This world is inhabited by creatures that we call pokemon. People and pokemon live together by supporting each other, but now the scourge threatens the safety of the entire region. Kohaku has become a dangerous place, where children stay at home and only brave souls go adventuring.
Welcome to KOHAKU. Come for the nightmares. Stay for the tea and crumpets.
The season is SUMMER. It is easy for survivors to forage for food from the land, as there are entire abandoned farms ready for harvest. On the downside, you can smell the corpses.
swarms
GRAND OPENING !
Welcome to KOHAKU REGION's grand opening! If you're interested in joining, come check out our grand opening giveaway!
it's been awhile ago since sophia had discovered the physical realm of castle forlorn. it's been two days since she had discovered the kitchens of castle forlorn, and probably for good reason. the land had good instincts.
one of the industrial ovens gives off a small 'ping' as the timer runs out. sophia looks up from a memoir that she had found in the library of lost things and walks towards the oven door. it was certainly a more reliable way of attaining cooked game than trying to start a fire in the snow. the delibird were plentiful during this time of year, and it's only today that sophia has truly taken advantage of the season.
she opens the door, and-
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1-20 the bird is cooked rather unevenly
21-40 the bird is so undercooked that it's practically raw
41-60 the bird is practically BURNT TO A CRISP since this is an ice bird we're talking about. there is so much smoke that the fire sprinklers might have gone off if forlorn had any
61-80 the bird is okay. as in, cafeteria quality
81-100 zahir would have given her a pat on the back for her efforts
in her infinite wisdom, sophia decides that the bird is probably edible. she takes it out with every intention of offering half of it to her partner pokemon, who stood outside of the kitchen.
it doesn't occur to her that phillip had been trying to spare her feelings during her childhood. he also happens to be a scourge pokemon that eats anything now. besides, he had been eating a lot of delibird lately. except those were...recently alive. not anything that just came out of sophia's hands.
she gives him a funny look. at the same time, it was kind of nice. it was familiar, like the days when zahir would fuss over the things that he had found in her fridge.
"if i can eat it, then it's food. that's what food is. calories."
"No, food is nutritious, hopefully with a side of actually tasting good. That thing doesn't qualify as either. It's a burnt piece of meat that's going to taste awful and be actively bad for you as well."
sophia looks pretty sulky. which hasn't happened much, if at all during these last months as physis.
"you haven't even tried it. what happened to keeping an open mind? aren't you supposed to be able to eat anything?" or rather, the food blogger that she once knew was supposed to. "i'm still alive, aren't i?"
what did he think she was always eating, five star menu items?
"I wouldn't eat that if you paid me. Besides, which of us is the professional foodie for a living? All I have to do is look at that and I know. It looks like you forgot it in a furnace for a decade."
He wouldn't even look at the delibird for more than a second at a time.
"Even if it's not making you sick instantaneously, trust me you don't want to be ingesting the chemicals on that thing."
sophia concedes that she's not living at lake pax anymore. at the same time, she's pretty sure that the bird is semi-edible.
she sets down the tray and removes the oven mitts. carefully, she picks at the outer skin and expects the inside to be edible. the inside is charred black as well. re: ice bird. she's perfectly aware that burnt food carries a cancer risk, but she's not about to say that aloud. maybe she should have tried spearing some basculin instead. or fried barboach.
"i set a timer. and you know that you're still an elitist" she mutters as she walks towards the industrial-sized fridge. "don't tell me that you're still a food blogger after..." her hand pauses on the fridge handle, but she forces herself to press on. "...after zahir brand went on permanent medical leave to become an anarchist." how plausible was it, really?
an elitist anarchist. there's probably a joke about this somewhere.
sophia opens the fridge, and wishes that she didn't.
"...how are you still able to afford five-dollar-a-pint milk?"
sophia pauses. it's been so long since she's had this conversation that she's not sure if it had even occured in the same lifetime.
did she have a passion for what she did? probably not, sophia decides. seeing her career as a job was the only way in which she ensured that she did not fall through the cracks. and where were they now? she stares into the fridge and decides that she's wasting electricity. again. she closes the fridge without taking anything out. when she does, she realizes that she can't possibly be wasting electricity in the land of nightmares.
"i'm not buying things. i...have little desire to return to the city. no good comes out of it." not to say that she is a flawless angel. ransaking the belongings of dead eos trainers wasn't much better. "although if you require anything of me, i...i suppose i could make an exception"
"...phillip can still eat it. he doesn't complain."
again, that's really...not saying much when scourge eat practically anything.
"it's elitism when you complain and you're not the one eating it."
she opens the fridge again and realizes that beyond the basic ingredients, she doesn't really know what to do with everything else. who actually uses walrein blubber as an ingredient?
she...she knows how to make a quiche, right? it's only a recipe. she can remember fine.
slowly, sophia begins to deprive the fridge of batin's kalos cheese, diced grumpig, and organic eggs. he could always get more if he was really that desperate.
soon, she's got all the ingredients out. she's also got several bowls and some foil. even sophia can toss things into a bowl with the correct measuring tools. she measures carefully, and the mixture isn't quite a disaster (yet).
...except batin's staring is getting really hard to ignore. that's right, zahir is the one who taught this recipe to her, wasn't he?
suddenly, sophia begins to feel rather self conscious.
"...don't you have anything else to do? or did you get stuck on this floor?" barricading batin into the kitchen did seem like something that the land would do.