Taste

A slight preface:  This was based on an idea I had over Spring Break with the family. On the ride home, my wife and I chatted about the idea. It was really fun hashing some of the details out with her. I was thrilled when she took a stab at writing a small character piece based on the idea. Below is her introduction. I'm both excited and pleased to present it. Past the cut is where I took that idea and ran with it. We hope you enjoy.

>monk

--

-Taste-

The kitchen is a ruin.

There looks to be a method to the madness but a ruin nonetheless.

As she places the tiny microgreen on top she inhales. It looks so perfect. Maybe this time she's done everything as needed. Maybe this time it will work. Closing her eyes she lifts the spoon to her mouth.

One perfect morsel. The crispy duck skin, the smokiness of the duck breast, the poached quail egg popping in time with the tiny sphere of basil oil, and finally the zing of pepper with the arugula micro green. She pauses as all the flavors work together to create a harmonious whole. And they do, almost.

It's good, even great.

But not transcendent, not ethereal, not unearthly, not as good as the original.

"Dammit!"

She throws the spoon in the sink. It splatters dish water as it lands. Where had she gone wrong? Was it the timing on smoking the duck? Maybe the basil had been just a day past perfect? Or was it, as Chef Adria said, that women lack the taladro de carne and therefore... she can't even get through that one without rolling her eyes so hard it hurts.

"UGH, why can't I figure this OUT!?"

With a sigh she starts cleaning up the kitchen. She's been a dishwasher much longer than she's been a chef. Washing dishes is as close as she comes to meditation. It also helps her catalog this latest failure.


--

Julie punched out of work. Every part of her was tired and her hands were totally cramped. The only nice thing about Mondays was that she at least wasn't up all night. Mondays were the day the restaurant was closed, giving the staff time to thoroughly clean and prep everything for the upcoming week.

The bad thing about having the evening to herself was that it gave her more time to ruminate on her failure last night. All last week, she'd watched the dish prepared, by the exceptionally skilled hands of the lead chef himself. She'd bought only the best ingredients, from all the same suppliers as the restaurant, replicating it all perfectly, or so she thought. The only one thing that slightly eluded her was the duck itself, which was always prepped by the Chef before anyone else got to work. The only evidence of the supplier was that wolf's head logo she'd seen on the discarded butcher paper in the trash.

That logo was like a blind spot to the entire kitchen staff, and after two weeks of asking with no results, she was beginning to wonder if she'd actually seen it herself.

"Why is this time so different?" she asked herself. She certainly was no novice. She'd been sous-chef for world-renowned talents for years. This was hardly the first time she'd attempted to replicate a dish. In fact, it was something of an obsession for her. An obsession, it should be noted, that she was very skilled at. She'd excelled at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and taken that skill on the road to feed her desire, moving from place to place to study under the world's best cooks in order to capture the essentials of the best food experiences the world had to offer.

She didn't care about profiting off of this. This wasn't a milestone towards a larger goal. She just wanted to collect the experience, the same way that other people collected stamps, vinyl or old books. She wasn't a vulture, no. She was the curator and sole patron of an exclusive taste museum.

At least she had been, until just a few years ago. The first time it happened, she thought it was an anomaly, just one of those recipes that perhaps she'd never master. Try as she might, she understood no one was perfect all the time. But as she moved to pursue her dreams, she noticed it cropping up more and more, dishes that she'd manage to get technically correct... but didn't taste the same. She was growing increasingly frustrated by its regularity.

Last night was just the latest of these and it was becoming more than she could bear.

Preoccupied with her own aches and pains, she almost walked into the back of the Kitchen Manager, a surly older man named Rafael, who was almost blocking the staff entrance in the back.

"Pardon," Julie said, as he glanced back at her, his mouth turned down it it's perpetual scowl. If she'd been a dishwasher, she might have been fired for such a slight. Instead, he bit back a curse.

"It's ok. Just, watch where you're going," he grumbled, stepping to the side enough to let her out. She had disturbed him from receiving an order by the look of things, clipboard in his hand and a young man just beyond him on the back landing in front of the service door.

"See you tomorrow," she said.

"Yeah, yeah, sure," came the half-hearted reply.

"G'night, miss," the delivery man said as she walked by.

She smiled weakly in response, only barely trying to be courteous. To her, delivery people were largely forgettable, this one was not much of an exception. He was a young man, which was common, but he wasn't wearing any of the normal trappings of either a small bike courier, or a company uniform of the larger suppliers. He was handsome in his own right, though a bit scruffy looking for her tastes.

Some part of her lingered on the thought of him, though, as if something were not altogether right with him. Something felt off, even more than his odd choice of clothes. Maybe it was the smell of him, a scent she couldn't quite place.

"Seems a bit light today," Rafael said, obviously to the courier.

"Yeah... we had a small problem," the courier replied, "but we're taking care of it now. You'll have the rest no later than tomorrow."

"I'm only paying for half then," Rafael growled.

"Yeah, yeah, that's fair," the courier quickly conceded.

A few feet down the alley, Julie looked back as she heard the sound of a check being ripped from a ledger. Rafael was handing it over to the courier, who was handing over a standard, grocery sized paper bag, stapled at the top...

...with a wolf's head logo stamped on the side.

Julie almost forgot to breathe in that moment, nearly tripping over her own feet.

"Once I get back, I'll give you a call to update you," the courier said, tucking the check in a pocket on the inside of his weathered leather jacket.

"See that you do," Rafael said, bag in one hand, clipboard tucked his arm. If she knew that the back door wasn't so heavy, Julie would have assumed that the Kitchen Manager had slammed the door in the face of the courier, who merely cringed slightly from the sound.

"Talk to him?" Julie asked herself. "Shouldn't I just talk to him?" Her feet had almost carried her to where the alley met a main thoroughfare, but she felt her pace slow.

"I should just ask him," she convinced herself, stopping altogether. She turned around sharply, expecting him to be just a few paces behind.

Instead, she noticed that the courier was headed in the opposite direction down the alley, towards the road on the south side of the block.

Without thinking, she stood up and started walking after him, a lot of her fatigue suppressed by her own determination. Just shy of running, she made her way to the southern entrance of the alley, trying to get a fix on where he'd gone. She spotted him crossing the street, continuing southbound. The streets were busy, bordering on being crowded. She had to fight to get to the edge of the street and across. A car honked at her as the light changed, the driver angry that she'd made him delay for just a second while she actually made it to the sidewalk.

The delivery boy was tall enough, and his brown leather jacket looked to have a hood spilling over the top collar and onto his back. It was black and fuzzy, giving it a distinctive look, even in the crowd. She was as assertive as she needed to be, but frustratingly maintained a slight distance from him, thanks to the ebb and flow of the pedestrians on the sidewalk, like a run of salmon all heading upstream against the current.

She almost panicked when he turned towards the park, ducking down a side street and dropping from her line of sight. Thankfully, she was able to slide around a hotdog cart and get to the corner in time to see him walking towards what would be the Northeast entrance of the park. She was stopped for a moment by a traffic light, but made up the time as soon as it changed, racing past the others crossing in the same direction as her.

The park was one of the largest in the city, small by comparison to the miles of high-rise real estate all around it, but a welcome burst of colorful nature in the otherwise uniformly concrete gray landscape. She saw him walking down one of the smaller jogging paths as it sloped down under an artfully constructed footbridge arching overhead.

He appeared to be in no real hurry, but Julie was. This was her best chance to catch him. She picked up her pace, reaching the beginning of the bridge, just as he was walking out the other side a few feet away. He immediately turned left again, disappearing around the corner of the bridge's stone arch.

"No, no, no!" Julie said, breaking into a run to cover the ground as fast as possible. As she rounded the corner, he was there, directly in front of her. She hadn't expected this, so her and all of her momentum slammed into his back, sending them both forward in a tangle.  All sense of balance lost and panicked, she grabbed onto his leather jacket out of reflex.

It seemed as if they fell forever. When they finally hit the ground, she rolled away to the side.

"Sorry! I'm sorry!" she began, "I'm so very sorry!"

He grunted something unintelligible, though it sounded to be something of a mix between pain and annoyance.

"My name is Julie Stewart and I was following you," she winced as soon as she said that, it sounded horrible. "What I mean is, I just wanted to find out about your duck... that doesn't sound better..." She was immediately regretting trying to explain herself, but before she could speak again, she was interrupted by the cry of... something unnatural.

The sound made her cringe, sending violent shakes up along her spine. The noise made her want to run and hide. It was at that moment, in her desperate search for a place to hide that she noticed the bridge was gone.

In fact, the whole park was gone. She was still outdoors, but the scenery was all wrong. It was too green, and too bright to be the park.

"What the hell?! What was that?! Where are we?!" Her hand was in her shoulder bag, already gripped around the spray bottle of pressurized chemical irritants that could floor a full grown man in seconds. If that didn't work, her roll of chef's knives was there as well.

"Oh crap," the courier said, now sitting on the grass, facing her. His body language remained casual, but there was a slight look of frustration on his face.

Julie removed the spray bottle, keeping it in her still quivering hands. She was not threatening anything with it directly, but she sure as hell was going to give this guy or anything else nearby a face full of capsaicin if they tried anything.

"Look, I was just looking to find out where your supply store was. I'm sorry that I ran into you, but now I have no idea what the hell is going on and you need to explain to me, RIGHT NOW!" Julie held up her can in his direction, the look on her face showing him exactly how serious she was. He held up his hands palms towards her.

"Be calm, lady," the courier said. "Everything will be fine."

"It is not fine!" Julie said, looking around again, seeing the tall trees and the wild shrubbery with berries and flowers that seemed too brightly colored to be natural.

"That smell!" she said, finally recognizing the same scent she'd picked up on earlier at the restaurant. This was the source of the smell, not him, but this place... where ever this place was.

"You calm enough to listen for a second?" the courier asked. He was trying to keep her attention for a moment while he continued. "My name is Lonnie. Everything is fine, you just accidentally took a wrong turn when you bumped into me."

"What the hell does that mean?" she asked, noticing that her heart had not yet stopped racing.

"You're from Le Canard, right? You're one of the cooks?" he asked. That brought her panic level down a notch.

"I am not a line cook, I am the sous-chef," Julie replied coldly.

"Right, right, sorry," Lonnie replied with a slight smile. Okay, she thought, he didn't seem so bad, and he had those incredibly kissable lips, just like LL Cool J. She almost punched herself in the head for thinking of something like that at a time like this, but all thoughts fled from her when she heard the noise again. It was louder, if that was possible and even more unsettling. If her finger had actually been on the trigger of the spray, she probably would have dosed Lonnie from head to toe.

"C'mon," he said. "We need to get moving."

"Yes," Julie said quickly, her mind embracing flight over fight. "Wait. Where are we going?"

"I'm going to try and get you back home, but it may take a few minutes for me to find another slipway," Lonnie said, brushing off his jeans and jacket quickly before offering a hand out to Julie. She tucked her spray back into her bag for the moment and allowed him to pull her up.

"I'm not sure what you're talking about, but I'm just going to go along with this until I understand what's going on," Julie said.

"That may take a while," Lonnie replied, "but stick close and I promise to make sure you get back."

"I certainly hope so," said Julie, knowing how she must sound given how she felt. She followed along behind Lonnie, who seemed confident and surefooted in this bright forest, under trees that looked barely familiar and brush that seemed impossibly foreign. The insects that flitted back and forth in the sunlight had gossamer wings and moved impossibly fast. It must have been a trick of the light, but it looked as if they left tiny rainbow trails as they flitted about.

Julie choked back at least four or five questions before Lonnie slowed to a stop. He took a moment to look up. Julie began to wonder what he was looking at, but she noticed his eyes were also closed as if he was trying to catch wind of something. She took a couple of deep sniffs herself, but all she could smell was that unfamiliar scent that was not unpleasant but certainly pervasive. If he smelled something else, it was certainly beyond her.

"This way," he said, taking her past a tight thicket of vine covered, thick trunked trees. Beyond them she saw, of all things, a red VW microbus, most likely from the late 60s. It looked to be in much better condition than the one her college roommate had all those years ago.

"My friends are over here. We'll get in the bus and get you back to where you need to be," he said. Julie breathed a sigh of relief. Here was finally something that was familiar.

"Whatever you may see, try not to overreact," Lonnie added. Julie agreed, not sure what, at this point, could possibly upset her more. She joked to herself that he was just being overly conscious about the state of floorboard trash in the microbus. As they got closer, she made out two people at the front of the bus. One looked to be a tall man with long, dark hair. The other was a woman, not as tall, but with incredibly blonde hair braided behind her head.

As Lonnie and she approached, Julie saw both of them turn to look at them. The woman appeared unfazed, although cold might have been a more apt description. The tall man was wearing a smile, barely held in check by a trimmed black beard. Of the two of them, Julie was fascinated by the tall stranger. She was captivated by his looks. He had the kind of smolder that a Hollywood star couldn't pay enough to replicate. She found herself inadvertently staring at him as they drew close.

"Who is your charming new friend, Lonnie?" His accent was foreign. Mediterranean for sure, Julie thought. He also had such deep blue eyes and... why was she so obsessed all of a sudden?

"Her name is Julie. We have to get her back home," Lonnie replied bluntly. Pointing to his friends he introduced them quickly as Damianos and Sigrid.

"H... Hi," Julie stammered to Damianos, feeling her face flush a bit.

"Turn it down, would you?" Sigrid growled, punching her dark-haired companion on the arm. As he winced from the hit, Sigrid addressed Julie directly. "Pardon, Julie, if it isn't obvious, Damianos here is a satyr. A lot of his charm will wear off momentarily."

"Satyr?" Julie responded, totally confused. "What?"

"Ah, yeah," Lonnie said. "I hadn't really gotten around to explaining everything to everyone."

"Explain what?" Sigrid asked, scowling slightly.

"Like Disney Fantasia, cute little guys that blow the flute pipes, satyr?" Julie asked, talking over Sigrid.

"That's only partially true. The first Greek satyrs were actually part horse," Damianos rambled.

"What did you forget?" Sigrid asked Lonnie. "Who is she?"

"Let's just everyone take a moment," Lonnie said.

"Part horse? Is that like a euphemism or something?" questioned Julie.

"If you're asking if it's an exaggeration," Damianos answered with a charming smirk, "I can assure you it is not."

"Did you bring a mundane over through the slipways?" Sigrid growled at Lonnie.

"Intentionally, no," Lonnie retorted. "Now if we can just..."

All of them were drowned out by the sound, that sound that made Julie's skin crawl and urged her to crawl underneath the microbus for safety. It was louder than it had been the previous times, uncomfortably close. As the cry settled, Julie opened her eyes and began to notice a few things she had missed before.

First off, Damianos had horse ears. They were almost hidden by his thick mane of black hair, but they were definitely not human. She saw them turn back up after the cry ended.  Secondly, Sigrid had a sword strapped behind her, a real-life Renaissance Faire sword. Finally, something was moving in the clearing just beyond the van. She caught sight of a tail, or so she thought.

Damianos's ears and Sigrid's sword didn't really seem to matter much anymore, for some reason. She needed to know what that sound was. She slowly moved around the side of the microbus to take a look. Even though her feet shuffled that way of their own accord, she was consciously frightened to see what might be there.

"Oh yeah," Damianos said to Lonnie, "we found the cockatrice."

"Cockatrice? What is that? Is that even a real thing?" Julie mumbled to herself.

"I'm more concerned with getting Julie back home first," Lonnie said. Julie acknowledged that he was being very considerate of her and her feelings, but none of that seemed to matter anymore once she rounded the edge of the van.

"How did this even happen?" Julie heard Sigrid ask, the argument with Lonnie quickly picked up where it had left off.

In the field ahead of her, the field previously obscured by the van, roamed a dozen or so... chicken lizards? Her mind tried to wrap itself around the sight of it, but it looked to be something that would be an internet hoax video or a badly photoshopped picture. Each of these things, roughly the size of a pony, had roughly scaled torso similar to a crocodile or an alligator, including a long serpentine tale, but the head and stubby wings of a chicken, with almost comically oversized bird legs, like those of an ostrich.

"What the ..." Julie couldn't even think in complete sentences. She watched as they milled about, scratching at the ground like a bird, but instead of picking at the ground for seeds, they were dipping their beaks into a bloody carcass, like vultures on a nature documentary. Julie felt her stomach churn as she watched one of them pull off a strip of meat and crane its head up to swallow it down.

"Ok there, chef," Lonnie said, moving closer to Julie, reaching out to gently lay a hand on one of her shoulders. "We should get you out of here."

"Y... yeah," Julie stammered, unable to look away, but slowing backing up.

The creature closest to them, a few dozen feet away, turned towards the microbus, its rooster head cocking this way and that. It strutted for a few paces towards them.

"Okay, just be calm and don't look it directly in the eye." Lonnie's voice dropped to a loud whisper.  Julie found herself nodding in agreement, but still unclear about how to reconcile this against everything she had previously considered impossible.

The strutting monster suddenly reared up and flapped its wings. Julie had been to farms before, she'd seen live poultry and if it had been just a chicken, she would probably have been ok. Ever since arriving here, though, everything was more than she was used to: brighter colors, stronger smells, surging hormones and escalated emotions. The sensory overload of this new place and the imposing size of this literal rooster-zilla together were more than she could handle. That's probably why she started screaming.

When the rest of the flock of cockatrice heard Julie screaming, they replied in kind, each voicing their own hair curling cries. It became deafening.

Then they started to stampede.

Julie's scream stopped as her throat seized up. She fell backwards, feeling like the world was falling along with her, hoping she would just fall back to the park, as strangely as she had arrived here. Instead, the next few moments were full of furious motion and thunder. As her senses began to untangle, she found herself on the ground, half curled into a ball. Sigrid was standing with her arms outstretched, over Julie, as if she could hold back the entire flock of monsters with a single defiant gesture.

Whatever it was that Sigrid was doing, though, and it forced the cockatrice to split in half, running around the two of them and the van as well. At least twice, Julie saw one of the creatures attempting to keep moving forward, but was pushed away, as if it had struck some invisible barrier and was forced to move along with the rest of its herd or face being crushed itself. This might have given Julie some sort of reassurance if she could ever shake the feeling of being terrified.

"Oh my God," Julie wailed. "I'm God knows where, about to be trampled to death..."

"It's ok," she heard Lonnie say.

"...or pecked or whatever it is they do," Julie lamented. "And all I wanted was to see is if I could get a better cut of duck."

"That's funny," Lonnie said.

Julie looked up and around. Lonnie was kneeling next to her. She hadn't noticed it before, but one of his hands was on her shoulder. It felt reassuring. Just as quickly as she had become terrified, she was now overwhelmingly curious, rubbing the moisture from her eyes.

"What's funny?"

"It's funny that you almost got killed by what you were looking for," Lonnie said. "Luckily, Sigrid is exceptionally talented and protected both us and the microbus."

Julie noticed that the last of the cockatrice were running past them. She heard Sigrid let out a deep breath as her arms dropped.

"By the vipers of Nastrond, that hurt," Sigrid confessed wearily.

"Killed by what I was looking for?" Julie repeated out loud. "You mean those things? Seriously? Those creatures?"

"Yeah," Lonnie chuckled.

"You hunt those things and sell their meat as duck?!" Julie couldn't tell if she was angry or upset, but most likely it was a mixture of both.

"Amongst other things," Lonnie said, standing up. He looked up at the top of the microbus. Damianos was standing up there, looking down. "Did you get one?"

"Yeah, boss, sure I did. Three of them," Damianos said with a grin. Julie noticed that there was a bow in his hands, one much nicer than she ever used at summer camp during archery class all those years ago.

"That could have gone a lot better," Sigrid growled, casting a sideways glance at Julie who was batting away a helping hand from Lonnie. "It's going to be hell to track down the rest of them."

"That's repulsive!" Julie screamed, batting away Lonnie's outstretched hand. She got up on her own. "Not to mention dishonest!"

"Well, we can't market it as cockatrice," Lonnie said. "I don't think the FDA would approve."

"They most certainly would not!" said Julie emphatically. "And you can expect that when I get back that I will be reporting it.  It's illegal and unethical to allow this to go on."

"You mean, if we take you back," Sigrid growled.

"What?! What does that mean?" Julie demanded angrily.

"Calm down. Calm down," Lonnie said.

"You mean we don't get to keep her?" Damianos asked.

"That is not funny," Lonnie replied sharply. Turning to Sigrid he added, "Of course we're taking her back. None of this is her fault."

"Coming here, no. But nearly getting us trampled and threatening our business is most certainly her fault," Sigrid replied, giving Julie a cold look.

"I'll threaten more than your business," said Julie, suddenly full of white hot rage. She might have actually taken a swing at Sigrid if Lonnie hadn't stepped between them.

"Go get the bodies and stow them." Lonnie's voice had the air of authority as he spoke to Damianos. He leveled a finger at Sigrid. "You go with him. Go and help."

Sigrid looked ready to chew iron and spit nails, but she kept her mouth shut and walked away, leaving Julie and Lonnie alone.

"What is going on? This is all crazy!" Julie was certain that she was going insane. None of this made any sense. Lonnie took her gently by the shoulders.

"Hey, Julie, I need you to listen," he said, adding a subtle shake of her shoulders to get her attention. She looked at him. He was young, but his face was serious and he seemed to be far more mature than she first took him to be. Had he always had such golden eyes though? They were almost yellow. She couldn't remember. Everything in her memory was jumbled up.

"Are you listening?" he asked. She nodded weakly.

"You are not in Kansas anymore. You are far away from the park and the city that surrounds it," Lonnie said.

"I figured that part out," Julie said.

"We are in a place where your emotions will want to run away on you. It's not a normal place."

"Then what kind of a place is it?" she asked sharply.

"It's the place that... Okay, here's the thing. At one point in time, all the storybook things you've read about... elves and dragons and vampires and wizards,  monsters and creatures of all sorts... all of that was real. It is real." Julie immediately started to balk, but the thought of the chicken lizard cockatrices gave her pause. Lonnie continued anyway, emphasizing, "It IS real.

"Back when people started noticing these things, they did what people generally do when confronted with the unknown. They panicked and started killing them. So over the years, all those fantastic things left. They slipped away," he said. Pausing a second he held his arm out, motioning to the wood around them. "And this is where they went."

"Another world?" Julie asked.

"The same world," Lonnie said. "Just a little off to the side. That's not the point, though. What's important is that this world runs by a slightly different set of rules than you're used to. Thoughts and feelings and emotions, just like everything else... well, they're larger here. Stronger than what you're used to."

"Not just that, it's also colors and smells and ..." Julie paused for a moment. She saw Lonnie crack a slight smile.

"And tastes?" Lonnie asked. "Is that what you were about to say?"

"Yeah," Julie said. "That's what I was thinking. I mean I haven't eaten anything from here... have I?"

"It sounds like that's what started this whole thing to me," Lonnie said. "Why you chased me down. Looking for something you couldn't quite understand. Something better than you'd been able to find... you know, in your world at least."

"Then the duck that the chef used..." Julie began.

"Yeah," Lonnie confirmed, "that's what we do. We keep dangerous population of creatures in check, while simultaneously provide amazing tastes for others. We also happen to make a small profit for ourselves along the way."

"It's not that small of a profit," Julie heard Damianos say. Lonnie rolled his eyes. Julie smiled before remembering Sigrid's threat.

"You're not going to leave me here are you?" Julie whispered.

"No," Lonnie said. "We're not."

--

The VW microbus pulled to a stop in front of Julie's brownstone. The door slid open and Lonnie stepped out first, offering Julie a hand as she stepped out.

On the curb, she took a look around at the city. It was late, and in this part of town, there were mostly just lonely streetlights and wandering alley cats.

"It all seems so drab now," Julie said.

"You'll be better adjusted after a good night's sleep," Lonnie confessed.

"I'm happy to help you get a better night's sleep," Damianos said from the passenger's side of the vehicle. His ears seemed to be normal now, but his smile seemed no less enchanting. She smiled in return.

"I'll... be fine, thanks," she said.

"Give her our card," the satyr said confidently to Lonnie. "Just in case she changes her mind."

"Shut up, you," Sigrid growled. Lonnie sighed, motioning Julie to move away from the van. He walked with her to the edge of the stairs that lead up to the brownstone's entrance.

"Will I forget it all?" Julie asked.

"Nah," Lonnie said. "Not all of it. You'll probably have a hard time convincing anyone it's the truth though. Unless maybe you start off by saying, 'so I was tripping on drugs one night when the following happened..."

Julie chuckled. Despite Lonnie's reassurances, it already felt distant, like it had been years ago and millions of miles away. Before wondering what she could possibly say next, she felt Lonnie press something into her palm. Holidng it up to the light, she saw it was a business card, pressed with the same wolf's head logo in red that had started this whole adventure. Printed neatly underneath it was a number.

"I like Damianos, but..." she snarked.

"Nope. Not for that. It's just in case you ever need any really tasty duck, at a premium discount" he replied with a grin. "Or just in case you need someone to talk to about your strange drug experience."

"Or maybe just a cup of coffee now and again?" she asked.

"Yeah," Lonnie replied, "We could probably make that work." Perhaps to avoid any further awkwardness, he turned and walked towards the van. As he climbed in, Sigrid started the motor back up.

"Where are you guys off to now?" asked Julie.

"Home, for sleeping," Lonnie answered with a smile.

"Flying castle?"

"A toadstool under a rainbow," Lonnie replied.

"Really?" Julie asked, genuinely surprised by the answer.

"Nah. Sensible duplex on the edge of town," Lonnie laughed. "But we do have a mermaid that lives in our backyard pool."

Julie had a good laugh as the van's door slid shut. Damianos blew a kiss as it pulled away from the curb.

On the steps of her brownstone, Julie watched the van drove away down the street, around the corner and out of sight. She lifted the card up again, looking at the wolf's head and the number below it. As she lingered in the moment, admiring the styling and detail of the logo, knowing there was a whole new world of tastes out there to explore, her moment of contemplation was interrupted.

Over the nocturnal sounds of the city... she heard a solitary wolf's cry.

And it made her feel safe.