Malta

[peace_inthe_violence]

This is a fairy tale of blood and bullets
It is the story of three men and three women and a small island between Italy and Africa.
This is a story about tragedy and pain, about healing and hope, but mostly it is about
love.

Comments

[notariver]

She just shook her head, eyes widening for a moment before she closed them so she could pinch the bridge of her nose, "Manet, Édouard Manet, the painter, whose art I saw at the MoMa on a field trip, and you just toss out the fact that you knew him and he might have insulted your nose like he's Steve the next door neighbor. I'm going to need, just, just give me a minute."

Part of it was theatrical put-on, but part of it was genuinely reeling, however briefly, from the historical whiplash.

[peace_inthe_violence]

He chuckled softly, turning off the faucet when he could no longer feel any oil between his fingers. He dried his hands on a fresh towel, and took the buttered one over to the doorway between the kitchen and their laundry. There was already a load going, so he set it aside for later.

"I didn't know him particularly well. You'd have to ask Joe if you want details about him. I met him a couple of times...and I'm fairly certain that he was the one who insulted my nose." He made a face, reaching up to run a finger along the slope of his admittedly rather Roman nose. "I'm aware of how large it is, I didn't need the verbal reminder."

Still, he smirked and headed to the fridge to pull out a gallon sized jar of what looked like milk to set on the counter while he knelt to find the pot that he wanted.

[notariver]

She shook her head, eyes still closed for the moment, kneading up her brow instead of just pinching the bridge of her nose, something reaching a boiling point even as she rattled off: "I don't have anything to ask, I want to know why he named that one a startled nymph when she don't look startled at all and really just looks like my moms when someone interrupts her reading for the third time in twenty minutes."

She realized belatedly the pitch she'd reached by the end and took a deep breath, adding, "But I don't think Joe would have that information."

[peace_inthe_violence]

Her voice got louder and louder as she went and Nicky blinked as he stood up, the stock pot and it's lid in separate hands. She looked upset and he set the tools aside in favor of walking back over and sitting back down in the chair he'd left.

He opened his mouth to say that Joe might actually know the answer to that, depending on when it was painted...but after a moment he just closed his mouth and instead reached out to lightly touch her arm.

"I am sorry, sorellina. I am not sure what I said to bring this to the surface, but I do understand that this must be a very hard thing to hold in your mind."

[notariver]

"I think it was less the what and more the how." She had managed to settle a little, at least, you just said it, like maybe it happened last week and not a damn century and a half ago."

She shook her head, drawing herself up a little once she did so, as if physically moving away from being overwhelmed, "I'll get used to it, I will, that one just caught me by surprise, I wasn't prepared for that."

[peace_inthe_violence]

Ah. That made sense. Perhaps a bit less sense to them than it did for her, but Nicky could see her side of it.

"I'm sorry. I didn't even think about how strange that must be for you. I..I guess the best way to put it, is that the man I'm talking about isn't the famous man you've read about? To me, to my memory, he is simply a man who painted and had a very...unique view of life. To me, it is no different than you telling be about your third neighbor to a house you only lived in for a year.

I will try to be better about remembering."

[notariver]

She shook her head at the offer, "No, it's fine, if you start getting gun-shy about how to say things, the way you talk about things that have happened, I'm not going to get used to hearing it, and that's the opposite of what we want."

Another little head shake, "It's fine, really, I'm caught up now, everything's good." At least until the next moment of historical vertigo, but now that she knew that he was probably just going to toss out facts like that at the least provocation -and the others would probably be the same way- she had a little better sense of how to handle it.

[peace_inthe_violence]

She was right, but he could still make an attempt to keep his stream of thought somewhere at least in this century. After all, he could still remember how absolutely jarring it had been the first time that Andy had casually mentioned that Jesus had a fondness for honey sweets.

He hadn't slept for a couple of days after that and he'd also forbidden her from talking about him ever again. She'd held up her end of the bargain. So far.

Nodding, he glanced over at the milk on the counter before looking back over to the young woman at the table.

"May I distract you by having you help me make cheese?"

[notariver]

That question was definitely enough to shake her out of the lingering uncertainty that the initial statement had caused.

As evidenced by the fact that she just blinked at him, finally asking: "You can just make cheese?" Logically she knew that some people did, but she hadn't ever considered it herself, though she'd made her own butter a time or two, usually for Thanksgiving dinner and once or twice for Christmas breakfast, when her mom hadn't made cinnamon rolls.

[peace_inthe_violence]

He arched a brow, a smirk toying with the corner of his lips. "Did you think it just appeared at the store to be bought?"

And no, he had absolutely no idea how much of a boomer that made him sound like. Or even what a 'boomer' was, to be honest. He preferred books to the internet, though he was getting better at the whole 'computer' thing.

"Mozzarella is easy. No pressing or aging required, unlike what I have downstairs. Fresh mozzarella is quite a treat. Do you want to learn?"

[notariver]

She spread both hands, some kind of gesture of surrender, "Look, I'm from the city, everything's made in some kind of factory as far as I'm concerned. So yes, I would absolutely like to learn just as long as you don't mind me reacting like it's magic for a while."

Because she was going to regardless, the same way she had when she'd first learned how to make pancakes, though that had been a long time ago, now.

[peace_inthe_violence]

He chuckled, giving her a teasing look. "Ahh, but what is science other than magic explained?"

One brow popped in an arch and he grinned wide as he finally got back up to head over to the stove. He settled the stock pot onto the burner, but didn't kick it on yet.

"First step, bring your milk up to 13 degrees. Low heat, please. You don't want to scorch it or the whole batch will be ruined."

[notariver]

"Thirteen?" She squinted a moment, "So that's, what, about fifty-four, fifty-five Fahrenheit?" She wasn't entirely sure on that calculation, "And you have a candy thermometer or something to measure with or have you done this often enough that you just know? Because I'm not going to call that cheating, but it kind of is."

It was a tease in return, still testing the edges of what she was allowed to tease about and what would be too much of a dig, though she doubted she would hit any of those by accident.

[peace_inthe_violence]

"That is not cheating. That is putting in the effort. No different than any other skill, thank you much." He smirked, reaching around her to slide open a drawer that contained all the cooking utensils that weren't common to every day cooking. "But since you haven't put in that work, yet, the thermometer is there."

He affectionately flicked the braid he'd just finished. For a moment, part of him considered teaching her the old, old fashioned way of doing this...but he wasn't that mean.

He wasn't switching over to Fahrenheit, though. He wasn't American and he never had been.

[notariver]

She hummed, as if considering that, though there was finally amusement catching at the edges of her expression again as she said: "Fine, I'll let you have that point."

She gave the thermometer a quick rinse in the sink before setting it aside on a dishtowel, "Is this just milk or is there something in it? Because if it's just milk I think it might have gone off."

[peace_inthe_violence]

He blinked, amused expression clouding for a moment as he came over to smell the milk. It was fine, just as it should have been. Stepping back, he shook his head.

"Nothing is wrong with it? It smells fine. A little grassy, perhaps, but her goats are pasture raised, not grain fed so that's to be expected..."

[notariver]

"Oh. Goats." She nodded once, as if that explained everything. Which it probably did, and she had to remind herself that it hadn't gone through the whole factory filtering and pasteurization process, either.

"Is any getting reserved or is it all going in the pot?" That was the next important question, all in all.

[peace_inthe_violence]

"All of it.

Did you think it was cow's milk?" He smirked, shaking his head as he moved back over to the table. He was teaching her how to make this, right? Well, right now was all about patience, time, and paranoia.

"You'll find that cow's milk doesn't settle well on our stomachs. Booker can handle it a little better, but Andy and Joe and I never really drank cow's milk until this last century or so. It was always goat or sheep's milk. Mare's milk, but that was usually kept for babies who's mothers couldn't nurse them. I've had camel milk once, and that didn't upset my stomach, but it is much easier to get from a goat.

"Let me know when you get to 13 degrees."

[notariver]

"Did you somehow miss the part where I said I was from the city? It's all cow's milk, and it's all highly processed to keep it from spoiling too soon or making anybody sick from who knows what." There was amusement in the first question, because it really was meant as some kind of tease.

She nodded at the rest, however, filing the information away for later, "Stir it or no?" She knew for things like caramel it needed to be stirred to keep it from scorching and sticking to the pot. It was also some stroke of luck that his version of teaching was also the way Nile learned best, hands off and clear instructions.

[peace_inthe_violence]

He wanted to ask what kind of animal husbandry practices were going on in her home country that drinking fresh milk caused sickness, but this was also the country that banned collecting rainwater and refrigerated eggs. The whole thing didn't make a lick of sense to him, and getting into a debate about it wasn't going to change that.

"Stir it. If it scorches, it will be ruined. The whole batch will taste burned." He wrinkled his nose a little at the idea, pulling a pad of paper and it's attached pen over to himself so he could start jotting down the next week's shopping list. After a moment, however, he had to put his pen down and look at the woman in his kitchen.

"Why do you put your eggs in the refrigerator?" Because that question was completely sequential with their actual conversation and not just with what was in his head. Right?

[notariver]

She had nodded at the answer, and had picked the right spoon for stirring it, one with a wedge bowl to actually get into the corner along the bottom of the stock pot, because she wasn't completely incompetent in the kitchen, it seemed.

The question however, had her blinking, brow creasing as she turned to look at him, "What?" She shook her head then, returning to watching the milk as she stirred, checking the temperature again because she knew that once it started to heat it would heat quickly, "Not everybody does, people that have their own chicken and can get fresh eggs don't, but it's the whole commercial processing thing again, how they're washed or something strips them of a protective coating, makes the shells sort of porous or something? Easier for bacteria to grow on them, same reason you have to be careful not to get bits of shell into it when you crack one."

[peace_inthe_violence]

It would heat quickly, and probably even quicker considering the milk was from the market run that he'd only gotten back from just before he'd come out into the garden. The milk was still slightly chilled from the morning, but it hadn't come from the fridge that was tucked into the back corner of the pantry. They hadn't been a thing when he'd started imagining this kitchen, but it had fit well enough there.

He looked a little puzzled at her answer, but he let it go with a small disgruntled sound and a thump of the eraser against his notebook. "Well, when you go shopping here, the eggs will not be refrigerated." He scrawled a few more items onto his list, absently twirling the wooden utensil in his fingers as he pondered.

It was another ten or so minutes before he glanced up from the list again, his internal clock tickling at him that the milk should be coming up to the proper temperature range.

[notariver]

She had just given a shrug at that first statement, "Just as long as I don't have to actually fight a chicken for them, I'm good." She'd had both eggs from the supermarket and eggs from the neighbors' chickens growing up, and her brother had always been better at collecting the eggs than she had.

It was right about when Nicky looked up that Nile was testing the temperature again, "Couple degrees shy, what should I be preparing to do?"