thelastfountain-blog

[thelastfountain-blog]

The Last Fountain

AN: Hullo. I’m the omniscient, overarching voice behind this Tumblr. My name isn’t really important for the time being. For now, I just wanted to say that this Tumblr is here with hopes that I’ll get my writing mojo fully back again and to help me flesh out Eneith, Jarrick and the rest of the gang at The Last Fountain- the best tea shop in the multiverse. If people ever actually read any of this, I’ll be highly surprised, but ho hum. We’ll see what is to come. For now, on with the show.

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A moment of introduction, history, and a pot of tea.

Today’s brew: Root-Seed. Brewing temperature: 37 degrees. Brewing time: Anywhere from ten minutes to eighteen years depending on the quality of the seed. A decent seed will only require a handful of years in a bone pot to brew correctly. Colour: an iridescent muieal* with hints of ceochre* when brewed to perfection. Aroma: remember the first book you ever read that made you cry? The smell of the pages of that book are captured to perfection in a well brewed cup of Root-Seed. Taste: A hint of sweet remembrance, cut with a distinctly nutty hit of nostalgia. If brewed incorrectly will taste like salt and bitter memories. Serving suggestion: best not to temper Root-Seed with any unnecessary additions as the brew can be exceptionally complex at the best of times and an absolute pain in the backside to make at the worst. Serve in a well used, but well kept mug, with a couple of biscuits on the side. ---

First Generation Brewer: Katherine “Kitty” Joanna Everstaine-Banks.The Godmother of Tea

The Last Fountain was established back in the year of the Jackalope Invasion. During the Jackalope Invasion, a fair few more soldiers made their way through the Fountain’s original location of Littlesea Parish, Underside, W681 on their way to the Gateshead Harbours and on to the ships that would take them off to face the fuzzy menace.

(A Jackalope, as we all know, is a rabbit creature with deer antlers. What they don’t tell you is that they can get up to about 10 hands high and the sharper a Jackalope’s antlers, the more chance he has to get a better mate (the smaller, antler-less Jillalope), and so many soldiers were lost to vicious, but adorable disembowelments.)

Since these soldiers came from all over the Underside and a few places beyond as well, they were travelling most of the time, with their families and loved ones. Littlesea Parish was known for many things. Its name sake, for example, a stunning saltwater lake that for some inexplicable reason had the same amount of pressure as the bottom of the deepest oceans in just a 15 square mile lake. Scientists and intellectuals flocked to it regularly, but still weren’t any closer to uncovering the mysteries surround it. This meant that Littlesea Parish already had a booming hotel/bed and breakfast market with a decent number of pubs to boot.

But one thing it lacked was a decent cafe or tea shop.

Sure, the locals could brew a decent pot of your basic teas, and business owners could bring in their own people to do the job, but it was just missing that something, that spark that turns an ordinary cup of tea from ‘rush it down with breakfast before running out of the place’ to ‘my heavens, I have seen and touched and supped the face of God from this mug, please give me more.’ Enter Katherine Joanna Everstaine-Banks, wife of Augustus Nicholas Everstaine-Banks, a local and rather prominent businessman. She was, most considered, to be the pinnacle of the brewing arts, but spent most of her time managing her husbands affairs (business affairs mind, not the extra-marital variety. Katherine- or Kitty as she was affectionately known, came from a particular family line which we will go into at a later date), and handling the business of the Everstaine-Banks manor and their six, now almost all adult, children.

With the war coming and changing how Augustus would handle business for a while, and four of their six children off to join the efforts against the invasion, Kitty found herself with an awful lot more time on her hands and not much to do with it. Not one for sitting around all day with nothing to do, Kitty decided to do something in the parish for the soldiers and their families. Another bed and breakfast? No, the Gurtzwuld’s had that market most solidly cornered with their efforts. A hotel perhaps? No. If the Higginson’s even smelled a whiff of a rumour that another hotel was going up to rival their chain, Mariana Higginson would be all over her like a bad case of saltpox and that would make several social encounters between their husbands dreadfully uncomfortable.

Taking lunch one day with the ladies in the tea room of the Higginson Littlesea Banks, Kitty was listening to another friend, Shashanna Gurtzwuld hold court to all at the table who would listen. The outspoken heiress was reminiscing about the old days and about how you couldn’t get a decent cup of tea around here for love nor money nor anything else you were willing to trade. In fact, stated Shashanna in a frank manner, there was probably nowhere left in the entirety of Underside, nor the rest of the globe where you could find someone who knew how to make a proper cup. Mariana took slight offence to this, considering they were sitting in her tea room, in her hotel at the time and gestured to her own cup of quite off-colour ’Pasithea’ as an example of how good a tea her staff could brew. Shashanna snorted, getting ready to launch into another one of her heavily opinionated dialogues when Kitty spoke up quietly, agreeing with Shashanna for the first time about something. The tea had been brewed wrong. Pasithea was supposed to be a relaxing tea. But the batch they were drinking had been brewed by what felt like the very personification of stress. Once again, Mariana took umbrage to this statement and told Kitty, in no uncertain terms, that if she wanted to do better, she’d love to see her try.

Three months later, The Last Fountain opened in the heart of Littlesea Parish. Kitty had been very specific about certain architectural constraints for the tea shop. There were individual rooms on the second floor that were recommended if drinking specific brews- a patron drinking Fa-T-Gued  for example, wouldn’t want to be downstairs at a table when they finally slumped over from the effects of the tea. Kitty had spent three months designing and planning a store that almost seemed like its own entity. Not sure what brew you needed when you walked through the door? The Fountain knew. Maybe it was something to do with the heartswood the place was built from, maybe it was the hooded figures who visited the place and spoke at length with Kitty the night before opening who placed a spell over the shop to make it almost sentient? Maybe it was haunted? No-one knew for sure, and neither the Fountain, nor Kitty, would ever divulge the truth to any except the next brewer.

Kitty was the Mistress of Brews at the Fountain for nearly thirty-six years from the day it opened. She outlived Augustus by twenty-six long years and two of her children by sixteen years. But her sorrow and heartache at these losses never came through into her work, unless it had to. Of her four remaining children, Kitty stayed in constant contact with all of them, but one in particular always came to the Fountain to visit and to help. Her youngest son, Tycho Alesander Everstaine-Banks. It came as no surprise to any, that on her eighty-second birthday, she named Tycho the next Master of Brews for the Fountain. He was forty-six, the same age as Kitty when she first opened the doors. She hoped that Tycho would continue on her path. But Tycho had his own ideas. Next: Second Generation Brewer: Tycho Alesander Everstaine-Banks.

* Glossary:

Muieal: A depressed shade of teal. Ceochre: The orange colour of flames when you dream.