"Dear as Pepper"

Today's post is based on an old Italian folktale called "Dear as Salt."

The wise woman left her cabin in the heart of the deep, living forest and traveled to the castle. There she found the prince, seated at a long table on top of a dais, celebrating his wedding feast.

She gave him a cloth bag full of black and red peppercorns.

"Pepper?" the prince asked, holding the bag open, sniffing. He tugged the bag's drawstrings and gave woman the most graceful smile that his confusion would let him manage. "To be honest, I would have expected mushrooms, or some other forest delicacy. Or at least salt. That has some value. We use that in everything."

The wise woman nodded. "Salt is simple and practical, a good foundation," she said. "But pepper. Pepper adds depth. Bite. Salt stands in agreement with each ingredient and makes each dish what it's meant to be. Pepper makes the whole dish something more." The wise woman bowed and turned to take her leave; the party was no place for her. "Go a year without pepper, and your bride there will say everything is seasoned pleasantly enough," she called out as she walked through the long hall. "But how long can a person look forward to dining on food that's merely pleasant?"

She didn't have to turn around to know that the prince's young bride was watching her leave, and that both her meal and the prince's remained untouched.

"Take It Off"

 

"You know, I really kind of want to just take the night off," she said, leaning back in her chair.

To which he replied, "Yeah! Woo! Take it off! Take it all the way off!"

She looked at him.

To which he replied, "I was hoping you had said 'take the nightgown off,' which makes no sense, since you're not actually dressed for bed yet, but, you know," and then sheepishly cast his eyes downward and returned to reading his book.

"Swarm"

 

[While I'm writing about ants, might as well include a link to an article about ant behavior that I thought was a good read: "7 Reasons Ants Will Inherit the Earth"]

Lina had been at the window for a few minutes when Kristin came up behind her. Together they stood and watched a mad cluster of ants, thick as a cloud, swarm their front porch.

"I heard that ants go crazy like that right before a storm comes," Lina said, her eyes focused outside.

"Really?" Kristin murmured. "I heard that when they pile on each other like that, they're basically two colonies at war, fighting each other."

Lina turned. "Just have to disagree with me on everything, don't you?" Her smile was little more than a twist of her lips, as if she had swallowed something sour. 

Kristin sighed and pressed closer, placing her hand on Lina's arm, her chin on Lina's shoulder. "I'm sorry," she told her. "I didn't mean it like that. Look, can we, I don't know, just press 'rewind' and go back fifteen minutes or something? Try that again?" Outside, the sound of thunder rolled toward them like an army.

"The Giant's New Shoes"

 

Piotr the giant sat in the kitchen in his house, which occupied the tops of ten different mountains and was always hidden from below by a disguise of clouds, and removed the shoes from the box his wife had given him. "Oh," he said carefully, "they're very nice. Very lovely." And they were; the soles had a spring to them, which he felt when he pressed into the heel with his enormous thumb, and the leather for the uppers was soft and thoroughly worked. The hides of at least a hundred cows must have gone into each shoe. He tried the left one on.

"I've seen how you rub your feet after you've been trampling the countyside all day," Galena said with a shrug and a smile. "Perhaps these would be kinder on your feet than those two boulders you carved holes into."

"I'm sure they will be," said Piotr, even as he thought about all the little truths still hidden from her after all those years: that there were times when he didn't want to trample the countryside; that it felt right for him to wear large rocks, so sharp and heavy, on his feet; that he often was glad that it didn't take long for him in his boulder-shoes to pillage and ruin an entire town. Sometimes, it was best if the end came quickly. 

"Thank you," Piotr told Galena as he slipped on the other shoe. It was the one kindness at the moment that he could offer her.

"Clarinet"

 

"Jeez, what is that sound?" she asked from the couch. "It sounds like a clarinet. Or a cat dying. Or a dying cat playing the clarinet."

The man closed the wooden box that kept his song safe and placed the box back on the shelf. "Probably just the neighbor's kid. I think he started taking lessons," he said. "Listen, I'm sorry to have to call it an early night, but I've got this presentation at work tomorrow...." He wiped his hands on the front of his shirt, leaving streaks of dust across the fine-gauge cotton blend, no longer worried about how he looked.

"Bright Little Blossoms"

 

I think I noticed Dorelle and Keith at the reunion the same moment they noticed each other. Ten years after the last time we'd all been together in that gym, and there they were, looking at each other with new eyes and offering each other smiles that neither one would have had the chance to see the other wear before, given how things had gone in junior high.

It was like this: some trees start out in spring with a show of bright little blossoms, the kind with petals that curl under perfectly, the kind that make everyone who sees them feel lighter and happier. That was Dorelle. Then there are the trees that, instead of flowers, present buds at the tips of their branches, dull, difficult things all covered with scales. That was Keith, and he'd had terrible acne. Yet none of that mattered, not ten years later, when they both had had time to grow and flourish. You doing okay? I saw Dorelle mouth to Keith. I am, I really am. You? Keith said to her. And suddenly it felt like the end of summer, when no sounds were greater than the whispers between tree leaves, and everything was about to happen.

"Hot Booties"

I love the "As Seen on TV" display rack.

"Oh, no," he said with a laugh. "No, you don't. How much chili did you have tonight? And you think you're sitting anywhere near me? No. No!" 

He leaped from the couch and dashed around the coffee table while she chased him, wailing, "But you said your feet are always cold! I love you!" on what truly was to be another steamy Saturday night.

"Stuffed"

 

I sat with Bear in her cave, because there wasn't much else either one of us could do at the moment.

"Sometimes," I said, taking a sixth slice of pizza from the box, "when I do stuff like this, I imagine that my stomach's full of rocks. Like I'm just swallowing rocks and sinking them down in my belly. Because that's how I'm going to get myself to stay in my chair and get everything that I need and want to get done done. I am weighing myself down so that I have no choice but to sit and work."

"I think that's just all the cheese you're feeling," said Bear. I looked at her and chuckled. "Seriously," she continued, "you should try some protein next time. Fills you up longer." She herself was enjoying one of several fish that her mighty claws had snatched from the river, with a complement of berries that she had shaken free from a nearby bush.

"Well, aren't you the healthiest bulk eater in all the land," I said. "Next I know, you'll be telling me about the virtues of eating several small meals throughout the day."

"That 'grazing' bullshit? Hah, what do I look like, a deer? I am not a fucking deer," said Bear. "I have things to do."

"Me, too. In fact, I should probably get going soon."

Bear extended an open paw toward me. Several round, red fruit rolled around on the pad. "Take some berries?" she asked.

"Nah, I'm stuffed," I said. "Plus, I think for humans, those might be psychotropic."

She raised her eyebrows and pushed her paw closer.

"I write better with a clearer head," I insisted. Standing, I pointed to my box of pizza. "You want the rest of my cheese-flavored granite?"

Bear sniffed. "Yeah, leave it," she said, "I might be hungry when I get up."

"I'll call you later," I told her.

"Much later," she agreed. "Hate being woken up early. This body does not do Januaries."

I gave her a hug before I left her cave; already she was round with everything she would need for the winter. I saw her roll onto her great side as I walked away, preparing herself for the long work of dreaming.

"Cleaning Your Glasses"

 

"You keep cleaning your glasses," the child said to her grandmother one day when they were sitting together.

"Because I can't seem to see right with them on," the grandmother replied, though she could see well enough to understand what the girl thought of that. It isn't that I can't that accept my eyes are failing, she wanted to tell her. It's that I can't accept that this is as good as it gets.

"I guess I can see all I need to, though," the grandmother said instead, putting her glasses on and looking away.

"A Package"

 
Instead of a packing label, a note had been taped across the top: "A Mysterious Journey Awaits You."

The husband and the wife looked at each other.

"You sure you didn't order anything?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Everything I got off eBay already came in."

She poked the corner of the box as if she expected it to squish. "They really beat the hell out of it, wherever it came from."

"And it's soaked. It's probably going to start to get moldy soon," he said.

He threw it into the recycling bin, on top of a wealth of glass bottles, told himself that he didn't hear any sounds coming from inside, and went back into the house to get ready for "A Game of Thrones."