pointed silence carries a taste of mischief, then it certainly must be the imagination. Hunger does funny things to a mind, you see.

“Of course I know about the Rift.” A pair of skeletons, embracing, matching knives through one another’s hearts. His grip on the whisk tightens. “We have to do something about it, or else, well, that’s it. Just like we’ve got to do something about the Tides, or else they might self-destruct, and that could be it too. Only, someone’s raised the cry of Assassin, and now I’m hiding in the kitchens. Maybe that’s where we stop. Just like Salib could’ve done it, and the Endless Azure Skies, and Bella, more times than I can count, and the Yakanov, and the Armada, and the Eater of Worlds, and, I might be forgetting one or two?” He frowns, and his whole face wrinkles in thought.. “No offense meant to Aphrodite - it’s a terrible, awesome Rift, among the worst obstacles we’ve faced yet - but we’ve not had a free step this entire journey. But the only way the journey gets done is if we keep taking steps, however we can.” Otherwise the journey may never get done. How many more crews did Hermes have to send? Who’s to say any of them would succeed where they’d failed? “So, I have to keep believing there’s a way we can do it. And figure out how before we get there.” 

“That said.” He scoops a sample free with a spoon, observing its consistency before taking a delicate lick. A while longer, but getting there. “It’s not like we’re going in blind, either.”

With one hand stirring, the other counts off.

“First: Hades loves to gamble. I’ve not personally seen him care much whether he wins or loses, or even how often he loses. Never in the stories, either. This is just a hunch, but I don’t know if he’d go for a wager if he knew, for sure, how the cards would fall. I don’t know if he’d be [i]this[/i] invested if he knew he’d win every time. If that’s true, then that means there [i]is[/i] a way through the Rift, even if nobody’s found it yet.”

“Second: We have to be doing [i]something[/i] right so far, more than the crews that came before us. We’re yet to reach the point of no return for the Rift, yet, Demeter said Aphrodite assured her that Vasilia would have killed me by the time we reached Salib. There are…” He swallows uncomfortably. “...signs, that other journeys ended long before ours, by Aphrodite’s curse. But it hasn’t happened to us yet, despite the fact that it should have, and I can’t believe that’s down to chance.”

“Third: There’s some things the gods have told us that I can’t make sense of. Hades told Vasilia that, on this side of the Rift, love is denied to all. That the Rift only magnifies and accelerates existing fault lines. Aphrodite himself told me I did not have love. And yet. Vasilia and I are closer now than we were at the journey’s start. Aphrodite saved our lives, when all I had to offer was the promise that I was hers, and she was mine.” Denied love, then saved for love, all in the space of a few minutes. The gods may act on whims as they so choose, of course, but that answer sat wrong in his heart. There was something more afoot, if he could just figure out how it all pieced together…

Hrmm. But first, there was stirring to do.

“It’s not an answer.” He admits, returning to his careful kitchen work. “I need a little more time, some opportunities to consult the gods further. But I think I’m close to something.”