C-OSO-002
Barista: Jericho Myerscough
Date: Feb-1-2020
Receipt: C-OSO-002
Subject: Otherworld
Devil below me, I hate █████████-hopping.
I’ve done a fair bit of it in my time, and it still knocks me sideways. Came to with a mouth full of moss and and my brain sloshing like a compass with no North. Thought I’d cracked my skull on a cairn stone, but no, just a rock shaped like one. I think. Not sure if that’s better, mind. Course we figured we’d be █████████████ moving about, no chance this Otherworld is a natural part of the ████████. So we came prepared with the only cure known to ██████ or to men: ██████████.
This place though… It’s got that smell. You know the one. Damp as a cellar and old as bedtime. Like peat smoke and bog water clinging to your bones. It feels like the kind of place my nan used to mutter about when I was little. She’d call it ██████████, or █████████, or █████, depending on how many glasses of elderflower wine she’d had. ‘Course, apple trees in the distance are a dead give away, choice?
We’re in the ███████████████.
No questions about it.
There’s █████ here. Not the usual ███████ kind. The old and ephemeral kind. The kind that’s patient. Lurking. Watching. Bloody Unknowable.
Oh, speaking of watching, those trees’ve got eyes. Not metaphorically. I mean knotted into the bark, all pleading and hollow like. Wretched things. Like something crawled into them and forgot how to leave. Jenni’s been calling it a grove, but I’ve walked battlefields less fucking haunted than this. The bark here’s got her name scrawled all over it—█████████████. Old, cruel, and fond of collecting pretty things she never intend to return.
Eoin’s still out cold from the transit. Poor lad’s got his face buried in a patch of moss and his soul trying to remember where his damn limbs go. First time’s the roughest. Always is. He’ll come round. And when he does, he’ll probably love this place. He’s got that glint in him, the kind that shines brighter the stranger things are. And hell, if nothing else, this is finally confirmation that he’s not as mad as he seems.
Decaffeinate Receipt
“A young cycle maybe obeys today?”
Lateral Logic | 1 Word