More moly and another chance to create a cure. This time, Lex had brought a jug of maple syrup to experiment with. Syrup was delicious and maybe the sticky and sugary taste would mask any of the flowers. Besides, Maple candy was a thing wasn’t it?
How hard could it be to make maple candy?
It turns out that maple syrup boiled over in a menacing brown foam, that swamped the pot and the handle and dripped onto the fire and made everything smell of burning.
Burning sugar and herbs, and hot metal. Not a good combo. They frowned at the pot, having dropped it in the dirt, so now a mess of swamp, sugar, and moly and fire. … Greatttt.
Lex breathed slowly and brought their supplies over, slowly working through what they had brought. Water, brown sugar, and maple syrup from before. Pot and pan from before. They had added flour, yeast, baking soda, powder, and salt. The basics of any sort of recipe…
Except they didn’t have anything like measurement cups. Lex hummed slightly and shrugged. Toss and stir and count it good.
The resulting product was interesting…. Some sort of hard biscuit like bread. Maybe they hadn’t added enough yeast? Lex prodded the three hard tack and gave a soft hum noise. Well… at least it looked edible.
He tacked a bear…who turned into a naked man. A naked Rafe and the image was stuck in his brain. Lex gave a soft pff noise, prepping the moly once more. Crush stem, pull petals, simmer till essence is abstracted, pour into brown sugar, mold and cook till harden slightly.
Cut into small squares and wrap up in parchment paper – new addition, to keep out pocket lint and moisture, and join the growing collection of cures made.
Songtao tried to make a cure! +1 for Demeter hijinks.
Whimsical Blue rolled 1 6-sided dice:
2Total: 2 (1-6)
Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2016 4:11 pm
Alone in 'camp', Sid had stolen away to a side room to fiddle around with the Moly flower she had found while rescuing Olivia. It was small and delicate, almost enough to make her wonder if this thing was really what they had used to change her back from a Macaw. It was so... unimpressive. She was, thankfully, quite human again, but having a flower in hand made her think maybe it would be a good idea to turn it into a couple of cures to tuck into a pocket, just in case. Not that she really knew what to do with it... but the whole problem, from what she had heard, was just that the flower was terrible, eaten on its own. So all the cures so far had been attempts to disguise the taste. That, she could maybe do something about.
Where Sid had gotten the bottle of vodka, who could say? Among her many remarkable talents was an ability to get her thin fingers on things others might have trouble with. She never shared the How of it with anyone who wasn't a partner and questions just earned a sly, teasing smile.
I have my methods.
It wasn't exactly the best vodka, but it had a high enough proof to satisfy the DJ as she plunked it down on one of the tables. Three emptied bottles went beside, ready and waiting for the cures she planned to produce. The moly flower she pulled from her hair and spun between her fingers with a thoughtful look, watching the white petals turn. A cook, she was not, but she knew alcohol as well as any chosen of Dionysus. There were many, many things you could put into alcohol, either to consume as is or to sit and infuse the alcohol with flavor. It seemed like a good enough way to get whatever was in this flower into something she could get into someone else... and the burn of the alcohol should be enough to cover the supposedly horrendous taste of it. She'd heard enough from others to know it was bad, but if anything should cover it, it would be vodka. She could even add some mixes later, turn it into something shot worthy.
A pair of cleaned, smooth stones did service as a muddler, since she didn't have one on hand. It was important to crush the plant up to really release the juices inside. Once that was done, Sidney brushed the bits together and shifted them to the mouth of the bottle in pinches, stuffing them down inside till they fell. Once it was all down the neck, she twisted the cap back on and gave it a good shake. Plant bits swirled around the bottle when she set it back down and at that point, it was a matter of waiting. The vodka needed time to infuse and, since she couldn't drink it now, Sid herself needed a drink.
The bottle was left to do its thing, flower bits floating around the top of the liquid. When Sid finally retrieved it, the once-clear vodka had darkened to amber, the flower bits blackened. It looked... terrible, but at least she wouldn't have to drink it. Some testing was needed though.. and she happened to know of a certain boar that had been brought in recently.
Perfect.
A third of the vodka went into a smaller soda bottle, prepped and ready as she went to find the pig in question. He was laying out by the first, sleeping off the beating he'd received, when she approached.
"Hey dude..." Sid crooned as she came close, her empty hand up and the other displaying the bottle of Moly infused vodka. "I got a treat for you. Turn you right back into a human, eh? Whatcha say?"
The look she received as dubious, but she refused to be disheartened. She had this down. This was going to work. Twisting off the cap, she knelt down to shove the end into the boar's mouth, and while it didn't appreciate the handling, it gave a long suffering sigh and drank down the concoction.
The effects... were not what she had hoped for.
The boar squealed as it surged to its little trotters, knocking Sid flat on her a** as it spun and took off around the side of the inn. It screamed like someone was trying to kill it and the DJ scowled as she pushed herself up, her hair a mess across her forehead.
"Ingrate." She growled as she climbed to her feet. The bottle with what was left of the vodka was chucked into the fire and she went stomping off to find another drink for herself. There had to be someone who would appreciate that she'd tried, even if she'd failed.
After all, he was a chemist. He was a chemist with a doctorate, at that. (He paid a lot of money to prove his knowledge, dammit. Or he had paid a lot of loan money, anyway--) He worked in toxicology. Making weird mixtures of things that were effective was his purview. It could even be said that he was an expert in the field.
Of course, antidotes and things that were actually helpful to other people was more of his husband's purview, but that wasn't really the point here, was it--
Zebulon looked over one of the moly flowers he had found. Hm.
If it was the flower itself that cured, Zebulon needed to figure out what part of the flower had the most curing potential. Where would the cure be the most potent in the flower? Perhaps he could use that part to mix some kind of liquid drink. Getting the animals over there to drink might be a bit easier than just trying to shove something into their mouths.
He really didn't have much interest in sticking his hands into some weird personimal's mouth anyway. Didn't sound like a good time. He'd pass.
The easiest way to make a drink would be to strain the flower, right? There were a lot of flowery teas. He lost count of the number of times that he heard that a tea had rosebud or lavender or some other odd plant inside it, strained with hot liquid to make a tea. And warm teas tended to be soothing with some level of healing properties on their own. Maybe he could just make a tea out of this thing?
Carefully, he put together his makeshift tea-making setup. He set himself a small fire, getting himself a pot that was sitting around and warming it up. While he barely trusted the water himself, he doubted it mattered overly much for a cure-making base, so Zebulon looked around for some spare water and poured it into the pot once he found it. Then, for a makeshift strainer, he found a sturdy leaf and poked some holes into it, wrapping the moly flower in the leaf. Unceremoniously, he plunked it into his mixture and waited for it to act.
After a few minutes, he noticed the water had changed into something that definitely looked more tea-like, so he fished the leaf out and poured the mixture into a bowl. There. Now just to feed it to one of the personimals and see if they turned back into a normal person.
Of course, it smelled really foul. The animal senses of the personimals seemed to take offense to that, and when he approached the animals with it, a lot of them made gagging noises or motions before quickly trying to get away from him.
Okay, maybe he needed to try something else...
2+1=3 (no cures)
Character Name:Zebulon Castaneda Brief description of character: Zebulon accompanies his even temper and clear mind with an oft-frustrating tendency to be snarky even in the most serious moments, needling people far past the point he should. Tagging along is a need for control, tempered by the fact that he does usually know what he's talking about. His normal ease seems lessened at current, though his control over himself is back now that he's removed enough from the conflict with the metal vulture.
Clearly, he needed to make this particular batch of whatever he was going to make a little more appealing, so the animals would actually, well, drink it. Whatever he had mixed up before was clearly foul, and the personimals were having absolutely none of it. He couldn't blame them entirely--no one liked the taste of medicine, most of the time it was disgusting or masked with a taste that was slightly less disgusting--but didn't their parents ever force them to just take the disgusting medicine anyway?
Zebulon sighed.
He sat himself down, laying out the flower on a nearby rock. What was he supposed to do with this? Perhaps there was something in the flower that made the tea disgusting? Maybe he shouldn't've have brewed the whole thing. Didn't a lot of those teas only have the petals in them, or the leaves, and not the stems? Keeping the stem attached might have been his error.
Deciding that he was going to just work with the petals this time, he quickly set to work separating the petals from the stem. Each one was unceremoniously plucked off and placed into a pile, and he stuck the stem on the side. He wasn't sure what he was going to do with the stem, but perhaps he'd figure something out...
His pot still seemed to be rather hot, so perhaps he could just make a new brew?
Zebulon located some more water and dumped it into the pot, before finding another strainer leaf. Perfect! After spliting the petals in an attempt to make sure all the possible nutrients could be strained, he placed the petal bits into the leaf. This one, he tied closed with the stem that he had remaining.
After a few minutes of sitting in the water, Zebulon had a much more pleasant smelling version of his terrible concoction ready. Perhaps he could get the personimals to actually drink this version? He found another bottle to pour the makeshift tea in before heading over the animals and attempting to entice them with it.
And he was in luck: this time, they actually came up.
Excitedly, Zebulon focused his attentions on the seal he had brought back with Diryas. Time to test his concoction. "Alright, I'm hoping this will work and cure y'all. Give it a try?"
He poured the drink into the seal's mouth and waited a moment. And then another. And another.
Nothing happened, until the seal suddenly shrunk back, making some odd noises that almost sounded like gagging. Zebulon cringed, watching as all the animals scattered away, the seal's response clearly scaring the rest of them off.
How had he done so badly?! Clearly he needed to ask Diryas more about how medicine actually worked...
3+1=4 (no cures)
Character Name:Zebulon Castaneda Brief description of character: Zebulon accompanies his even temper and clear mind with an oft-frustrating tendency to be snarky even in the most serious moments, needling people far past the point he should. Tagging along is a need for control, tempered by the fact that he does usually know what he's talking about. His normal ease seems lessened at current, though his control over himself is back now that he's removed enough from the conflict with the metal vulture.
Despite her colossal failure creating an edible, viable cure with the first moly flower she’d found, she had acquired three more, and she didn’t really know what else to do but to try again. She wanted to try for something sweet again, though she didn’t trust herself with the sugar (or salt). What else could she use? She scanned the shelves of the kitchen and found some chocolate bars -- chocolate had some promise. She had never worked with it, and she was aware of the risks of burning it, but maybe it was worth a shot.
She remembered enough from the Food Channel to know that, without a microwave, her best bet was to try and make a double-broiler. She didn’t even really know what one looked like, but she found a metal mixing bowl and a pan and decided to wing it. She started boiling the water and unwrapping the chocolate bars while she tried to figure out her plan. She could just dip the flower in the chocolate, but that still seemed like a cover-up rather than a solution. Maybe if she cut the flower into smaller bits? Maybe she could dry the flowers and crunch them up into the chocolate? She plopped the chocolate into the metal bowl and placed it over the now-boiling water as she mulled over her options.
Sylvia tried not to stir the chocolate too much. She decided against the idea of dried flowers -- it would take days to do so -- so between stirring breaks, she worked at slicing the flower petals into small strips, and then smaller squares. It wasn’t perfect, but hopefully it would work well enough.
She was supremely pleased and impressed with herself when the chocolate remained smooth until she was ready to remove it from the heat. She sprinkled her petals in and stirred, and everything seemed fine. This just might work. She found some aluminum foil and formed a makeshift container for her chocolate, then poured it in and left it in the fridge.
A little while later she came back to check, and it was solid. She carefully peeled the foil away and cut the chocolate bar into three cubes. And then she took a breath. She couldn’t be sure until they tried, but it looked like a success!
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