the Packbats' village witch playthrough 2024-07/08, part 2: soup and coffee

[packbat]

With our first two tarot card draws of spring, Maybe begins their village witch work.

Content warnings on this section: food (including meat), hoarding.

Spring, Card 1: Knight of Swords

You make a soup to take to someone who is ill, filling it with herbs and blessings for healing and comfort.

I carried my laptop with the posting and set it at one end of the dinner table, shifting my altar a little further over to make it fit. I carefully poured a little soybean oil into the lamp on the altar, lit it, and stared at the light reflecting off all the things surrounding the altar - the glass of my trinket dishes, the plastic of the dice, the copper and silver of coins, and the brass of the sailboat sculpture. Stared, and concentrated on the posting, the request for healing for an ill aunt.

Garlic, ginger, and mint, I thought, then: Sage, bay leaves, and time.

I felt my eyes close, breathed deep, and then blew the lamp out.

Then I grabbed my mp3 player, put on my headphones, and pulled the carcass of the rotisserie chicken out of the freezer to make into broth.

...

A bit after I rang, an older person with a rainbow tie-die shirt opened the door, saw me awkwardly holding pot and broom, and ducked out the screen door to take the soup from me.

"Ah, are you one of Ari's friends?" the person asked.

"I'm a witch", I explained. "A relative of hers, Elmo, said she was ill, and asked that I make her something."

"Oh. So this is...?"

"Chicken soup with dumplings", I answered. "Elmo said that would be all right. The magic is in the herbs", I added, "but ... chicken soup."

"I see", the person in the rainbow tie-die replied. They sniffed at the pot curiously.

"There should be enough for three, or two with leftovers. A meal is best shared. I can perhaps come back tomorrow to get my pot back...?"

They gave me a suspicious look, then sighed. "Elmo means well, and I appreciate not having to cook. Thank you."

"Of course - good luck to Ari", I said, and bowed. The person in the tie-die half-bowed in return, and went inside with the pot.

I put my headphones back on, stepped onto my broom, and flew home.

...

"You should come in", said Ari's housemate, the next day. "Ari wanted to meet you - she's doing better than he was yesterday."

Better was not as well as I hoped, but I was glad to let him see my face, and see that my magic was helping.

Spring, Card 2: III of Pentacles

Someone tells you their house is being haunted and asks you to help.

"The house has always had a way of moaning, sometimes", Mike said, eyes on the road as he drove me back to his house. "Thought it was the wind - it's not strange for it to be the wind, is it?"

"I don't think so", I said. It'd been a while since I'd been in a car, and I think I'd forgotten how to enjoy it.

"Well, I saw the 3D printer on the bulletin board, and brought it home. And when I took it out of the box, well, the voice wailed and cried, 'My printer, my printer, my printer', over and over." Mike glanced over at me. "I don't think it's normal for the wind to do that."

I nodded. "I don't think so either", I said.

...

"Oh", I said, as the garage door lifted.

"Oh?" Mike asked. He looked between me and the garage, the ordinary garage, with shelves on the walls, a bench in the back, and a few awkward large items like boxes and bicycles.

I pulled the door handle and stepped out. Stared at the mirage of crates and boxes piled on pallets, the light on the ceiling blotted out by the heights to which it rose. I heard Mike climb out beside me as I closed the car door and walked in, carefully stepping over the memories of cables and hoses, turning sideways to fit past sheets of absent plywood, and looked through a curtain of dreams of things at the bench on which the printer sat.

I turned, and saw Mike tentatively crossing the empty space where his truck would park towards me. None of what filled it was real for him. The whisper of a wail followed him.

"They - she? ze? - ze had a printer too", I said to him. Then I said to zir, "Can you show us where it was?"

...

Navigation was ... an adventure. At one point, I had to ask Mike to move a table, because there was a scarce foot of aisle to go down and a table was in the middle of it.

Then there was figuring out what ze wanted, and getting the right filament into a 3D printer that was simultaneously sitting on top of a stool in a corner and gone. In the end, I had to hold up the spool by a highlighter stuck through the hole, and move it back and forth as accurately as I could to follow the movement of the head.

The first print was a mess. The second was imperfect, but real - a little tugboat, prow rising high.

Mike got a strange look on his face, fear mixing with technical expertise. "You're running the print a little too hot," he said. He looked at me, asking silently if he was breaking some rule - but I gave him an encouraging nod, so he continued: "I think slower and lower temperature would print better."

The next print was slower. My arms were shaking a little from holding up the spool. But it was clean and sharp. I set down the spool as Mike carefully separated it from the ghost of the printer, and ran his fingers across its surfaces.

"It's good", he said, and held it out.

Other hands reached out and took it. Held it.

We watched as ghost, tugboat, and clutter began to smoke, curl, and escape, pulled up and away as if by vent fan. I felt tears rolling down my cheeks. Then ze was gone.

Suddenly, Mike was handing me a cup of coffee, and I realized I'd been sitting there long enough for my legs to go numb. I sat with Mike for another hour, talking about ghosts and aspirations, before he drove me back.

"Neighbors", he'd explained, when I'd offered to just fly between our houses. "I'd rather not have the argument."