taxevasiontactics - Tumblr blog

[taxevasiontactics]

hey is this shit still on? yeah hey surprise. not an update. but i am not dead yet. life kinda comes at you real fast. sorry for no writing for nigh on a year now, but hey.

i still got a plot to run and one balding jackass’ life to turn upside down.

[taxevasiontactics]

The Godmother's Godchild [5] - ...Make for Such Great Falls

Synopsis: You just knew the good times wouldn't last, but you didn't think they would come this quickly. Getting hit with multiple problems in a row, you find yourself starting to thrive. It is, after all, your job to deal with major problems on incredibly short deadlines.

Warning: (Graphic?) Depiction of a major injury

For the better part of your month allowance, you work.

You don’t make any more visits out of the cottage save for necessities. Even when you need materials for some concoction, you go out, you get what you need, and you come back. The inspiration for “improvements” strikes as often as it had before, but you cannot bring yourself to care beyond “good enough”. You hate the idea of leaving behind the quick friendships and bonds you’ve made here. Still, the month wears on and your time runs thin.

You dread it. You fear it. You languish in it.

You wake up with a dry throat and a stuffy nose. The world outside is a dusky grey, even if your phone tells you it’s your habitual 6 AM. Beside you, your lazy, feline housemate continues to snooze away on the opposite pillow. Your tired eyes slide to the date, recognizing it as the end of summer. Your judgement day is drawing ever closer. Still, you have many projects to do; so, you drag yourself out, have your breakfast of quick cereal, dig out another can of tuna for the cat to have when he wakes up, and head out into the gloom. Time is of the essence, you tell yourself. Let people know that you’ll be leaving soon.

You decide that the pizzeria will be the easiest to knock out first (see: the bandaid that will probably hurt the most, thus pertinent to rip it off the fastest) and work on until the fog burns away from the warm noon sun’s rays. The phone is ringing off the hook when you come in, smelling like the forest and dirt between your fingers.

Nobody is manning the front where its shrill bell calls, not until you hear Gustavo shout from the back that he’s “COMING!” like the caller can hear him through an unanswered receiver. The place is a mess of soda boxes, napkin boxes, pizza box boxes, and a multitude of other little things you don’t have the brains to pick through mentally. A whisper of a smile runs across your mouth. You’re going to miss this place when you go, wall stains and all.

“Hey! Welcome back!” Gustavo shouts as he comes out of the kitchen. “Haven’t seen you in forever!”

He’s quick to pick up the phone, waving at you to sit down between writing down lines of the order. You look around at all the boxes and shift your bag against yourself. You feel bad, just standing around when there’s all of this work lying around. You hear Gustavo click his pen again, sigh, and stretch. He almost asks you if it’s “the usual, again?” before you interject.

“Do you want some help with putting all of this away?”

His eyebrows go up. “Are you sure? There’s a whole lot, and they’re heavy. But I don’t think Peppino or I will say no!”

“Hell, sure, better than sitting on my rear while you run around and make me sweat just watching.”

He gets a kick out of that. It doesn’t take very long for Gustavo to get through the delivery orders in the oven. You’re put to work, following him back through the kitchen door with a moderately heavy box. Peppino is there with his back to you both, still preparing toppings with a multitude of knives.

“Afternoon, Peppino!” You call across the kitchen.

“Mmhm,” he mumbles back. “Salve, salve.”

You frown. You were expecting some sort of ribbing on the way through. Gustavo leads you to a storage room half packed with disorganized junk. The other half is free for you to attempt stacking your boxes neatly. For the most part, it works, though you feel your Tetris skills protesting the rust. You finish up in no time, going for more boxes.

“What’s up with him?” You ask on the way back.

The shorter man shrugs. “Just tired, I guess. I told him to sit down for a bit, but… you know how he is by now, huh?”

“Yeah.”

You both continue to haul inventory, stack, and go back for more until the available storage space is all filled up. This, unfortunately, leaves no room for the soda fountain’s refill boxes. You and Gustavo pick them up anyways, taking them to the kitchen.

Your senses prickle from a new smell when you next pass through. It’s not the sauce. It’s not the toppings. It’s a warm, metallic scent that sets your mind on edge even when it’s masked by spices. Gustavo clicks his tongue to get the larger man’s attention.

“Hey, Peppino?” “Huh?”

He’s still chopping away, cleaver sharp and gleaming as he brings it down on the counter with a hard thump!

“Where do you want these?”

“What, where do I want what? What are they?”

“The soda refills.” “What? Oh. Over there, why not.”

Peppino turns, waving his stump of a left arm through the air towards another door. Blood splatters across the countertop from the meat around his radial-ulnar and it keeps running red rivulets down the limb. A steady stream drips onto the floor from where the rest of his wrist and hand lie in perfectly sliced sections on the cutting board, oozing a pool of the iron-rich sanguine. You drop your box on the nearest surface and rush between metal tables to get to Peppino.

“Oh.” He finally catches on when he looks at what was once his hand, face blanched. “My arm. My arm-!?”

Gustavo shouts in alarm behind you. You grab what you hope is a clean rag, snatching Peppino’s limb and pressing the fabric tightly against it. You jerk your head towards the lobby.

“Gustavo. My bag is in the front, go grab it and bring it here.”

He’s out the door in a moment. Your mind is coasting on tight rails as you coax Peppino into dropping the cleaver to hold the rag for you. Stop the bleeding. Stabilize, then repair. Within moments, your bag gets tossed onto a nearby counter. You rip it open, racing in measured, confident digs to find what you need and get suitable substitutes for what you can’t. He’s a breath away from fully panicking, muttering faster and faster under his breath an incoherent spew of words. You spare a moment, leaning into his view.

“Hey, Peppino, look at me. Look at me?”

He’s still staring at his stump, watching the rag slowly becoming more and more soaked.

“I need you to look at me. Alright? Just for a sec.”

You get what you need and set to work. He listens to you now that you’re moving more, attention drawn from the source of stress. Ok, you can work with that – you keep talking, your mash slowly becoming the green paste you need.

“You’re doing great. You’re doing great, just keep holding that on your arm. Positive pressure, ok?”

“I really did it this time,” he rambles, “this time I-“

“No, no, you’re doing good! Keep holding it, you’re doing great.”

You finish in record time. You’re thankful that Peppino cut himself in such even sections; you hurriedly paste his hand back together on the cutting board, piece by piece, with thick, creamy salve and white wrapping. You keep talking. He’s doing great. Just a little longer.

You feel the skin starting to mend when you pick the severed palm up and line it up with Peppino’s raw limb. You wrap it back on as securely as you can, all while the meat and bone and flesh zip right back up like interlocking puzzle pieces coming into place. The contact you have with every cut as they mend is not unlike feeling a bubble bath’s bubbles pop and reform into plain water, or sectioned slime closing back around the divisions. You finish up and step back with a deep, rib creaking breath.

Peppino is left with a fully bandaged hand, while yours are as bloodied as can be. He stares blithely at the once-was stump currently in the process of reconstructing dermal layers, tendons, marrow, and muscle. You’ve never been on the receiving end, but you imagine the sensation is confusing.

“There!” You laugh, breathless. Your hands are still, even if you are rife with adrenaline. “You, uh, shouldn’t use that very much for the rest of the week. It’ll hurt like hell if you move everything around while it’s still doing its thing. Just so you know. Doctor’s recommendation.”

You go to wash the tacky, drying red from your palms as Gustavo steps in, presumably to chew the man out. It’s not the first time you’ve been put on the spot like that, but it is the first time you’ve done it for someone you know. Your mind tentatively steps back into normality as the atmosphere relaxes from shock to relieved frustration. You scrub out where it’s caked between your nails.

Gustavo finishes his rant behind you as the oven timer dings. You move out of the way as he pulls the delivery order out, boxes them up, and heads out to the vespa. He leaves you with Peppino, who has been silent ever since you finished. He mulls over something in the back of his mind, mouth working over itself until he chooses to drop a single, penny-quiet word.

“Thanks.” “You’re welcome.” You toss the paper towels. “It’s my job.”

You go back for the box you had thrown on the counter in your rush, putting it in the corner Peppino had pointed out beforehand. He cleans up the spilled blood and tosses out what he had been chopping beforehand. You don’t want to know how much product had been wasted during that fiasco, but you lost out on a couple key ingredients yourself.  You’ll have to go back into the forest later and hope that they’ve regrown since harvest. In the meantime, you grab the second box; the one Gustavo had abandoned.

“I wanted you guys to be the first to hear it.” You shove it in a proper looking place. “Work called. I’ll be leaving to go back home sometime in the future.”

Peppino scoffs, though it’s more to fill the air than disbelief. “Well, I didn’t know we mattered so much. When?” “Probably towards the end of the year, or the beginning of the next. I still have to call back and set a date.” “Well, when you leave, I wish you the best of luck, and good riddance.”

“Come on, don’t act like I’m already going!” You protest. “I’m not gone yet!”

You wished you spent more time here instead of hiding in the cottage this whole time. However, you see an opportunity present itself yet again. You turn, leaning so very casually against a wall. “And, you know, I better make good on the time I have left.”

“Oh, no no no.” Peppino wipes his hands on a towel, thumping it on a counter and rounding the worktables with a accusing finger. He comes into your space, doubt and suspicion written plain on his face. “I’ve seen that face too many times, you’re up to something. What? What crazy thing are you going to suggest this time?”

“What, I fix your hand and you still don’t trust me?”

“You fix my hand and I trust you less! I can never tell what you want out of something, so what do you want?”

“The same thing I’ve always wanted,” you answer, pushing back against his presence with your own. He takes a step back. You eat the distance up and fill the space with another. “A little bit of food in exchange for my help. You’re suffering from success, I have idle hands and want to enjoy this place a little longer. I think it works out, don’t you?”

Peppino’s mustache scrunches up into his nose as he thinks it over. He doesn’t have to pay you, but you would have unrestricted time to bother him as much as you please. He needs the help, but you’re you.

You waggle your eyebrows at him and break the argument in his mind, forcing a loud “bah!” straight from his gut as both of his arms are flung into the air from exasperation. He winces, cradling his injured hand after the whipcrack motion.

“Fine!” he shouts. “But only when we absolutely need you, then I will call you in.”

“Sure.”

“And only one meal every time you come in!”

“Fine by me.”

“Then I owe nothing to you afterwards, capeesh?”

“Unless I save your life.”

“Yes, unless you save my-“ Peppino scowls. “Enough of that. You didn’t just come here to tell us you were leaving, were you?”

You make vague hand gestures to the entire kitchen. He sighs, fixes his hat with the good hand, and opens the fridge doors.

“You tell me to rest my hand, you’re working here soon, so you learn how by making your own pizza. Start with the dough in that bowl and I’ll guide you from there.”

---

You would dub the next six days as “hell week” if you didn’t enjoy the people working by your side. Peppino, true to his word, only calls for you when he absolutely needs you; unfortunately, with his hand still out of commission during the healing process, he needs you every day. Every lesson you get from him is a trial by fire. Overcoming the obstacle of sucking at something new is a process you’re abundantly used to by now. You make plenty of mistakes. You learn plenty more.

You relish the rush of getting it right.

“’Stavo need a large-“

“Coming through, here’s your box!”

“You two, another order!”

In the kitchen, you quickly adapt to the controlled chaos. Dough flies back and forth. Sauce splatters with wild yet deadly accuracy. Toppings and cheese are portioned, scattered, and slammed into the oven all while you weave between, under, and sometimes over Gustavo and Peppino. Even the telephone’s constant ringing becomes a welcome sound, signaling a new challenge for you to undo.

Similarly, for the next six nights Peppino sees to it that your dinner is covered. Mostly by leftover pizzas that were defects, but on Saturday night Gustavo makes something from scratch. It’s a bit of a tradition, you figure as you watch the man walk to the back and start up a new pot of something without any further elaboration. Your temporary boss comes to you with his bandaged hand and shakes it in front of you.

“What do you think, eh?” He does it again, showing off his range of mobility. “I think it’s good enough now to go to work.”

You tilt your head and hum. “I’d have to take a look to be sure.”

“I can move it just fine!”

“Sure, but I still want to take a look.”

Peppino grumbles yet obliges you all the same. You guide him to the counter, gingerly unwrapping the work you’d done at the top of the week and have monitored closely since. With each layer unwrapped, you congratulate yourself on a job well done. The salve has done its job and fixed him up, leaving behind clean, faded lines of scars where it had knit together muscle and bone.

“Yeah, actually,” you mutter, “I’d call that pretty good. Flex your hand for me?”

He does so, twisting and turning it with a pleased smirk.

“Wiggle your fingers too?”

He does that too, thick phalanges rasping against each other. You note that the hair on the back of his knuckles hasn’t quite grown back where he’d chopped them up, but that’s a given.

“Looks good to me. Does it feel weird or uncomfortable anywhere?” You slip from the seat to grab a cup of something to drink. Peppino makes a noise in the back of his throat behind you. You can hear his meaty hand slapping against itself as he flexes the palm a few more times in quick succession, testing it.

“Numb,” he answers. “A little.”

“That’s to be expected, but if it stays numb for a few more days, you should tell me.”

“What, so you can poke and prod at me more?”

“So I can give your nerves an extra boost to heal,” you crack back, sarcasm deflected. “Drink?”

“Cola.”

Gustavo comes out with a nice one-pot of pasta in meat sauce seconds later, happily announcing his arrival before you can all dig in.

The busy times are not to last, however. Sunday is a day of rest and cottage work. Your phone doesn’t display the affectionately named “Hookup” contact you’d set for the pizzeria on Monday, nor do you find hell on earth when you visit on Tuesday. As quickly as interest came, it dries up and dies; this is good for Peppino’s rest, terrible for Peppino’s wallet, as he complains to you over the counter. You put your heads together while you eat, but neither of you can come up with anything.

“Guess we can wait until tomorrow,” you mumble.

“So we will.” He slumps on the counter, pulling out a book on woodworking, of all things. “A domani.”

---

You barely have to search to find the source of your sudden lack of work. The very next morning, you find posters plastered in town, pasted on with old fashioned glue-and-roller glee en masse. Walls upon walls of posted paper greet you at every turn in town. Everywhere they can legally be placed you see advertisements for an instant, fuss-free, cheaper pizza delivery service. Automated perfection. Whoever put these up even tagged the grocery store, something that Pamela shrugs at when you ask her.

“They paid Mrs. Bradbury some very good money,” she answers. The register’s bell rings and you see a flash of fresh printed paper in the till. “For advertising space! Out here!”

You can only assume that the other store owners were given the same treatment, money for advertising. Still, the posters can’t reach more than a hundred people a day – tops – and it won’t do better than your word of mouth. Not to mention, Peppino’s place is the only competitor. It doesn’t add up, in your head.

“Do you have any idea who it was?” You take your groceries off the counter, one bag over either arm. “Any name, face…?”

“Not a clue! Some guy in a trench coat and hat, which I thought was super suspicious, you know. But you know, when money comes along for something easy…”

You nod in understanding, bid her farewell, and get on with going home. Whoever put those up is either in for major disappointment or is just extremely petty when it comes to rival businesses.

You call your “Hookup” the moment you get into the truck, setting your phone on the dash and driving away. Your favorite Italian answers – just as you’d hoped.

“Peppino’s Pizza, how can I-“

“Peppino!” You hear him sputter on the other line, script interrupted. “I found out why we’re getting zero business! Some schmuck is undercutting us. And they have instant delivery! The most irresponsible use of teleportation I’ve ever seen-“

His voice takes on an incredulous, accusing tone. You can practically hear him wave his hand in the air, pacing behind the front counter.

“What? What?! How do you know this? Did you see them?”

“No, but there were posters plastered all over town, you just could not miss them. Pamela told me someone, didn’t see who, came in and paid Mrs. Bradbury for the wall space.”

“Maledizione, non riesco mai ad avere una pausa…”

“No idea what you said, but that’s what we’re dealing with. I don’t have any bright ideas yet, so…”

You squint at the front of the cottage, trailing off. There’s a strange structure just off the road in front of it.

“Actually, hang on a second.”

“What is it? Is there something wrong?”

“Just- just one moment. Hang on.”

The truck rolls to a stop, you throw it into park, and you marvel at the sight.Piled up outside of the fence is bushel upon bushel of tomatoes. So many tomatoes, you can barely see the red fruits peeking out of the top box. So, so many tomatoes, you can smell the summer ripeness captured in their slightly firm, juicy skins. So, so, so many tomatoes, you nearly miss the note tacked onto one of the boxes right at your eye level. It’s written in a child’s hand, jagged yet on the cusp of neatness.

Dear Doctor,

You still can’t tell if the kids in this town have forgotten your last name again or they’ve all mutually agreed to just call you by that.

Thank you for all your help with the fields. We are sorry that the tomatoes came late. We think that giving you the best tomatoes instead of just the first ones is a good thank you. We hope you like them lots and lots. They grew very well because you helped us.

Love,

The Anderson Family

And Marnie and Agatha

You sigh, folding the note up and sticking it in your pocket. You love those kids. You really do. What are you supposed to do with all of these tomatoes, though? You can’t use it. You couldn’t possibly cook down and can all of these tomatoes by yourself.

“Hello?” Peppino reminds you of his presence through your phone’s speaker. “What is it?”

“Well-“ You grunt as you attempt to move the precariously stacked boxes to the ground, tucking your phone between face and shoulder. “I don’t have an idea, but I have recently come into possession of many, many tomatoes. You wouldn’t know how to get rid of, say…” You pause, huffing. “Three hundred pounds, give or take?”

Peppino goes quiet on the other end for a moment, thinking. You hear him drumming his fingers on the countertop, murmuring in Italian, and moving some papers around. Whatever he finds, though, it has him sounding hopeful once he speaks up again.

“If you haul it all to the restaurant, I can do something about it.”

You grin. “Great, time to work some magic!”

“Don’t bring your crazy magic things in here! I have pots already! Plenty of pots! And regular stoves!”

“Too late!”

You cackle and hang up. Of course, you won’t actually bring anything but the usual bag and yourself. You gird your loins (and your back), preparing to lug everything into your truck.

---

Offloading everything was a cinch between the three of you. Getting to work was harder, though now you’ve all gathered in the back for an unofficial-official meeting over coring, cutting, and dumping a third of the tomatoes into a big pot to cook down for sauce. It’s the most immediate way to use up a big portion of them without waste. This was also the extent of the head chef’s creativity when it came to getting rid of the red fruits.

With so much time left to do menial tasks, brainstorming is a natural consequence of conversation.

“Ok, how about specials?” You take a gulp of water, fanning yourself in the hot kitchen. “We can run specials, every time I get a new batch of produce.”

Peppino frowns. “Specials, as in special dishes?”

“Right. The posters only extended to pizzas, very plain pizzas. Pepperoni. Cheese. One or two popular toppings. That’s it.” You dump another handful of tomatoes into the communal pot, bumping elbows with Gustavo. “Sorry.”

He shrugs. “That’s alright, keep telling your idea.”

“Anyways, if we stand out, we have a chance to get some customers back. I could put up posters-“

“We don’t have money for advertising space,” Peppino counters.

“Ok, then I’ll try and spread the word again! We do specials, we make the pizzeria stand out, and people come order them with a pizza or two to go. How’s that sound?”

He goes through another three tomatoes in lightning quick cuts before he stops and sighs. You reach out for another fruit and core it, as does he. “Whatever I come up with will not be so creative,” the man grumbles. “It won’t even be edible.”

Gustavo clicks his tongue and swats Peppino’s arm. “Don’t say that! You’re a great chef! People wouldn’t have been calling for a month if you weren’t, and we like your food!”

“Yup,” you agree. “It’s what kept me coming back, I will attest. You don’t give yourself enough credit.”

“Then why would they stop? It cannot all be just about the money, or the delivery time, or the- the- the-“

His hand waves through the air, searching for a word but finding none to pull. He sighs, goes for another tomato, and cuts it just as clean as the others.

“They stopped for one reason or another, and some special food will not bring them all back.”

“Doesn’t have to bring them all back,” you answer. “Just enough to keep things going.”

The next hour is dead air, filled only by kitchen fans humming, knives rasping against tomato skin, and the dull thump, thump, thump of quarters (or thirds, Gustavo and Peppino bickered about it in the beginning) falling into the pot. You help them lift the giant pot onto the stove and snag the lighter as Gustavo turns the gas on. He gets a step stool, you wash your hands, and Peppino scowls at the remaining bushels of tomatoes. With one large hand rubbing his chin, you practically hear the rusty gears turning in his head.

“Alright,” he mutters, “I’ll try.”

You don’t get any explanation of what’s going on as he experiments with a few of the thicker, fatter heirlooms. It’s not what you usually use in the restaurant, that honor is reserved for the humble roma, but the big fruits he picks from the bunch get sliced, tasted, and graded by some scale in his head. The phone rings for another order. Gustavo leaves to answer. You step in to stir the pot in his stead.

Out of the corner of your eye, you watch the chef go for one of the many blocks of mozzarella in the fridges - as well as flour, egg, and breadcrumbs - before he slips a shallow pan of oil onto an adjacent burner to yours. You have a faint memory of watching diner cooks work back in the city. Mozzarella sticks were one of your favorite treats after a shift. Cheap, filling, and plentiful when you were a regular. He starts to cut them into roughly equal slices to the tomatoes from earlier.

“What’s going on in that head, Pino?” you call over your shoulder. “Looks like mozz discs, to me.”

He scoffs. “Pino?”

“It gets tiring saying your full name all the time. Work with me, here.”

“You have to say the full name of the cheese, at least. Fried mozzarella is what it looks like, but this is not the only part of the dish.” He finishes, starting to bread them. “Have you heard of a Caprese salad?”

“Sure have.”

“If they want something special, they will get something special. I am doing it differently!”

Your brow shoot up. Wow. Frying the cheese, stack between refreshing tomatoes and basil leaves, serve drizzled in olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Crunchy. Juicy. Snappy. It’s a hit combo. Gustavo comes back with an order ticket; just in time to leave the sauce to simmer. You abandon the pot to help and time passes in a blur. By the time you’ve sent him off with all boxes strapped to the vespa, Peppino is busy with the last touches to his creation.

Good gods and every other higher power listening, watching him plate it up with as much care as possible does something for you. It’s not just the careful way he arranges the slices of deep fried mozzarella and tomatoes, nor is it the way he tears apart the basil so delicately. It’s not even the loose, easy way he shakes out the dark and light dressings in generous swirls. It’s the small glimpse of a confident man doing exactly what he’s always wanted to.

A fond warmth blooms in you. He has a real passion for the art. When he’s focused like this, all the anxiety melts away into a pervasive desire to get the job done right. He presents the dish by sliding it your way, grabbing two forks as he follows it over. He hands one to you, and you both dig in with a delicious **crunch** of tearing a fried piece apart.

“Holy shit,” you mumble around a mouthful. “Holy shit.”

It’s good. It’s really good. It’s better than what you thought.

“Peppino, I’m not joking, this is genius.”

He frowns, rocking his hand back and forth. “Salt. I could have salted it after frying.”

“Yes! Ok, salt after frying-“ You go back for another bite. “-and box it up. We could put the dressing in little cups for delivery?”

“That’s easy, like the sliced peppers.”

“Yeah!”

He’s excited as you talk over the little details. The delivery method. The plating in the box. How to keep the fried things crispy and hot. The minutia are more or less accounted for and the tester plate emptied by the time Gustavo gets back. He laments at not getting to try any, so Peppino goes to make another round of it just for him.

The anxiety creeps back now that he is no longer occupied by the testing phase. You see him stiffen up and slouch back into his usual frown. You lean in on his space, lifting your brows. What's got him down this time? He sighs, flipping the breaded cheese over.

“I only hope that the customers like it.”

You huff. “They will. I’m sure of it. You’re a good chef.”

-----------------------

turns out switching to full time when you're used to part time makes you very, very tired. yayyyy more free labor. at least he seems to trust you, now.

[taxevasiontactics]

wrote myself into a Bit Of A Corner pacing wise but don’t worry folks i think i have it figured out. nonetheless if the next chapter takes a while, that’s why LMAO

[taxevasiontactics]

The Godmother's Godchild [4] - To What Great Heights...

Synopsis: You make good on your word to Peppino. In return, he gets exactly what he wants - lots, and lots, and lots of customers. You get the feeling that this won't last as a good thing for very long.

Warning: None.

For once, you have a use for every shilling technique you learned in retail. Everyone you talk to for the next week – every delivery, every pickup, every visit – hears about Peppino’s Pizza. You talk to people you never thought to hold long conversations with. You even learn that the grocer clerk’s name is Pamela after living here for nearly an entire season!  You know that your attempts to weave in meal habits as a lead-in are cheesy at best (ha ha), but you get a few nods of acknowledgement during your jabbering. You only hope that your efforts are not in vain.

You get your results back very quickly when you visit the pizzeria shortly after your shameless advertisements.

“Welcome to Peppino’s Pizza!” Gustavo shouts over the kitchen window’s ledge as he jumps up to grab a hanging order ticket. He sees you, lighting up with a smile and calling your name above the din. “Hey! Be with you in a second!”

You see both men in the back, hurriedly rushing around between hot ovens. Dough flies through the air in varying states of roundness, sauce splatters with terrifying accuracy, cheese rains like snow, and toppings scatter in coordinated chaos.

You slip into one of the turning chairs at the counter. You feel like you’re watching a cartoon show through the rectangular view to the back; it’s just missing the sound effects and ridiculous music.

“Take your time!” you try to shout over the din.

You don’t have to wait very long. Just minutes later the kitchen door slams open, and Peppino shoots out with a tower of pizza boxes in either hand. You don’t even get a chance to say hello, he’s so fast – in a flash, he ties them all to the back of his scooter, jumps on, and disappears in a cloud of dust.

Gustavo comes out a few seconds later, hat off and wiping the sweat from his face with a huff. He goes to get a drink from the soda fountain as you hum.

“Busy day?”

“Yes!” He laughs, then comes back to sit with a sigh. “It’s the busiest it’s been for a while! We haven’t had the chance to sit since we opened. When you said you would get the word out, you really got the word out, didn’t you?”

You rub the back of your neck sheepishly. “I didn’t think they would all call today. I guess we hit the prime time for pizza parties?”

Gustavo guffaws, finishes his drink, and gets up to make your usual order. You catch up over the countertop after he sets it in the oven. You laugh as he complains about his hobby work. Apparently Gustavo yodels, though he doesn’t get much of a chance to show it off to anyone. He lives in an apartment building, which makes for poor practice unless he wants to annoy one of his neighbors. He quilts, too. That’s something he can show off more readily. You make him promise to bring his latest work for you to see when it’s done.

As for you, you’ve gotten the library squared away and got started on the workroom - one of the workrooms. Aunt Marian saw fit to make one dedicated to alchemy and one to spellworks, as well as a storage “closet” (you know damn well it’s bigger on the inside) that you’ve yet to broach. You would be annoyed with her hoarding habits if you didn’t understand the value in every item of the alchemy room. All the other junk? You just don’t have the talent nor preternatural affinity for it, so you tell him you plan on getting rid of it.

“Why?” He leans on his elbow, face resting in the palm. “You could always learn how! Everyone has a bit of something, even if it’s not true right away.’

You chuckle halfheartedly. “Trust me. I’ve tried.”

“Oh.”

Ouch. There it is. The awkward pity face. You thought you got over it, but that still bugs you every time you see it. This is one of the times you prefer kids over adults, they’ll take anything at face value and accept it as it is. Adults either already know the answer, or assume they do. You tell yourself every time, you need to figure out a better way to tell people.

A beat of silence passes before Gustavo clears his throat. “Well, at least you gave it a good try! That’s what matters, right?”

His positivity is genuine, you know, but it still stings. You’re grateful that the kitchen timer dings, summoning him to the back. You have work to get back to, anyways.

---

Pamela’s hand waves for your attention at the till as you roll up. She looks like she’s dying to tell you something, fit to burst if she doesn’t spill right this minute. You tilt her head as wordless permission to get on with it.

“Did you see those big trucks this morning?” She whispers scandalously.

“Huh? No.” You frown, handing her a box of dry pasta. “I live outside of town, remember?”

“You missed out, then. There were these big ole trucks that came rumbling down the road when I was driving in this morning. Pshooe!” Pamela’s hand rolls across the counter’s surface, mimicking the vehicles she saw. You recognize it from your morning transits in the city – big rigs, classic highway cloggers. “They were hauling huge containers and flat beds full of construction materials. Steel, brick, lumber, you name it, they had it.”

You make a hum of interest, though the idea has already run through your course of curiosity. You dig out your wallet and thumb between paper slips in anticipation for today’s total.

“What do you think they’re going to use it for?” She slips the money from your hands when you offer it and gets to rifling around for your change. “The mayor’s office didn’t give any notice about a new project, and we’ve never had anything that big come through.”

You scoff, stuffing what she hands back into the proper pockets.

“Corporate something, probably,” you reply. “I’d hate to see whatever warehouse or multimillion condo gets set up. I like how open the land looks out here.”

“Uh-huh, me too. Have a good day!”

“You too, Pam.”

You load up and get out of town. You’ve been in an absolutely dour mood since you last talked with Gustavo. You haven’t even gone back to the restaurant for a few days; no craving means no excuse to hang around. No matter what, be it cleaning, organizing, or simply sitting outside, you can’t get rid of it. It festers in the back of your mind like a worm, burrowing deeper and deeper until it sits at the base of your skull in a tight knot. It’s as absolutely, totally, and utterly frustrating as it is tiring.

The only moment you get any reprieve is when you see Aggie waving to you from the side of the road. You pull over and stick your head out of the window as she comes to your side, leaving behind a gaggle of kids standing around a tall tree. Thomas is among them, you notice. This time, he’s the one who looks extremely annoyed.

“Hi, Doctor!” Aggie greets over your engine. She flashes you a quick, thin smile. Guilt, if you’ve ever seen it. “Uh, can we… ask for your help?”

You give a look to the group, humming. “It wouldn’t happen to involve whatever’s going on over there, would it?”

“Uh, yes.” Her guilt multiplies. “We were flying Thomas’ model plane around when the wind kicked up, and…”

You look up to the higher, thinner branches. Lo and behold, you see a real beauty of an RC plane precariously hanging near the top, tangled up with no way of crudely dislodging it without breaking it. Climbing up there would be a stupid idea; even if the trunk is sturdy and the limbs are thick, the plane is likely out of any child’s reach if they manage to get up there.

“Man,” you mutter, shutting off the engine and getting out. “You’re lucky I like you little punks. What is it with you kids and trees?”

You haven’t climbed that high in years, nor do you don’t know anybody with a tall enough ladder. However, when you step out of your truck and look up, you get a quick shot of adrenaline. You’ve chased a cat before and kept up, track record says your athleticism is fantastic. You are possessed by the confidence of a thousand squirrels. The children need your help. Meddlesome instinct or not, you want a win.

You wrap your limbs around the tree and begin your ascent.

Your confidence wavers six feet above ground. You cannot climb the tree, your body tells you, you are going to fall very, very badly if you keep this up. You elect to ignore its warning and continue upwards, committing to helping despite fear. If you falter, you’ll fall anyways, so don’t look down.

It’s a careful, slow affair. In the time it takes for you to get within sight of your prize, Aggie manages to flag down another adult to assist. You glance down from where you cling to an unsteadily wavering branch. A bewildered Peppino stares back up at you, surrounded by a flock of concerned children.

“I leave you alone for just a little bit- what are you doing this time, crazy?!” He shouts up.

“Helping.” You inch forward. It’s just within sight. “They got their plane stuck in a tree.”

“You couldn’t have asked for help?"

You get another inch, grunting, “Maybe, but I almost have it. It’s within reach. Just a little further.”

“You talking to yourself about all of this doesn’t make it any better! You’re going to fall!”

You ignore him too, willing the wood within your grasp to quit shaking as you shuffle forward like a caterpillar. Just a little further and your fingertips can touch it, then you can grab it and get out of this tree. You can see the younger folk start to back up as your anchor leans downward.

“Careful!” Aggie’s probably biting her nails by the way she suddenly gasps. “Be careful! Be careful!”

“You’re almost there, just a little more!” Thomas shouts upward.

You lunge for it. You snatch the plane from the tree’s hold, victorious, before the world lurches forward with a loud snap. You don’t even have time to yelp. Everything spins in a wild blur, tree and sky and ground all becoming one stretch, stomach slamming your throat as the rest of your body goes tumbling down and you can do nothing but squeeze your eyes shut and tense and curl and wait for the sudden stop.

“Caz-!”

“Ough-!”

Your weight crashes unmitigated into a jumbled mess of limbs. The wind is knocked out of you and aches bloom across your body. For a second, you can do nothing but wheeze for air and stare up at the tree’s canopy, dazed. Underneath you, Peppino groans.

Oh, wow. He caught you.

The realization makes you shoot upright in spite of your protesting tailbone. You hurriedly roll up and off of his stomach, grabbing the plane from where it lies in the grass. Somehow, it's still in one piece after your tumble. You hand it back to Thomas.

“Run along,” you tell them. “Go on. Have fun.”

“Thanks. Uh. Have a good day!” He and the rest of the kids quickly get back to the field, far away from the tree – and far away from Peppino, who sits up and scowls sourly at you.

“What did I tell you?!” He gets up, flinging one hand to where the branch broke. “You were going to fall! What happened? You fell!”

“I was ready to eat dirt if I did,” you retort. “Could’ve driven myself back and patched myself, we’re not far from the house.”

“Oh, you and the broken leg you got from falling. How would you drive with that?”

Peppino’s exaggeration brings a burst of laughter from you. He’s ridiculous. The mental image of trying to push your truck while hobbling along back home is so ridiculous it jostles your brain out of the ruddy ditch it’s wallowed in for the past few days; it manages to make you feel something other than sad. You swallow down your next argument. This isn’t the good deed you were hoping for today, nor the aftermath you expected, but you feel better.

You tromp through the grass towards him, looking him over. Your scrutiny makes him retreat, so you lift a hand to stop him from scuttling back.

“Are you hurt?”

He jumps at your sudden question. “What?”

“Hurt,” you repeat. You vaguely gesture his way. “I fell on you from pretty high up.”

“Oh.” His shoulders slouch again, as does his frown. “I don’t need your worry over my back, I’ll deal with it. Like I always do.”

“If you say so.” That’s all you need. You jab a thumb back at your truck, conveniently located next to his idling vespa. “I’m going home to make some ‘magic tea’ for my back. You’re welcome to it if you want.”

You walk, leaving no room for argument. Peppino follows, though not without a muttered string of low words.

The drive is short. You have to coax your visitor in by crossing your heart again and again, you will not slip anything weird into his drink. No sleeping draught, no forget-me juice, and certainly no shape-changing nonsense! Even after the placating promises, Peppino still treats the doorway like he’s going to get zapped the moment he crosses the threshold.

You can barely hold your laugh when he finally steps inside. His cringing face relaxes, replaced by utter bemusement as he tilts his head.

“You look disappointed!” You continue to chortle, closing the door behind him. “What? What is it?”

“I’ve never seen the inside. I expected Mama Marian’s place to be more… magical,” he mutters.

“Yeah, well, surprise. If she didn’t magic everything she could get her hands on, she was like any other eccentric aunt who hoards and meddles in everyone else’s problems.”

You lead him into the kitchen, getting water on the stove and rummaging through your hackneyed storage space for materials. Peppino sits down at the doily-laden table, fingers drumming on the wood. You can feel his eyes on your back as you work: grinding, sifting, measuring.

“It’s not too different from cooking,” you say over your shoulder. “Just has to be more precise.”

He scoffs, “I can see that. You know everything that is going in, yes? And why? And how?”

“Yup, everything.”

“Then it really isn’t that far.”

You hum in acknowledgement as you both lapse into silence. Peppino’s fingers drum on the wood. Your mortar grumbles when you drag the pestle in its bowl. You hear your pot start to simmer, a small hiss of steam drifting from its spout. Still, you aren’t satisfied with the grain size yet. Bigger than you want becomes inefficient, smaller than what you want lets particles go right through the strainer. You don’t want to waste filter paper for a quick two cups.

The drumming stops. You look behind you and find that the man has fallen asleep sitting at the table, face propped up in one hand with an elbow on the wooden surface. You feel a stroke of empathy for him – lounge chairs and tables were as comfortable as beds when the work was tough – and let him sleep.

You can hear him quietly snoring over the kitchen clock’s ticking. You’re not used to working so leisurely, much less with someone else in the room. You’re hyperaware of every movement, trying to keep your noise to a minimum while you finish up the dry mix and dump into the boiling pot.

Eventually, Peppino shifts in his chair, clearing his throat and shaking out the sleep. Just in time, the dead air was starting to get boring.

 “Hey, Peppino?” “What?” He sounds convincingly lucid, you’re impressed.

“When’s the last time you had a decent night’s sleep?”

“Ha!” The man slaps his knee. “Ever since the restaurant got busier, I get up earlier and stay up later! Every day, we hardly even have time to sit down and we rush around like rats. But can I complain?”

He holds his hands in the air, sighing. You thought it was funny when you saw him and Gustavo running around, but if it’s been like that every single day you can’t help but feel bad.

“Maybe a little,” you reply. “No, I cannot.” Peppino sinks back into his chair again, the lines under his eyes multiplying. “We make the payments on time, so I have to keep the customers we get in any way.”

The healing potion has finished brewing, according to your internal timer. You strain it out, dividing the liquid into two mugs. It’s still not maroon, but a weak red will do for pain relief. You bring them to the table, sliding one to your guest.

“Sure,” you say before taking a sip, “but you have to make time for breaks, before your body makes the time for you.”

“I’m ­robust, I can handle it. There is nothing I can’t do.”

Peppino drains his cup in barely two pulls, bids you good day, and leaves to open the pizzeria.  You’re a hypocrite, sure, but that just gives you an insight to what kind of trouble a mindset like that can bring.

---

You get a call late at night while you’re trying to shove a heavy table out of the way. You really hate the carved marble stuff, it’s always been a hassle to move anywhere, but there’s your phone on the table’s surface buzzing away with a name you hoped wouldn’t bother you for at least another month. You groan, wipe your face with the back of your arm, and pick up your phone.

“Heyyyy boss.”

When are you going to come back?

God dammit. You take a deep breath inward, praying that the receiver does not pick it up, and run one hand down your cheek to get out the bitter tone before she can hear it. You knew that would be the opening question. You and Candance have never gotten along. She is the corporate face at work, which already puts you at odds with her, but there is just something about her that makes you itch. You understand the budget cuts. You understand the massive workload you and the others have to pick up to accommodate the massive rush of patients at times. You understand the stress that everyone undergoes to keep every one of them healthy while working under such tight constraints, including yourself.

You will never, ever understand why Candance insists on profit margins that directly contradict your job description.

 You lean back on the table, your free arm folding across your stomach. “Well, you know, I’m still trying to get the place cleared up. I still have PTO from last year.”

Ah, yes, the year you took no days off. People quit, you picked up the slack, all for no extra pay. You felt bad. You didn’t want anyone else to deal with what you thought you could handle.

I know, but it’s becoming a problem. The work you’ve placed on everyone else in your absence is starting to take its toll.

“They all knew Aunt Marian,” you answer. A stab of guilt goes through your heart anyways. “Look, I just need more time to figure all of this out.”

How much more time? “I… I dunno, as long as I need? It’s still pretty hard-“

I need a concrete answer.

You breathe out without really giving your lungs a chance to absorb the air. It’s always like this. It’s always like this! Better you than someone else, though. You can handle it.

“I’ll get back to you in a month. I’m almost done with the cleanup.”

Alright, good. A month. That works. Don’t forget that your contract expires at the end of the year, we need to renew it when you get back.

“Yup, sure thing boss.”

Take care of yourself. Don’t forget to call me back.

“Will do.”

The call disconnects.

You want to throw something out of the window.

[taxevasiontactics]

The Godmother's Godchild [3] - Olive Branch Offerings

Synopsis: You're not sure how much you like that you're making a name for yourself in town. It's fun work, sure, but it's work nonetheless. However, since you're technically your own boss (and by extension the unofficial, temporary caretaker of some youths) that means you get to reward yourself with pizza parties as often as you want. You have a good idea of who you want to supply them, as long as you're here.

Warning: None

Today is a nice summer’s day. The sun is not too hot, the breeze is not too cold, and there are no clouds on the horizon. It’s the perfect weather for you to brew.

Your initial batch did get the cottage to maintain, but the iridescent stones were drained of their held power much quicker than you had expected. Within two days - just two! - you have to make a new set to tide you over until you figure something out. You suspect it’s a problem with the size of the stones – inverse square law still holds true when it comes to magic. It’s something you’ve never had to consider nor an issue the transmutation book hints at. You plan on making a singular, bigger power stone (some alchemist working in material engineering is probably itching to correct your terminology) to serve the entire house, utilizing the giant kettle that you found while clearing out the library.

Aggie and Marnie show up outside the cottage’s gate just after you get the vessel set over a crystal boiler in the front yard. You’re so busy pulling the garden hose around and trying not to step on the cat that you nearly miss their expectant faces looking over the peeling paint.

“Did you two…” You gesture towards the house. “Want to come inside?”

“No, that’s ok!” Aggie calls over. “We just wanted to see if we could stay here today!”

You question if this is just small-town logic, or kids taking a shining to you. You slide the hose into the kettle (cauldron, actually, you think at a second glance) and turn it on.

“That’s fine. Go ahead and sit on the porch, I have to go inside and grab a few things. Do you two drink soda? Pop? Soda-pop?”

“Yup!” “Yesssss!” Marnie yells enthusiastically, popping the gate open and running through.

You get the sodas and a paddle to stir with. The girls situate themselves on your porch, where you can hear the cat meowing for attention. Marnie is more than happy to oblige, sitting down on the ground just as you come back out with the cold cans of citrus-flavored drink. After a moment’s pause, you go back inside and grab a wide-brimmed hat. You’re going to be out there for a while.

“Do your parents know you’re both out here?” You turn off the water and pull the hose out as the level nears three-quarters full. Much more would be too dilute, but you have enough leeway for evaporation. “I don’t know how much they’d appreciate it if you decided to hang out at a near-stranger’s place all day.”

Aggie shakes her head. “Mommy knows we’re here and Daddy’s still working. She said we could go, as long as we minded our manners and didn’t make ourselves a nuisance.”

“Don’t know how much of a nuisance either of you can be…”

“Marnie can make herself one, trust me,” Aggie mutters. You laugh unexpectedly; kids are brutally honest when they want to be.

For the most part, you get through the brewing process unhampered. They ask questions every now and then, ones you try to answer as best you can. You have to go inside every so often to get and refill some water glasses for them, but once you’re deep in the process you only need to focus on adding, stirring, and keeping the temperature even.

“Are you a witch?” pipes up Marnie, lying on the floor with the cat.

The question catches you off guard. “What?”

You look down at yourself and what you’re doing. You can see where the confusion would start.  You’re stirring a giant cauldron full of bubbling, strangely colored liquid while wearing a giant hat (though it’s missing the stereotypical point). You even have a cat that seems to understand humanoid speech. It’s what a kid her age would expect to see out of a witch, nevermind the outdated hat and lack of a laboratory setting.

“Oh, no, I’m not a witch. I’m a doctor, remember?” You pull the paddle out and whack it twice on the side of the cauldron to shake off any excess drops, turning the boiler’s heat down to a simmer. “I don’t have magic. Even if I did and I were trying to do a witch’s job, I’d be in some pretty big trouble.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t have a witch’s license, of course.”

Marnie gasps, then very seriously murmurs, “Are we going to get in trouble for using dousing rods? That’s magic!”

“Of course not! We’re just trying to help Daddy’s farm!” Aggie interjects. “They can’t get us in trouble for that!”

Your meddlesome instinct jumps on the opportunity before your logic can wrangle it.

“What’s going on with the farm?”

A dam breaks, apparently, as Aggie quickly comes over to sit next to Marnie in front of you. They both start babbling at the same time, talking over each other, and debating over which facts are true, but you get the gist of it. Their father (Mr. Anderson) is having a hard time getting the crops to grow well. The new irrigation system he installed last year doesn’t seem to be doing anything. They just won’t reach up to the sky like they used to.

“That’s why we were trying to find a well out in the woods,” Aggie finishes, “because the water out there is magic. You were collecting plants out there! You know that they’re magic.”

You nod, though your mind is elsewhere. The case bears enough resemblance to the dormmate houseplant incident that you barely have to search your memory. It’s simple enough that scaling the recipe should be easy. It might not be your place to butt in this time, but you hate to see them so upset.

“That’s right, the water there is special.” You turn the crystal boiler to its lowest setting. “You don’t need to dig a well for this one, though. I’ve dealt with this situation before.”

“What do you mean we don’t need to dig a well?” She winges, getting up.

“I mean you two can help with much less time and effort involved. I have a giant pot; you both have two hands.” You start to head towards the cottage door, looking for your bottomless bag. “How would you two like to be assistant foragers for the afternoon? You get a free lesson and pizza out of it!”

---

You let Marnie hang her head out of the window as you drive to Peppino’s place. You’re all riding the high of an extremely successful foraging session; you’re hardly surprised that they picked up the ropes so fast. With dirty hands and singing hearts, you all hop out of the truck as soon as you throw it into park and yank the emergency brake up.

“Guess who-o’s ba-ack, Pep-pi-no!” you singsong as you enter. Who you see, however, is not the Italian you were expecting.

“Oh, ‘scuse me!” The man at the counter exclaims. “Sorry, he’s on a delivery right now, but welcome to Peppino’s Pizza anyways! How can I help you young people?”

He’s a shorter man compared to you, curly brown-red hair puffing up underneath his toque. The guy has an air of joviality around him, and it’s not just because he has a round nose with a rounder face to match; he’s all smiles from the moment you enter, spreading from the curve of his thick mustache to his smile-line eyes. You can’t help but smile right back at him, leading Aggie and Marnie to the counter. You also note that he’s actually wearing an apron, a small step above his coworker.

“I think I recognize your voice, actually.” You pull out your wallet in preparation, leaning on the counter. “You’re Gustavo, right?”

He laughs, apparently amused, “That’s me! Sorry I don’t remember you too. People call in, the phone isn’t so good as those new smartphones, you know how it is.”

“It’s alright, it was a while ago,” you assure. You motion to the girls. “Same as last time?”

They both nod. You relay the orders (pepper and sausage, cheese, you feel proud for still remembering) along with your own. Gustavo nods and heads to the back to get to work. You and the girls sit down at the same booth as last time. The entire time you wait for your pizzas, you talk with them about what you’ll be making with the plants you gathered. The concept of a wild growth potion is utterly amazing to them, they ask you to explain every single detail. From the method of application, to what the brew itself does, to even how much it might grow. You oblige them at every turn. It’s your favorite part of the job, explaining to children how it all works.

The spark of curiosity in their eyes is twice as satisfying as making anything.

“Marone, the heat is killing me today, Gustavo!”

You turn to look at the ringing door, but you already have a confident idea of who’s come in shouting. The restaurant’s namesake slogs in, fanning himself with a hand and wiping his face with his white tank top. He beelines for the counter, complaining about this and that and the bugs and the roads being so congested today in town Santa Maria the drivers could not be any slower! You watch as he heads in back, disappears, and reappears with a faded plastic cup that he promptly fills at the soda machine.

“I nearly showed up too late too, but I still got there!” He swaggers as he turns from the machine, taking a triumphant swig. “Peppino’s still got it!”

He catches sight of you. He freezes. You wave, delicately fluttering your fingers his way.

“Hi Peppino,” you casually greet. “You sound very happy today.”

“Can I not go one week without being made fun of?” He groans to himself. Or maybe God, you don’t know. “Don’t you have better places to be, Doctor?”

“The food is good and they wanted some.” You gesture to the kids.

“Hi Mr. Spaghetti,” Aggie politely says.

“Hi Mr. Spaghetti!” Marnie shouts, though just as politely.

Peppino rubs a hand over his face and mutters something too low to hear. You didn’t even intend to use the kids as a weapon against his distrust this time, but the lack of an overlong interrogation as to your intentions is progress.

“No more jokes and don’t be a bother,” he tiredly orders.

You grin, holding your hands up. “No jokes, no more. Crossed my heart, I meant it.”

“Good.” Peppino turns to the girls. You catch a small fondness. “You two make sure the Doctor does not break the promise.”

“Promise!” They echo. You feel betrayed by their stern eyes on you immediately after.

He goes back behind the counter to yank his white hat on and sip at his drink. He and Gustavo have a quiet conversation in Italian. Of what, you don’t know, but between the two of them they point in your general direction no less than five times. You can only assume you’re a hot topic and go back to polishing off bready, cheesy, saucy goodness.

---

Good news: the new power stone works. The decently heavy, physical manifestation of energy sits on the living room’s coffee table (a temporary place, you promise yourself) and has been humming nicely for the last few days. It keeps your fridge on, your microwave spinning, and the temperature comfortably low as the land brings on summer in full swing.

You welcome Aggie back inside the cottage as you’re working through organizing the library (still! STILL organizing it! You’re barely a third of the way through!) for another soda and talk. The girl fondly recounts all the good your joint project has done for the farm. Already, her father’s tomato fields are as tall as Marnie is, and the rows of other vegetables have finally put out healthy leaves at a respectable size. You remind her about the potion’s application schedule as you heft a stack of books into the “donate” pile.

“I remember!” she exclaims, thumping her chest. “Once every two weeks, add one part concentrate growth for every two parts water used in the sprinkler.”

“Correct,” you reply. You dust your hands off, even if the place has no more dust to dust off. “When you need more, I still have extra for a few more big batches.”

Aggie’s feet stop kicking from where she sits on a red velvet chair. A pensive frown takes over her face and the cat meows from her lap, asking for the petting to start again. You get the feeling she’s going to repeat her father’s morals, so you come over to lean on the desk opposite the chair.

“Still don’t like taking without giving in return?” You offer. “You paid for it by getting the stuff, last time.” “Yeah.” Her hands rub against each other. “Daddy won’t accept it without paying you back somehow. It’s not right if we just expect those kinds of kindnesses without being kind ourselves.”

She, and Mr. Anderson by extension, have a point. You sigh, pushing back off the desk to pace the room. More and more, you feel like the logic in this place is firmly stuck in the past, but you don’t feel good accepting money. The recipe is too easy for that.

“Alright,” you concede. “How about a deal? A cut of the first harvest, or something. Whenever your dad has time, we’ll talk about it.”

 A knock comes from the front door and turns both of your heads. You wave at Aggie to stay with the cat while you answer it. At the door is not one, not two, but three hopeful farmers, all glad to see you.

Bad news: Aggie and Marnie’s father let slip why his fields look so lush. Those three were just the start. Over the course of the next week, more and more come knocking at your door asking for the same potion. You ask for the same deal you make with the Andersons: a cut of the first harvest. Unfortunately, in their eagerness, they keep interrupting you organizing Aunt Marian’s belongings and slow progress more than ever. You barely get halfway through the library by the deadline you gave yourself to be done.

You run out of those extras quicker than you anticipated, forcing you to enlist the help of your new favorite gatherers and Thomas (who picks up the trade just as quick, you gladly note) to stock up on more. Their payment is, of course, afternoons spent at the cottage while you brew, then free soda and pizza after every successful foraging mission. You know this is unsustainable for both your wallet and the forest in the long run, but you probably won’t be in the town long enough for it to get to that point.

The unintended positive side effect is Peppino’s reluctant acceptance of your presence. Over the days, he goes from surveilling you the moment you walk through the door to making small talk while he charges you out. He even starts to remember what your posse’s usual order is. Gustavo is much the same, though much friendlier. He even throws in the odd free plate of breadsticks for the kids when Peppino isn't looking, winking at them over the counter.

Now, you and your team slog into the restaurant on quite possibly the hottest day yet. You feel like your face melted off on the walk from the truck, whose air conditioning did nothing for any of you. Aggie and Thomas lean on your sides, exhausted. You push Marnie in front of you like the world’s slowest slime monster. The bell rings, welcoming you all into the embrace of sweet, sweet air conditioning.

You shuffle in so haggardly Peppino sets his book down with a tsk, tsk, tsk. Gustavo waves hello, moving to the kitchen to start on the pizzas.

“Did you have a busy day?” Peppino probes. You hear a hint of amusement as he gets out four cups. You go to collect and fill them while the kids sit, groaning when the cool, faux leather hits their overheated skin.

“Oh, yeah, busy day. Super busy.” You fill your cup first, quaffing the entire thing while you get the rest. “Like you wouldn’t believe. I’m sure you’d understand.”

He scoffs.  “Not anymore.”

“Not anymore?”

“You might have noticed. The restaurant is always empty when you come in.” He sweeps his hand over the dining space. As he says, it’s devoid of anyone but you, him, and the children. “It’s like this all the time.”

“But you still take deliveries, don’t you?” You pluck straws from the metal box, ripping and placing one in each cup. “That’s how I found out about the place.”

“Sure, we take deliveries, but delivery is the only stable thing we do anymore. We are just not how we were before. It is…” Peppino’s hand rolls in the air, searching for words he can’t pluck out of his head. “It is how it is.”

Gustavo comes out of the kitchen, announcing that your food is ready. You dig your wallet out of your pocket, settle the bill with Peppino, and get to eating with the kids. A nagging feeling starts in the back of your head. Your meddlesome instinct smells blood in the water; you’re just not sure where.

---

The wild demand for growth potions tapers into a manageable schedule a month later. Your team of foragers is sad there won’t be any more near-daily expeditions into the woods, but you promise that you’ll need their help at times regardless. In spite of this, Aggie and Marnie still come over frequently for visits. Thomas too, though less often. His mother gives him an earful every time he’s out longer than promised.

The cottage’s library is finally organized into keep and donate. It’s a simple affair to load the latter into your truck for the town’s bookstore to keep. Your guilt over getting rid of them has long since passed – the majority was comprised of junk mail cookbooks, anyways.

You’re driving back when you get a craving for pizza. You expected yourself to be sick of it by now, but after years of subsiding on the same cheap ramen you suspect you’ve grown an addiction to salty, fat-packed foods. You just hope Peppino and Gustavo don’t mind you stopping in so late.

The lights are still on when you park in the dimming lot. You never noticed how remote the place is until now, perched up on the second tallest cliff of the coast. It’s dark when your truck’s headlights cut out, asphalt made darker without help from the setting sun. You can see both of them inside, talking over something behind the counter – by how they flip their hands around, it’s probably something they’ve been going at for a while.

Your entry makes them stop short. The men look away from each other as the door closes once again, clattering ring a stark contrast to the sudden silence. Gustavo is the first to pipe up, looking behind you expectantly.

“No kids today?” he inquires.

You shake your head. “Just me. They didn’t visit today.”

“The usual?”

“Yeah. To go, I know you’re closing up in a bit.”

“You’ve got it.”

He heads to the kitchen, leaving Peppino to ring you up with a pat on the man’s shoulder. You feel even more awkward in the quiet, desperate to fill it with something other than plastic keys clicking and whining receipt printing.

“What was that about?” you blurt, curious cat throwing itself in front of the metaphorical vespa. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you two argue.”

“Argue?” Peppino pushes a dismissive breath out. “That was no argument, we were just talking.”

“Looked like an argument to me.” “It was a conversation about the restaurant, that is it. I have to mop soon, will you sit up or something so you’re out of the way?”

You do as he bids, sliding onto one of the slippery counter stools. Oh. It spins. You’re entertained by the novel discovery while Peppino disappears, reemerging with a mop bucket and a wet floor sign tucked under one arm. He clacks it open, sets it down, and gets to work. With nothing left to do and the only other person here clearly not in the mood to talk, you watch.

Peppino works with a practiced route, swiping the mop under tables and chairs like he’s done this a million times before. He probably has, he owns the place – better yet, he never wastes a single movement. He guides the mop in figure-8s, expert hands swaying side to side. Now that you get a longer look, you notice that his arms are more than just big. They have some definition to them. Subtle muscles flex and relax while he cleans, and hands that look used to handling hard work all day strain just the littlest bit. The veins and knuckles shift underneath his skin as he goes, thin scar lines dotting the more prominent bones.

The focus Peppino devotes to mopping relaxes his features into something resembling a man at peace. He stops frowning so much, his jaw unclenches, and he stops furrowing his brow. You can’t lie to yourself, he’s not bad looking when he’s not pissed off at something. You imagine he was somewhere on the “conventionally masculine attractive” scale in his youth. You’d never know unless you got your hands on some old photos, though.

You quit staring just in time. Peppino rounds the corner of the counter, moving back the other way with his front towards you. You nearly laugh to yourself. What would he do if he saw you ogling him? Demand that you stop? Kick you out immediately? You know he has a presence with gravitas, but you really shouldn’t make a habit of letting yourself be swept up in it. You lean on the counter, humming to get his attention.

“Hey, Peppino?”

“What?”

“What were you two talking about for the restaurant?”

He groans, stopping for a moment to frown at you once again over his mop, “Dio mio- Will you drop it if I tell you?”

“No promises, but I’ll stop for tonight at least.”

He sighs, visibly weighing his options. He tells you, you shut up for the night, but you will know forever. He doesn’t, you continue to pester him forever. Either way, he loses. You know your persistence has won so far. It doesn’t fail you now either.

“Fine,” he spits, “but you will stop about it tonight. We were talking about the restaurant’s debt. We have been breaking even so far, but the interest will pile up if we don’t think of something to make more profit soon.”

A sour coldness hangs on your ribs. You remember hearing the same thing at the hospital, belly up if no increase in profits is made. They don’t have a choice if treatments cost more, anyways. They’ll pay for it. The memory makes you grimace. The memory chums the waters, and your meddling desire resurfaces. You grab onto it. Wait, you tell it. Not yet.

“You guys don’t have any other options?”

He scoffs, “None but to close up and move out! But I’m not giving up so easily. This place is mine. I can’t quit on all the hard work I’ve done to make it happen.”

(Not just yet, you tell it. You grip its fin even tighter.)

“I could help,” you tentatively propose. “There’s a thought or two I have that you might not have gone over.”

“I doubt it,” Peppino dismisses with a hand. He turns his back on you again to mop down another lane of tables. “We’ve tried everything!”

(Almost, you urge it. It’s chomping at the bit.)

“You never know, an outside source and fresh perspective could do some good.”

“What makes you so confident that you won’t give up the moment it gets tough, eh?” He stops, turns, and slaps the mop in its bucket loudly. The water barely turns black, cleaned floors hardly touched by any customer’s shoes. “You have no obligation to stay, and you said it yourself that you won’t stay long. You barely have a foothold to tell anyone to do anything here.”

“I wouldn’t say that” you drawl, sitting up.

(Now.)

“I’ve been talking with most of the farmers in the area about growing advice. I think they’ll listen if I direct them this way, considering I’ve eaten here plenty of times. I think I can get a few to at least stop by. Word of mouth spreads quickly among them, you know. I’ve told more people how to help their fields in the past month than I’ve meaningfully talked to patients in the past year. It works.

“If worse comes to worst, though?” You shrug. “There are a lot of places that take junk you don’t need. I should know, I’ve been visiting them for the past month. You can tell me ‘I told you so’ and everything if I’m wrong.”

You conveniently leave out why you’ve been talking with every green thumb in the area. You still don’t have a license to practice in the area. However, if good news about Peppino’s place spreads as fast as your potion popularity, he might see new people as soon as tomorrow.

He finishes his mopping in silence. You worry, for a moment, that your lackadaisical delivery worked against you. He squeezes out the mop for the last time, wheels it next to the kitchen door, and leans on the red countertop to meet you eye to eye.

“What’s your angle?” He leans forward, pushing his space into yours. “What do you want out of this?”

You smile in response, shrugging again. “Lifetime supply of pizza?”

“HA!” He guffaws unexpectedly and pushes back, loud enough to make you jump. “Only when you save my life! Lifetime supply… No, you expect an equal exchange, is that it? No money? No favors?”

Peppino actually seems on board with the idea when you nod, body language opening up. No money, something he desperately needs to settle the debt. No favors, something you assume he would hate to owe.

“Just some food whenever I help,” you confirm. “It’s the kind of deal I’ve been cutting with everyone else. Plus, I’ve said before, I like your cooking. I would hate for it to go away.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Alright, Doctor.” He grins, a face you never thought you’d see on him, and holds his hand out across the counter. “Then we have a deal.”

You feel giddy as you reach out and grasp his hand. The firm grip makes you wince, but you shake on it. Gustavo comes out with your boxed pizza; he looks happy, too. He must have heard everything from within the kitchen.

“Sure, it’s a deal.” You take your dinner, hopping off of the stool. “Looking forward to seeing this place shine, Peppino.”

--------------------------------------------------

hoo boy do you have your work cut out for you. time to make some big moves, doc, if you want in on that ~lifetime supply~.

[taxevasiontactics]

honestly the problem with me right now is that i'm too busy looking at peppino to WRITE peppino. back to work.

[taxevasiontactics]

wait no it IS ok on pc. if you're reading on mobile, tell me if it's doing the same for you anywhere. goes for any other things you find wrong, btw, i would be happier to fix it than just leave it out hanging.

there's a section in the new tgg chapter that's gone missing NOOOOO i have to get into the habit of triple checking things gruguhrg

[taxevasiontactics]

there's a section in the new tgg chapter that's gone missing NOOOOO i have to get into the habit of triple checking things gruguhrg

[taxevasiontactics]

The Godmother's Godchild [2] - This Town Ain't Big Enough for Anyone, Really

Synopsis: The problem with a small town is that you don't really have a lot of options in places to go. You keep rubbing shoulders with Peppino, much to his continued frustration, and end up overextending just the tiniest bit. Damn kids. Damn helpful instinct.

Warning: Description of a Minor Wound

Your prediction ends up coming true the very next morning.

To avoid a repeat of the night before, you go grocery shopping. As you’re driving down the tight, one-lane-in-either-direction road, you note a few things. The town was built before cars were a staple of life. It’s smack in the middle of farmland; even if it’s no corn hell, the miles of emptiness and cow fields take up the majority of your trip’s vistas. There are no big warehouse superstores, no fast-food chains, and no corporate names in sight. The grocer in town (the only one) is a mom-and-pop gig, as is every other storefront in sight. It’s charming in its own way, but you feel like you’ve wandered onto a retro show when you stop inside. Linoleum floors, buzzing lights, an old cash register that goes “ding” as the middle-aged clerk pulls on its lever. Even the people shopping around you know each other. You can feel the looks as you pass. They’re probably gossiping about the newcomer, as nonthreatening as you try to make yourself with nods and smiles.

That’s what makes Peppino stick out like a sore thumb when he appears around an aisle’s corner. You try to say hello, but the moment you turn he bolts out of sight as quickly as he came. He’s surprisingly fast too, going from near standstill to a sprint in the blink of an eye. The same thing happens as you’re perusing produce, then while checking canned fruits. Even the baking aisle is not free of a near encounter with the man. Your entire shopping trip is plagued by near-misses, disappearing the moment you even try to approach.

You finally get a chance to talk when you push your cart behind his at the only checkout lane. Looks like the man’s ditched the tank-top-t-shirt getup for now, swapping it out for zip hoodie and t-shirt instead. He pointedly does not look your way. He has a lot of food in his cart: flour, vegetables, cured meats, and a few herbs. And tomatoes. Lots, and lots, and lots of tomatoes.

“Stocking up for the day?” You ask the open air. Peppino tenses like he was hoping you would ignore him too.

“Yes. Every day, as fresh as it gets…”

You nod. “Where I used to live, every pizza place bragged about using only San Marzano tomatoes. Authentic Italian style, or something.”

He seems to take great amusement at that, scoffing and muttering a string of his own authentic Italian. This apparent blasphemy is enough to knock him out of whatever timorous behavior he’d subconsciously assigned to you.

“They wouldn’t know real Italian food if it came and smacked them in the face. Why would you need canned tomatoes when fresh ones you can make just as good, for less?” He picks up one of the red fruits for emphasis, waggling it in front of you. “You don’t need fancy things, no, you just need to know how to make it right.”

The clerk clears her throat, holding back a smile. “Mr. Spaghetti?”

“Oh, scuzi, sorry…”

He rummages around in his pockets, pulling out a coupon book. They exchange papers and knock down prices for nearly every item in his cart. You get the feeling that this is a practiced dance between them – either because the clerk is used to penny pinchers, or because Peppino makes a habit of being one everywhere he goes.

He waits while she gets through your cart, raising an eyebrow at its contents. You catch it, raising your own eyebrow. It’s nothing out of the ordinary, you think. Quick fridge fill-ups, low-effort meals, and snacks.

“What?” Genuinely, you don’t know what he could criticize here.

“Don’t you think you should…” He waves his hands in the air, searching for the words. “Get some things better for you? No one can survive on cereal and- and chips, and whatever other little filler foods those are, no?”

“Questioning my ability to run after a cat on a handful of cereal, are you?” You tease.

Peppino makes a sour face, and you snicker. You decide against playing Misery Olympics and telling him about how you usually eat at work. Based on your past two encounters, he might find something else to yell at with your diet of coffee and granola bars. This is cheating­, for you. The clerk finishes, you pay, and you wheel out with your pantry goods. Peppino follows along, bags in hand.

“You seem to care an awful lot all of the sudden, considering I nearly made you crash and poked fun at your name,” you wryly reason.

“You are doing the exact same thing!” He runs ahead of you, somehow pointing at you in accusation despite the three heavy bags in his offending hand. “I’m just trying to be polite before you decide to turn me into a toad, or whatever it is you people do!”

You sigh, opening up your truck’s door and loading up your groceries. Exasperation runs through you in a moment, despite how outdatedly funny his worry is. A toad? So that’s what last night was about.

“Correction,” you start, “that would be the school of transmutation, an entirely different career path that I didn’t study. I’m from a school that primarily focuses on helping things reach a state they naturally can faster, and with less error.”

You close the door, leaning back against it with your arms folded. The more you’ve ranted, it seems, the more Peppino has shrunk in on himself. A little part of you is satisfied to see his accusations addressed and overturned.

“Even if I did know how to make polymorphic potions,” -He cringes. You continue- “you would have to absorb it somehow for it to have any effect. I promise, cross my heart, that I won’t try to turn you into a toad, an inanimate object, or anything else you might be afraid of.”

The frown on his face grows even more as he continues to grumble, “And why would I have any reason to trust you?”

“You don’t.”

You hop into your truck, catching Peppino’s frown get momentarily wiped off in bewilderment. Pleasant assumption? Unpleasant conclusion? You don’t know, and the ice cream in your groceries is going to melt if you stick around for much longer.

“You either trust me or you don’t. For the record, though?” You give him one big, cheesy grin as you start the engine. “The pizza was really good, and I can’t get any more if I turn you into something weird. Goodbye, Mr. Spaghetti!”

Peppino’s face turns bright red, one finger lifted to inevitably retort, deny, or chew you out. You peel out before you hear whatever else he has to say, riding the high of getting the last word in all the way back.

---

You’ve hit a wall in terms of preparing the property for sale.

Clue 1: the cottage was not cleaning itself.

There are many good things about magic cottages. They’re usually enchanted to take care of themselves, Aunt Marian’s was no different to your expert senses. You were still hit with a lungful of dusty air when you first walked in, yet thought nothing of the thin layer that covered many surfaces.

Clue 2: the cottage did not repair itself.

A few days after the grocer encounter, you tripped over a floorboard. It wasn’t like that before, you don’t remember breaking it in any way while organizing, but you knew for certain that the culprit behind your thrown plate of toast (which you were looking forward to, by the way) was the curiously crooked board. You blamed it on a shifting foundation and ignore it, trusting it to go back in place eventually.

This morning, a mere two days after the tripping incident, you went to get a glass of milk. Where you expected chilly cold fridge air, you found a slightly-cooler-than-room-temp puff of air from within the dark, metal cabinet. Luckily, nothing had spoiled yet, but you aborted your search for milk in favor of not tempting fate by quickly slamming the door shut again.

Clue 3: the cottage no longer provides power to anything inside.

You can only assume that Aunt Marian tied herself to the house. When she passed, the enchantments slowly faded away from lowest to highest priority until it ultimately failed you and your milk. You can’t make a change to the spellwork yourself, nor are you going to assume the future owners will have any idea how to fix it either. With this in mind, you go to the library with sleeves rolled up both metaphorically and physically. You’re stubborn enough to try keeping the cottage as it is, intent on not shelling out goo gobs of money on modern conveniences. You’re set on making your own solution to the problem.

You want to substitute natural magic with alchemy. A constructed power well, with properties you pick. Of course, this means you have to turn to the dreaded art of transmutation to make this work.

Arming yourself with a mind-numbingly dry book from the bottom of an overstuffed shelf and a bottomless bag rescued from the same pile, you walk through the nearby woods in hopes of finding the proper ingredients for your idea. Though the smell of greenery and life around you are refreshing, the mugginess and uneven ground are not. You thank Aunt Marian mentally for her foraging lessons during the hot, humid days of your youth. Then you yell at her for leaving the cottage a fixer upper.

Your mind wanders as you walk and search. Maybe this is some higher power’s way of punishing you for being a flippant idiot with Peppino. You don’t know transmutation, you said. You don’t know how to change the properties of anything, let alone turn a person into a toad! Fine, the higher powers huff to your inverse Arachne self, if you don’t know transmutation you’ll be made to learn it.

Still, you wonder and wander, what’s Peppino’s problem? Sure, you did laugh at his unfortunate name, you inconvenienced him majorly on the road, but you haven’t directly done anything that would be interpreted as hostility. He seems to immensely distrust you on principle. Aunt Marian, as far as you know, wasn’t much of a Beauty-and-the-Beast godmother, doling out curses on the deserving to teach them a lesson. Maybe he’s a staunch mundanist. Maybe he just doesn’t like new people in general. Ha ha, you think, if your godmother was the just-punishment type, he probably would have been a toad a lot sooner had they met.

Your train of thought is upended by a sudden wailing echoing through the trees. You hurriedly stuff your most recently plucked mushroom into the bag, making your way towards the sound.

“Oh my god oh my god oh my god-“

“Okokok calm down it’s ok-“

“MY LEG HURTS MY LEG HU-U-U-RTS!”

“I told you not to let her go up there!”

“I told her not to go up there!”

“Then why did she?!”

“I don’t know!”

You find a pair of kids underneath a tall tree, arguing over a little girl. She’s clutching a bloodied leg, sobbing as the red drips through her fingers. You can’t see the damage clearly from between her dirtied hands as you walk up, shouting to get their attention. The children stop their bickering when they realize an adult has come out of the literal woodwork. Reactions flipflop from confused relief to bracing for trouble.

“I know I’m a stranger, but I can help.” You introduce yourself right away, adding on for good measure, “I’m a doctor. Can I take a look at her?”

Your credentials do the trick, and the kids immediately blab to you about what happened as you set to work. Marnie (the little girl, you presume) went into the tree to grab a new branch because they lost their old dousing rod in a river when Thomas tossed it right in (the older girl, Aggie, points at the boy of the pair) to try and see how far it would go to save them time on finding a new well.

“I didn’t mean to lose it!” He shouts back. “I thought it would work!”

You don’t have the heart to tell them that dousing rods don’t work anyways. As they continue to tell their tale of how and why Marnie was in the tree, your triage reveals that she’s scraped herself up pretty badly. Your extra bottle of water from within the bottomless bag washes away enough blood and debris to see that there is a large abrasion covering the majority of her left shin, irregular around the edges and still bleeding. You assume that this came from the actual impact on the ground. Her arms are bruised and present similar, if more minor, scrapes in small patches. You gently convince her to let you feel her limbs, finding nothing shifting where it should not.

“Good news,” you tell her, “I don’t feel that anything is broken.”

The big sister breathes a huge sigh of relief. She hits Thomas on the arm with an even fiercer scowl than before. “You are sooooo lucky! SO lucky my sister is ok!”

“Ow-! Ow! Hey! I’m sorry! I said I was sorry! Aggie stop!”

Digging in your bag, you once again thank Aunt Marian for lessons on being prepared. You treat Marnie with a field salve mushed together with items you’ve already collected after cleaning her hurts again, then bandage her up. Aggie looks guilty. Her cheeks puff outward like a frog’s and her hands grind into each other.

“Daddy said that no work goes unpaid, but we don’t have any money. Doctor, um…” (You get the feeling she’s already forgotten your name, you let that slide too.) “Is there anything we can do to pay you without money?”

Your heart hurts to see a kid try and take on responsibility. You quickly wave off the offer, “It’s fine, I was just helping out.”

“Daddy said we can’t!”

Honest to goodness, you hate trying to reason with kids. They’re not like adults, they can go on being just as stubborn as you. You’ll make no headway in convincing Aggie that, truly, you are ok with not being paid this time. Small town values are something else. The kids have had a rotten enough afternoon and you, the adult, feel like going out of your way. It also presents a unique opportunity to knock two birds with one stone.

“Alright, alright,” you mutter, pulling out your phone. “You can do one thing to help me out. I was going to have lunch all by myself, this afternoon, but…”

The kids pipe up quicker than you can finish. “We’ll help!”

“Oh, good! That’s a relief. You’re going to be doing me a big favor by coming along.”

You search up the address for Peppino’s Pizza.

---

A metal bell rings overhead when you walk through the façade’s door, alerting your favorite Italian to customers at the door. If you didn’t know the owner is as authentic as they come, you’d laugh at the incredibly stereotypical black and white tile in combination with red, white, and green décor. You watch him emerge from the kitchen with a great big cloud of flour as you usher the kids inside. You might even call him eager to greet his patrons from how fast he gathers up a notebook and pen.

“Salve! Welcome to Peppino’s Pizza, how can I help-“

It dissolves the moment he realizes it’s you standing in his empty restaurant. The click of his pen is a little too aggressive to be anything else but annoyance at your presence. Still, he can’t immediately start getting sour with the three kids here. Good, your secret weapon is working.

“Heyyy Peppino.” You come up to the counter, stretching your greeting with all the casualness you can muster. Your gaggle of kids follow suit, heads peeking over the counter. “How’re you doing?”

“Just fine.” He scans over the tiny crew, pausing on Marnie. “What happened to the little one?”

“Tree.” You shrug.

“It was a really big one,” she supplies.

His concern runs out and he taps his notepad impatiently. “So, are you going to order something, or are we going to stand here all day?”

You turn to the kids, gesturing to the faded plastic menu over Peppino’s head.

“Pepperoni!” Thomas shouts first.

“Peppers and sausage!” Aggie exclaims next. “I just want cheese…” Marnie mumbles.

The chef raises a brow after he finishes writing their orders down, leaning over the counter. “All on the same pie? Or are you going to make Peppino cook three separate pies? Eh?”

He has an exceptionally large amount of geniality for them when compared to his stiff behavior with you. You’re almost surprised – you didn’t expect it to work this much.

They look back at you. You shrug. “One small for each won’t hurt.”

“And what about you?” He turns away from the notebook to focus on you. You notice it’s less than a glower, so that’s a start. “Do you want something too?”

“Same as last time. Can’t beat a new favorite.”

He writes that down too, punches the total into a machine that you think is from the 90s, and charges you out. Four pizzas and drinks; not exactly chump change when ordering for everyone, but it’s a good deal cheaper than what you’d get back home. While Peppino heads in the back to get your orders together, you pull out the heavy book from your bag once again and settle with the trio of children in a faux leather booth. Their chatter becomes background noise as you read on, unentertaining paragraphs beginning to make more sense.

By the time you’ve finished getting a beginner’s grasp on the concepts and mechanics needed for your ideas, Peppino’s coming out with two pizzas on either arm. You’re a little impressed by how he can balance all of them at once without burning himself. So are the kids, apparently, because they’re shouting and clapping as he slides them towards each recipient over the table.

“Yours, pepperoni, pepper and sausage, and” -he takes a moment to flourish an extra spin for Marnie’s pan, who is the most impressed of you all- “cheese. Buon appetito.”

Thomas immediately digs in without a care for burning his tongue. Marnie’s hands are more careful thanks to Aggie’s help. The older sister only gets one bite for every two of Marnie’s, but she manages to take huge bites that even the difference anyways. All three of them parrot their thanks to the chef in charge between the feral bites that come with kids really enjoying their food. Peppino lingers for a second longer than he should. You follow his line of sight directly to the book in your lap.

“If you’re trying to understand what any of this is saying,” you wryly comment, “trust me, so am I.”

His gaze jerks upwards, concentration turning to yet another frown. “What is this?”

“What’s in the book?”

“Yes, the book.”

“Oh. Yes, the book, the book I am currently reading.” You hold it up and make a show of flipping the cover around for him with a smug half smile. “The book that contains information about transmutation. This book.”

You can see it. The conversation from a few days ago is turning over in his head. The kids stop eating for a moment to watch the adults talk. You feel yourself get a mirthful joker’s kick out of watching the mental journey turn wary curiosity into mounting paranoia.

“For… what?” He asks, composure holding back whatever horrors his mind is undoubtedly conjuring.

You can’t help yourself. You set the book back down in your lap matter-of-factly, opening it up to the page of polymorph potions. “To turn you into a toad, of course.”

Peppino gets out of reach in a surprisingly coordinated backstep shuffle, punctuated by a barely restrained noise that you really can’t categorize as anything but a “yelp”. The poor man’s hat slips from his head when his back cracks against his own counter in hasty retreat. The kids laugh at his expense – as do you, though less loudly and 100% less jeering.

“You said that you could not be trusted, but I did not think that you would do this right in my face!” “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” You hurry up your burst of laughter, getting up and setting the book down. He doesn’t accept any of your help, even when he winces. “Sorry! I’m joking! I swear! I’m joking!”

“Merda!” Oh, now that was a curse word you recognized. So did the kids if the resulting chorus of gasps is anything to go by. “I don’t want any more of your jokes, they are the worst jokes!”

Peppino grunts and hunches over for longer than he should. You feel the fun drain out of your stomach. You got him hurt with your fun and games, overreaction to sarcasm or not. He sits with a heaviness that betrays the pain he’s in.

“That was my fault. I’m sorry.” You catch sight of your bag. You can apologize for it in action, here and now. “Look, cross my heart, no more jokes.”

“Ech, easy to say!”

Your mouth presses into a line before you continue, “I want to make it up to you, but you’ll have to trust that what I make is, indeed, something that will help you.”

His head snaps up to meet you eye to eye. You know that he really has no reason to trust you after three mean jokes in a row, nor any reason to stay nice. The slew of heated words gets chewed behind his drawn-thin mouth, mustache working side to side. It never comes – he waves his hand dismissively.

“Do whatever you want,” he grumbles, “it can’t be worse than what I already have.”

You take the chance before he changes his mind and go back to the booth for your bag, motioning for the kids to keep eating. Your pizza will probably get to a gooey lukewarm by the time you’re done, but that’s the price you pay. Ducking into the kitchen (you can see Peppino almost protest before you get in), you quickly get a small pot, fill it with water, and set to work. Plants, fungi, minerals. Ground, sieved, boiled. It’s easier than the mash you made for Marnie’s hurts from years of experience; still, it never turns out exactly the maroon Aunt Marian tried to push you towards. You pull the pot from the heat, strain it into a coffee mug, and bring it back to Peppino.

He eyes you skeptically. You motion to the white porcelain wordlessly. He sighs, takes its handle, and samples with a small, hesitant sip.

“This is tea,” he deadpans.

“That’s alchemy,” you retort. “If it’s bitter, honey always helps.”

“I don’t even feel better, what is this? You studied to make tea?”

Sarcasm, you realize, does not feel as good when you’re the one being sassed. You feel your own annoyance growing in turn. “I studied to learn what was safe to put into that ‘tea’, in what dosage, and in what combinations. Specifically, so that it will not kill anyone.”

“Oh, I see, yes that is something that is worth a whole school.” Peppino’s back straightens as he goes on rolling you over the coals, draining the mug halfway in a single pull. “Magic tea. I could have gone to school to learn how to cook when I already knew how from learning at home.”

You both realize a moment later what happened. Peppino scowls and slouches again. You regain the upper hand in smugness, leaning over the counter with an elbow for support.

“Magic tea?” You cheerily repeat. “Ok! You made your point.” He gets up, shooing you from out behind the counter. “No customers back here anymore!”

You laugh as you go back to your lukewarm pizza and giggling children.

---

You take Thomas, Aggie, and Marnie back to their homes in the truck after you all retrace your steps through the woods. Incidentally, they happen to live on neighboring farms. Aggie and Marnie’s parents thank you profusely when you drop the girls off. You’re thankful the salve has done its job by the time they go back, neither of them has to explain what never left a mark. Thomas’ mother, on the other hand, gives her boy hell for staying out so late and not telling her, then makes him apologize for making you take him home.

You feel fulfilled after today’s work. Tired from all the hiking but fulfilled. You helped some people, you got some headway in repairing your repute with Peppino, and you got a good meal out of it. There’s even half a pizza for you to heat up later. You're not sure why you keep trying with him, anyways. You don't think on it very long either - chalk it up to liking the food.

“Miao.”

You’ve heard the same pitiful, damnable noise before on your first day here. When you open the front door, lo and behold, the same tabby is sitting on the porch.

“Miao,” it squeaks again.

“I’m not falling for that.”

“Miao.”

“I already told you once, I’m not helping you again. You’ll just tear my trash bags open.”

“Miao.” It looks up at you with sad, wide eyes. You sigh.

“Ok, you make a convincing argument. But this is temporary, got it?”

“Miao.”

Somehow understanding the agreement, the cat weaves through your legs and into the cottage. You follow after it to sacrifice one of your tuna cans for its dinner. Ha ha, you think to yourself for the twelfth time today. Maybe you want to make friends with Peppino because you're a sucker for helping stray animals.

-------------------------------------------------------

is peppino more of a kicked puppy or a wet kitten? vote now, call 555-NOISETV. that's 555-664-7388, NOISETV (totally legitimate number). i'm not entirely happy with this one, but at least you're getting good pizza out of it. enjoy.

[taxevasiontactics]

The Godmother's Godchild [1] - Hello, World

Synopsis: After you receive news that Aunt Marian has passed away following the worst shift in your life, you decide that you are too overworked, too stressed, and too tired to deal with grief while handling your job. You escape to the cottage that she left for you to try and recuperate. The town it's in is so small you nearly miss it on the map - the perfect place, so long as you don't get into any trouble.

Warning: Minor Character Death (mention)

You have to admit. Even from the vantage point of her kitschy kitchen tile floor, Aunt Marian had impeccable taste in décor.

You remember walking into a fancy lawyer’s office in a haze; barely awake, fresh out of a double shift at the hospital, still reeling from the fact that even the kindest and most magical people (godmother, both ways) can pass away from old age. Aunt Marian wasn’t stingy about her secrets in life. Told you who she was, what she did with the funny bottles and sparkles, and proudly mentored you into university. Medical Alchemy Practitioner. A doctor.

It feels like just yesterday she was checking in on you after an absolute knockout rush. Ragging on at your work, like always, because she just can’t leave well enough alone when there’s room for improvement – and there is always room for improvement.

You call that “maroon”? Come on, now. I have another trick for you, roll up your sleeves and start the boiler again.

Don’t even start, she knows that’s as red as these ingredients will let you get.  You don’t have the luxury she gets with her garden.

And that’s where the trick comes in. Someday, you’ll have to figure this out on your own without good ingredients or good odds. Quit being a donkey and let’s get to work.

It was sudden – poof, into thin air, and she was gone. She’d left an old house perched on some coastal cliff in the middle of nowhere and all its contents to you in her will. “Do with it what you want”, the lawyer rattled off from the magically and legally binding paper. “Sell it, live in it, use it how you please. It’s yours, little branch. Do what makes you happy.”

Even as you grieved, the rest of your life kept weighing on your back. The house was on your mind every time you came home exhausted. You wanted out. You wanted a break. Most of all, you wanted to make sure that the place was something Aunt Marian would’ve been proud of before you started looking for buyers. You went away, leaving an uncertain “return to work” date on HR’s desk.

“Eugh…”

So, here you are, sifting through the contents of Aunt Marian’s unemptied fridge and cursing to yourself that you didn’t think to put a fume mask on. You again wish you talked with her more often, maybe then you wouldn’t have to dig so much weird stuff out from the dark recesses. Like goblin cheese, wedged between an old pack of pepperoni slices and a perfectly organized shelf of reagents. Who the hell buys goblin cheese these days? ---

It takes a while to haul all the spoiled food out, but you’ve got it done and stuffed into a nearly overfilled bin. The town has a garbage collection service; thank goodness for that, you don’t think you could’ve fit all of that in your truck bed without something noxious bursting. You still feel bad for the stretched, plastic bin.

“Thank you for carrying my Aunt’s incredibly stinky and overdue burden,” you tell it with a pat on its lid. “You’re a very good trash bin.”

“Miao,” says the trash bin in return.

“Yes, miao to you too.”

You pause only when you realize that you can’t talk to inanimate objects. Even if you did suddenly develop the ability – which is very difficult, Aunt Marian told you once, so apologizing to things you knock over is like speaking in reverse Spanish to someone from the Arctic - you’re fairly certain that a trash bin would not meow.

You investigate the bin further to find a scrappy tabby rubbing its face against the angular sides. No collar. Small chip out of the ear. Funny bend in its tail.

“Poor thing, you must be a stray…”

“Miao.”

You kneel, reach out, and tuck a knuckle under its chin. It seems to appreciate the act, leaning into your finger as you rub its rough jaw from below. You know you should probably be getting back to work on cleaning out the kitchen, considering the sun is starting to get low and you have yet to cook dinner for yourself, but a small break with a cute thing like this is no foul. You came out here to try and get on with your grief (as far as you can anyways) with a break from constant work. This is de-stressing. Yes, you are feeling so very relaxed right now.

The cat takes this moment to jump onto your back from the perfect vantage point, rip open a trash bag from the overflowing bin, and make off with some unknown prize of infinite spoilage. You watch it go, slack jawed, in disbelief that you were suckered by a cat of all things.

“Wha- hey!”

Still, you really can’t let the cat eat an unknown, probably spoiled object in good conscience. You run after it with a graceful takeoff, like a flipper-less duck off of a maple syrup lake that bounces twice off its surface before achieving lift, in quickly fleeting hopes of wrenching the expired substance away.

The chase makes you thankful for every marathon day you ever worked. Your quarry drags you through bushes, runs circles off the road, and leads you so far away that you don’t even know where the cottage is at this point; but you keep chasing. You are a human. You are an endurance predator. You will outlast this cat. You will get this cat! You will get the smelly thing out of its mouth! You will watch it run right back onto the road in front of a speeding vespa, stopping stock still in front of its tires!

You are a human with (what you like to think is) a healthy amount of self-preservation, but you also have an entire degree in the art of ‘saving things’. Your eyes bulge out of your head as you run into the road too, desperately waving at the driver to try and get him to stop. You can see his entire body jerk back, face as white as a sheet, and heels digging into the ground when you throw yourself towards the animal.

“Wait- WAIT! HOLD ON! CAT! CAT ON THE ROAD! STOP!”

“YEAOUGH-!”

Brakes squeal. Dust flies. Your stomach hits and grinds against dirt when you land and snatch the cat by its scruff. You feel the front tire bump against your side. When it doesn’t roll over you and squash ribs four through six from lateral to lateral, you risk taking a sigh of relief as you get up. The driver sees what you dove for as you stand. In an instant, the color returns to his face with a tint of red. His foot jerkily flicks his bike rest into place as he yanks his helmet off.

“Hey, hey! What’s the big idea, eh?! You crazy?!” His voice is strained, shouting, and rolling his R’s the more worked up he gets. He rounds the two-wheeled motor to get right in your face – and, boy, what a presence he is. “You tryna get the both of us killed?!”

His volume is intimidating enough by virtue of volume alone, but that isn’t what catches you. What really catches you is that he’s big. Not big in the sense that he looms over you, you mostly see eye to eye. No, the man is wide, two tree trunks for legs solidly supporting a rounded stomach, leading up to a broad chest and arms to match. The guy looks like he could huck the idling vehicle without breaking a sweat – and with modest accuracy, too. He’s radiating heat while his hands flicker back and forth, chewing you out for your ill-advised attempt at meeting God. His round face is scrunched up and getting more frustrated by the minute. The combover’s doing a poor job of hiding his temper, vein starting to pop on his forehead. You note that his nose is slightly crooked above a slightly bushy mustache when he leans in, like it healed incorrectly.

“Are you listening?!”

You snap back into focus, analysis cut short. Shouting is one thing, him waving his hand in your face is another. You used to hate it when people did that. It got you riled up once upon a time, ready to yell back. Instead, you hold up the creature that started it all as an explanation, dripping plastic bag full of goop still hanging from its mouth.

“I was cleaning, found this cat by the bin, and it tried to run off with” -you pull the packaging from its mouth to emphasize the grossness. It rips slightly, treating you both to the sight and smell of expired pickled egg- “something that it probably shouldn’t eat. It might have made it sick.”

His face twists from anger to disgust and disappointment. Wait, is that a white tank top over a black shirt? What? That’s a terrible choice. “That doesn’t mean you have to jump in front of a bike for it.”

“Well, I wasn’t expecting it to run into the road. I was focused on chasing it, not minding someone speeding.”

“There isn’t even any signage posted, fast is the only speed limit-”

“Wait, better one for you, actually. Why didn’t you look out for people crossing the long, straight road?”

“Why didn’t you look out for someone coming down the- look, I don’t have time for this!” He throws his hands into the air, yanking the helmet onto his head again. “I’m gonna be late. Have fun with your cat, or whatever it is you were doing. Don’t jump in front of things for stupid reasons!”

With that, he jumps back on his vespa with a murmured line or two in a language you don’t understand (but have a fairly good idea on the meaning) before speeding off again. You scowl after him. The only thing you can think to do is stick your tongue out after his retreating figure.

“What a shame. I don’t even have his name to insult,” you tell the cat. It says nothing in return. You set it back on the ground and make a very disapproving shake of the head at it. “Very clever, cat. Don’t dig in the trash anymore, alright? I’m not going to chase after you next time. It’s your own fault if you eat something gross and get sick.”

“Miao.” It is entirely unflummoxed to be manhandled and divested of its dinner.

“…Alright. Good talk.”

“Miao.”

It trots off up the road, tail curled up high above itself. You assume it’s going home and follow suit, turning the other way with a running list on how to protect your trash from future would-be thieves.

---

You realize that you never had time to get anything to cook by the time you finish cleaning the kitchen. The sun is low, meaning the town’s grocer is probably closed by now. You are out of luck, out of time, and left with a growling stomach empty from a day of physical labor. It’s left you with a craving for a box of cheap pizza and cheaper beer to wash it down from years of helping friends move in college. You get up, suddenly, the thought sticking in your head hopefully.

Even somewhere like this nowheresville has to have a pizza delivery place somewhere. Capitalism can’t fail you on this front.

Your efforts are rewarded after a quick location search. No Pizza Hut, no Dominos, but a place called Peppino’s Pizza (standard American-Italian branding name and slogan “The best-a pizza in-a  town-a!”, at least the mascot character is cute) blessedly delivers this late into the night. No online ordering form, but one measly phone call is a concession you can make for hot n’ ready, carb-and-fat goodness.

The call is pleasant enough, too. A kind voice by the name of “Gustavo” (they’re really putting emphasis on Italian here) takes your order, promising a delivery time of thirty minutes or less – or it’s free! You gather up the paper payment, making sure to include the tip. You’ve done your time in graveyard jobs, it’s only right to pay it forward to the next generation.

As promised, within thirty minutes, you get a knock at the front door.

“Hi, thanks for-“

“Delivery from Peppino’s-“

You come face to face with the exact same guy from earlier, still wearing the stupid t-shirt-tank-top getup. In a moment of brilliant association, you realize you probably should have put two and two together earlier. Vespa, accent, “I’m late”, the faint smell of pizza as he took off.

He suddenly looks very uncomfortable on the other side of the doorway with one shoe digging into the ground. You can only assume he’s doing a very strenuous mental routine remembering your earlier interaction.

“So that means you’re, ah…” He clears his throat, finding the doorframe very inviting to stare at. “You’re the one who took over Mama Marian’s place. Are you also a uh… miracle worker?”

You tilt your head. “I wouldn’t call it working miracles. I don’t think I’m even allowed to practice medicine here. I’m not taking over either, I’m just here for a little while.”

“A-ha, so it is, so it is…”

You both continue to stand there awkwardly for a good few seconds. A cricket chirps somewhere in the distance. The man clears his throat again, stiffly holding out your order.

“Thanks.” You take it, exchanging the goods for a wad of bills. “Plus tip. Look, about earlier-“

“It’s fine! It’s very fine,” he says, clearly not fine and itching to get off of your doorstep thanks to the mortification of trying to pretend it never happened at all. “We get off on the wrong foot, we leave it at that. I’m very sorry for yelling at you. Very sorry.”

You feel whiplash comparing the current situation with the last. What happened between then and now? He was spitting mad earlier, now he’s acting like you’ll bite his head off! Aunt Marian can’t have built that bad of a reputation here. You inwardly groan, set the pizza aside, and follow the step he takes in retreat.

“Agreed.” You hold out your hand. He flinches back. “We can make it up by starting from the top.”

“The top?”

“Introductions.”

You start. Your name and title, even if he’d already figured out the latter. He takes you up on the fresh start, shaking hands with a sweaty palm.

“Peppino.”

Oh, so he’s the owner of the pizza place.

“Peppino Spaghetti.”

“Spaghetti.” Your constrained laugh must be showing if he’s already frowning. “Your last name is Spaghetti.”

“Yes, my last name is Spaghetti, ha ha ha. Laugh it up.”

“Wait.” You turn back towards the box, pointing to the cutesy, cherubic mascot printed in red. You don’t know if it’s the delirium that comes with hunger, but the hilarity is multiplied tenfold knowing that this isn’t some half-assed attempt at ‘authenticity’. “That means that’s you on the pizza box? Peppino Spaghetti, that’s you!”

He turns away, olive branch deftly dropped onto the ground. “Ok, I’m wasting my time here. Good night!”

“Wait! I’m sorry!” You try to control the sniggering, to little avail. It’s already loose. “Really!”

Peppino doesn’t listen, muttering to himself again (something something, culo?) as he jams his helmet back on and speeds back into the night. By the time you muster something better to say than ‘sorry’, he’s already a small, halogen-yellow dot on the road.

You sigh. Oh well. You head back inside, intent on enjoying your dinner while it’s still hot. If you wanted to piss him off, then you did a fine job of it. You could always try apologizing later. You have a feeling it won’t be the last time you see him, anyways.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

so uh. hey. first time actually writing and posting fanfic anywhere. fair warning, i do intend for this to be kind of a slow burn. it's fun to write for a character that has little to no canonical personality because i get to do mostly anything i want, dohoho. also a challenge to see how long i can go without explicitly needing to describe the reader in any capacity. enjoy, either way.

[taxevasiontactics]

What to expect

granted, this is the first time i've ever done something like this so lmao i have no idea what i'm doing, let's see how it goes. i'm mainly going to be posting stuff here without any real rhyme or reason other than "i felt like it". the main goal is to do exactly what it says on the tin.

be absolutely, utterly, and totally shameless in self indulgence. thanks.