The sun was setting through the window on the far end of Ada's kitchen. For an entire day, she stayed confided to her seat at her dining table. For an entire day, she stared at the deep blue wall across the table from her.
Though many could tell just from a headshot of her that Ada has been put through the ringer, with her eye half-swollen and most of her skin miscolored from bruising, the rest of her body had taken the brunt of her most recent loss. Many injuries were not fatal, but required minimal movement on Ada's part to heal properly. To achieve this, her doctor had bound her in a tight cast made of large leaves medicinal saps. Her mobility has been limited, and now is forced to slow down.
Ada turns her head to the kitchen. "Gods I'm so hungry..." She sighs, slowly turning her head to the kitchen. Slowly she shuffles to the edge of the chair, using her limited bodily movement to gyrate herself so she is lined up to the kitchen. She thrusts forward to balance on her immobile legs. Left, right, left, right, she slowly balances and wobbles to the countertop with her cabinets and stove. Looking down at her stovetop, she gets the vague recollections of her many attempts at cooking. Ada scans the countertop, and looks at the pantry as if she could recall every item inside without opening the door.
"A sandwich shouldn't be too hard."
Ada rotates her entire body so her casted arm can grab a spoon from the back of the counter. A large wooden spoon, a perfect tool to open the cabinet and slide out the bread and sauce bottle. She tilts back, balancing on one foot. With a flick of the wrist the spoon manages to catch on the edge of the circular knob. With decisive force Ada rotates her entire body, carrying the spoon with it to open the cabinet door. Just slightly above her head she saw it. The bread. Without hesitation Ada attempts at a small hop. She just manages to grab the edge of the bread sack with her teeth, dragging it out of the cabinet and letting it flop onto the countertop.
"Now the sauce..." Ada does her balancing act once more, ascending the spoon to a shelf beyond her sight. The spoon lunges forward to smack on a piece of glass. The sound gave Ada the assurance this was the sauce she wanted. She slowly led the sauce bottle to the edge of the cabinet shelf. Ada leaned back, readying her body to not exactly catch, but to roll the bottle onto the countertop with an angle using her cast after a short drop.
The bottle teeters on the edge of the shelf. Ada primes herself to catch it... then a knock on the door. Ada turns her head away from the kitchen, "Just a minute!" It was unfortunate how much her body is forced to move with her head, as the bottle took its fall, sloped to the side of Ada's cast where she was looking and crashing on the floor. "My sauce!"
Ada looks down at the cracked glass, only to see something truly dreadful. ". . . That's not my sauce." Smoke begins to bleed from the broken bottle, seeping out and dissipating into the air. The lanterns and candles in Ada's home flicker as a new chill shoots through Ada under her cast. With her wrapped foot Ada slowly turns the bottle to see the label in wytch's handwriting. 'Eversmoking Bottle'.
"Fuck."
The doors of her kitchen rattle. Ada turns, "Apologies spirit, I didn't realize you weren't my sauce bottle. If you'd be so kind as to get back into a bottled vessel. The sauce bottle will be free once my sandwich is made-"
A violent whisper echoes beside Ada's ear. 'S a n d w i c h'.
The cabinet doors all violently swing open. Ingredients begin to fly out and fling into the air. Bread flies out of the bag with many flinging across the room at Ada, or at the wall behind her. A whirlpool of food and utensils swirls around Ada. Through the maelstrom Ada sees her counter, where two pieces of bread present themselves. The sauce bottle Ada sought floats over the bread, coating both sides. Dill covers one slice while pickles shingle the other. Chicken slams atop the pickles followed by blood red tomatoes, ghostly white onions, lettuce whose life hangs by a thread, a deep colored mustard and finally, bacon blackened by the burning soul of the damned. The top bread levitates, and presses itself down before glowing with the same eversmoking aura of what rested inside the bottle.
With a loud clank, all the utensils and food flying in the air drops to the floor. Ada stares down the sandwich now glowing on her counter. "You know... I don't feel that hungry anymore." Ada turns away from the kitchen, only to see Beroe standing in the entrance.
"I told you to not try and cook for yourself Magister! Look at this mess!"
Ada looks around the kitchen and sighs, confiding it's easier to take the fault than to explain the origins of this accursed, tantalizing sandwich on her countertop.
