Page 13 of The Signature Dish of the Underworld

Her entry dish had to be bistro appropriate and still hit the brief, so Rae had settled on an apple casing that she would first make in a caramelised honey mould before filling with a cream she had whipped herself from the goat milk provided from the same mountain it was rumoured Zeus was raised on.

The milk was heavier, making it easier to whip, but the process of separating the milk and cream took far longer than usual, meaning Rae had gallons of the stuff in palladium containers by the fridge.

Finally, two lotus leafs, cut to look like apple leaves, would sit on top of the apple.

That’s what Rae had been deciding last night – whether to sprinkle the lotus leaf within the golden moulds, the cream itself, or have them resting on top. So, she’d taken a bite of the golden apple she was trying to replicate.

Last night’s memories reappeared in Rae’s mind like an old dream shaken awake.

The first bite had made her realise that the caramelised honey moulds she was thinking of using would be too delicate. To get that crisp consistency she was looking for, she would have to dip the moulds in an extra layer of warm honey right before serving so they didn’t turn out brittle.

With the second crunch, Rae had realised that if the lotus leafs were placed either inside the cold filling or the warmed honey, they’d lose their primary nutrient: which held the ability to make the eater lose their minds. So that had determined the lotus leaf position as leafs that would balance on top.

Finally, as the juice of the apple seeped onto her tongue and into her bloodstream, Rae’s eyes widened as she realised exactly how to make her competition entry a winner. She remembered feeling euphoric, as if she’d just been told the secrets of the gods. The sweet juices from the original apple had penetrated Rae’s cerebral fluid, shot up into her brain, and swept away the fog of her subconsciousness. She knew exactly what it would take to win the cook-off. She simply had to trust the process.

Which was why Rae decided to do one final thing to her entry dish. She took the Hesperides apple that she had taken a bite out of the previous night and began to press the rest of the juice of it out.

She would store the juice in a vial and add just one drop to each apple as she piped the cream in. Whether it would replicate the effects or not, it was worth a try. Some part of her synapses zinged in agreement, as if they remembered what the knowledge in the apple had revealed to them.

It felt like a hunch, a knowing, an ‘aha’, a tug on the thread of life from one of the Fates themselves. Rae followed the tug and got to work.

***

She was just about to turn the lights on in the bistro’s kitchen for the day when there was a knock on the door.

“Who would be here at five in the morning?” she asked the walls.

They seemed to give her a little sigh, as if they, too, were still sleepy.

Rae padded to the door. Only to open it and find Garth there, hands in his pockets, on the street corner.

“What are you doing here?”

“You didn’t use your token last night, and after what you said I was worried. I thought we'd be able to talk after the dinner service, but you didn't come. So here I am.” He ran a scaly hand through dishevelled hair.

“I was busy,” Rae chose to reply, keeping both arms crossed and wrapped tightly around her herself. It was chilly in the early morning hours. Hell, it was always chilly here. “That’s why I didn’t come.”

“Too busy to eat?”

Rae scoffed. “I barely had time to breathe between doing a shift at yours and going back to the bistro. I was exhausted yesterday.”

“I heard.”

“You heardwhatexactly?”

“News travels fast down our little road. Everyone was coming in for lunch for a change, complaining you were out of everything. What happened?”

“I overslept,” Rae grumbled, staring at her feet.

“You overslept?”

“I was working on my festival entry, alright?! Then I fell asleep in a mound of goat mush, and then I had to get that to set, so there wasn’t time to bake, which meant I was late, and—”

Garth laughed, a loud, good-natured rumble. “Goat mush? What on the Asphodel green meadows are you making, Sunshine?”

“None of your business.”

“Well … that’s what I was here about actually.”

---