The Recipe

Larry pulled the Quill and Well out of seemingly nowhere. Holding it in his hands we walked down the hall and went to the kitchen. "Pogs, we have some questions." I addressed him as he sat in his little stool watching the pit fire burn. A small spit was turning and a roast was on. I hadn't realized I was still in my true form, I toward over him even more than normal. Pogs looked up at all of us and pulled on his pipe. Its small ember of light brightening up his face with its red glow. The lines in his face deepend with its light and a swirl of smoke flowed out into a cloud only to be pulled up the chimney of the pit fire, the roast dropped fat and sizzled. "I was waiting for you all." Pogs said as he looked up at us.

As we all sat down, our shapes and size, the color of our skin changed, and our hair grew into our scalps, getting shorter for most of us and returned to their normal black and browns. We put the kettle on and started a fresh pot of coffee. I pulled out some snacks, some nuts and chips, some cookies and cakes, just things left from tea. We made sandwiches and sat down. I saw something move out of the corner of my eyes and when I turned my head a group of cashews I had just placed on a plate were gone and I saw the last of a gray mouse fade out of existence as it ported away. Some years ago we found a fat little mouse that House had been keeping as a buddy. It had made a tiny hole in the corner of the kitchen. When we learned about the mouse David and Mathew decided it would be funny to give the mouse the ability to portal on its own, the idea was to make it easier for it to get to food. From then on beings in the house reported having gotten a sandwich and chips or a bowl of cereal and brought it to where they were eating only to turn away for a moment and when they looked back a large part of their snack was gone. Some reported seeing the last of a thin gray tail or pink round ears like an after image behind their plates or bowls only to investigate and find nothing there. Little guy has lived with House for two hundred years at this point, what should be annoying has become a cute extension of House's presence in our lives. I wondered sometimes if the mouse had been an expression that was given to House, a living Expression. Though, aren't all expressions alive in a lot of ways? I've witnessed expressions react to wilder's in different ways. I've seen them protect their wilder and one another, during a battle a group of expressions joined their forces and created an effect more powerful than each individual expression alone. Over the ages I've seen many things and none of it surprised me anymore. I can still be impressed and the will of expressions was impressive, more, none of us have any idea how or why they behaved this way.

Pogs started telling his story, we were all sitting down and watching the candles burn. It was strange, it was long, and it was in depth. "You remember the night of my party?" Pogs asked. Most of us nodded in response. "Well as the night went on I needed time to think and just get away from all of the attention." Pogs continued as we drank and ate. The day was getting late and the sun was setting behind the skyline of forest and hills casting shadows that arched long and deep toward the center of our land. It dropped the greenhouse and the shed, and pens into inky blue, black darkness with only the greenhouse lights to illuminate the yard. As the last of the light faded, Fairy lights blinked into existence lighting the individual paths between, to and from each building. The only place that light didn't touch was the forest trails though will-o-wisps could be seen flashing and bobbing back and forth in the woods, training for when they were adults, ready to play tricks on lost people in the forests deep in the woods. As children of Aradia they were made of light, born of light, and they helped lost people find the right trail. They were still tricksters and led men and women astray as they fought to find footing but in the end you could trust one of the Goddesses' sons or daughters to bring you safely home. As Pogs told his story we all felt a rush of energy as it fed us life force like all stories do. His story was deeper, and longer than most and we feasted on its complexity and details.

What he told us was not what we were expecting, I assumed it was a situation he fell into or one that was thrust on him. Instead his tale was one he begged to be in, a story that he said he would pay anything for. When he snuck away from the party and went to the only quiet place he could think of, the Mother o fTrees sleeping partner's counterpart instead of the sleeping male mind of the tree he found the bark moving and awake. The man's feet were pacing back and forth and biting at his lower lip. Pogs walked up to him and loaded his pipe with a dark and fresh ball of Goats Weed, a darker and stronger form of Billy Weed, goats weed instead of sleep and relaxation brought the smoker excitement and energy while relaxing their muscles and tension. Pogs sat down on a fallen log across from Terry, the Father of all Trees, not all trees have male and female sides, instead being neither or both at the same time. It was only the first of new kinds of trees. When the first one of an Oak, or Elder, an Ash or Pine sprouts for the first time it is the Mother and Father of that breed of tree. Tessa and Terry were the first of all trees and had like all others both female and male sides but they are the Mother and Father of All Trees, each new sprout is born from them or a mix of them and other plant type Fey beings. Pogs watched Terry walk back and forth for a moment then spoke up."Hey man, what's under your bark?" He asked. In the shadows he hadn't seen the strange sisters lurking in the background, they were listening for the moment they had seen in their visions of the future that were quickly becoming the present. Terry spoke,"I slept for so long but I dreamt this moment, I could feel her need to create something new, something no one had seen. I take it you're the latest in her long line of suitors?" The male's voice was deep, like rumbling roots and shifting rocks. It cracked and popped, uneven as he spoke. He spoke to Pogs as he spoke. His pacing slowed as he turned to address the small 'Shroom Troll.

Pogs was indeed the latest in a long line of marriages that Tessa had undertaken. She viewed the creation process as too slow with just her and Terry creating new offspring that suited her needs and pleased her pride. By joining with other Earth and Plant type Fey sped up the process, some Fey beings were less powerful than she would have liked, others were more powerful than she would allow to exist next to her. The fates saw a moment in the river of time and jumped at the chance no matter how small it might be, they gave Terry a dream and made sure to be there to wake him up at just the right time. When Pogs came in and saw the Father of All Trees he couldn't help but ask him what was wrong. "I had a dream about you, a dream of happiness. It was a happy life with you, your love freed me from this captive state I live in." Terry told him. From there he spun a dream that after millenia of sleeping and being trapped, forced to be content with the lot he had been dealt. Pogs who dreamed of a life making his own path, away from being a prince away from the roots of his family that had him trapped by history. He would have married Tessa to realize that dream. She promised him a greatness that few members of his family ever knew. Being so long lived and having either been a part of, or witnessing events of history. She would give them power, new blood, maybe growth and transformation. The sisters offered Pogs a chance to do all that and find happiness as well, the chance to fall in love and she found the perfect partner for him to fall in love with. Terry was not only a plant type fey but he was old, powerful, and he was inspirational. One evening talking with him and Pogs couldn't help himself. He was lost. As Terry explained his dream he had of their lives together new shoots of trees sprouted, blooms formed on his branches and quickly turned into fruits. A sign that he was not only excited but in love as well. In the heat of the night's events no one but the two noticed the change. That's when the sisters stepped out into the light and promised that they could make it all true for them if Pogs was willing to pay some small and high prices for it. Being innamered with his new love and further in love with the idea of freedom and happiness he agreed to pay whatever price the Weird Sisters asked of him,not thinking that anything would be too high to pay.

After the party ended and Pogs went to sleep the one that is three dropped into his dreams and cemented the idea of a brighter future. It was like a drug he couldn't get enough of." After a couple centuries I started to doubt what they promised me, I couldn't help but think there was something they were telling me." Pogs added at the end of his tale. His doubt started when his realm lost its will to live, to exist. The sisters left out will in the threads they spun into the lives of the 'Shroom Trolls and their home realm. He didn't have proof at the time, Hecate, Bridgit, and Isis had waited long enough that when it started to happen and creatures and beings in that realm started to die that Pogs became suspicious. He knew he had to find a way to learn more about the sisters and keep it hidden from their all seeing eye. He knew that they couldn't see past us and beings directly involved in our lives. As the Troll started to die from his lack of desire to live he had a spell in place to call out to House. His message was received and House responded to his need. That's when he came to live with us, we folded him into the creases of our lives and he made himself useful while reading and searching and scrapping archives for what he was looking for. All the time he lived side by side with the sisters that took his family away from him. The only thing left was the history and stories of his people. It must have cost him a great deal of mental health to live here, to spend time down the hall from their homes. "I remember when they came to live here, it was a thousand years before you. They can't see us and our futures or those of beings close to us." I was more stating a fact than speaking to anyone. "When I finally found out what was happening for sure, so much had been lost. My family, our realm, all the beings in the realm." Pogs was finishing his story. As he pulled on his pipe he added. "I learned something that the sisters hadn't told me, the key to the Quill and InkWell and how they work." Pogs as talking about the ink that was needed to write with the quill and with it write anything into, or out of existence. "What is it?" I asked, my interests peaking up. It almost brought me to the edge of my seat.

"I don't think it will be of any help. Its a flower…."I cut Pogs off as he was speaking."You mean the flower of immortality don't?" Silence hung in the air, we were all thinking the same thing but no one wanted to say it because the implications were just too great to contemplate. "What are ingredients that we would need to make the ink, what mixes with the flower to create it?" I asked Pogs. I was so close to finding the secret out, to solving the mystery of all of this chaos that entered our lives.

"Its tears from one of the faces of Janus, one side of his face cries and those tears mixed with a powder made from the dried flower makes the ink that activates the Quill." Pogs just blurted it out, he just told us like he was telling us a recipe to his Hinckelberry Punch. The truth and the idea of what was possible filled the room like steam from a stew. Its weight was imperceivable but we could feel it all the same, it settled into our clothes and our hair. We felt it soak into our pores and take root in our bones.We all had the knowledge needed to change anything we wanted, to transform any idea we had into reality."Where is this face of Janus?" Steven asked him. Of course we all knew Janus, none of us had met him but we knew him as the two faced God in the Greek Pantheon of gods. He had other iterations with other groups of Gods, the Romans,the Nors, the Viking most of the European collection of Gods. In native american lore he could be seen as the Fox or the Raven. Any God that was understood to be a trickster or two sided was a manifestation of Janus if not Janus himself. Janus, himself represents the two different sides of a person, the many faces we all have inside of us, as well as the duality of humanity, of existence. Masculine and Feminine, the strong relative to the weak, the rich in contrast to the poor, and good in response to the evils of the world. That's who this God is to everyone but this version is the Sadness to the Happiness of the world. Until now it wasn't a side I thought the God would possess, most Gods are only one thing, an embodiment of Love, or the vigares of a Father, Even the strange sisters were each an embodiment of an aspect. A child, A mother, and a Crone. The aspects of birth, mother, and death. All three were born out of the concept of change and transformation, so they were one idea that has three sides. The question now was where is this mask, where is this face?

"Well we need one more thing from you old friend, we need you to open the chest that fell throughout home." Larry spoke. He was the one who spoke when we all felt danger or there was a threat to House or to our lives. Not our lives as in the living portion, nothing can kill us. That was the nature of the spell that made us the way we are. He protected the lives we have all built, the mosaic of bits and pieces that made up everything we are. We brought Pogs to my room, it was only then that I realized that Pogs had never been in my room, I don't know that he's ever been in anyone's room outside of Steven's room. A month after Steven went missing he went into clean it and check on all of the things that were in there and Pogs went in once a month to check on it. I don't know why he had never come into any of our rooms, I figured that it was always out of some respect for our privacy. That thought didn't last long, knowing what I knew now it felt more correct to say that he felt too afraid to get close with us, to become too intertwined with our lives.