KINT04
[Date | Nov-26-24]
[Barista | Caramel]
[Subject | Business as Usual]
[File Reference | KINT04]
It’s beautiful—truly—but I can’t shake the fear that the Golden Seams won’t hold forever. That’s becoming painfully clear. The ivy is doing its best—it really is—but all it can manage is to paper over the cracks, stitching the boundaries together with gilded tendrils that shimmer more than they strengthen. Beauty alone won’t stop the borders from fraying again. Kintsugi works, yes, but only if you stop dropping the darn bowl. The problem isn’t the repairs. It’s the endless, relentless damage. And damage has a source. It always does.
Vanilla saw something—a customer from Mexico. Mexico lies between Canada and the States, after all. (Don’t think too hard about that.) Something—or someone—there is pressing against their cell, sending ripples of disruption through the boundary lines. If we don’t address that pressure directly, it won’t matter how many tears we mend or how many seams we weave. The damage will keep coming, the ivy will lose its grip, and worse—it could become leverage for that particular customer to tear everything down.
The real question is how do we confront a customer imprisoned all the way in Mexico? Sure it’s “between” the States and Canada, but not… like… literally. If we headed up to Canada, we wouldn’t stop in Mexico first. This isn’t as simple as sneaking in or strong-arming our way past a few guards, either. We’d need an audience with one of the five Wardens. Maybe Lily herself, or one of the lesser keepers—Hope, Ardie, Nama, or Essie. Each of them governs a part of Mexico, and each carries a… reputation. Convincing them to let us in—or worse, to grant us access to a customer capable of this much disruption—is like asking the ocean to stop its tides.
If we could find a point of leverage—something they need, or something they fear—we might stand a chance. But that still leaves the matter of surviving an audience with authority figures whose patience for mere coffee peddlers (or anyone, really) is notoriously thin.