REACTION SPEED [Heroic: failure] - a single ravioli, damp from the water, still pleasantly steaming, lands with a defeated slap, on the linoleum floor. You see it happen, watch it flip through the air, like an Olympic bronze off the high-dive, or a suicidal veteran of war. you feel yourself shout a "No!", but it is too late. there, the ravioli, impossibly, lays limp.
FORSAKEN RAVIOLI - Why, it thinks, why me? For all the time I was grown and processed then crafted and for all the time I have waited for the only purpose which I was made for. To be cast so suddenly, so errantly, into the realm of the beyond? Beyond savior.
DRAMA - And here you stand, clad like a captain with your wooden spoon, watching as an honorable soldier, nay, a man, lies without your hand to aid him, on the kitchen floor.
VOLITION - you must act, now! first it must be picked up, then its fate can be decided.
COMPOSURE - Its fate is the trash.
AUTHORITY - Its fate is the trash.
YOU - You pick up the ravioli, it is hot, nearly still boiling, gushing steam and hot pasta blood down your hand. It hurts, but standing here, there is nowhere else for it.
PERCEPTION - It looks fine...
LOGIC - Don't do this.
SHIVERS [Heroic: Success] - Somewhere southeast of here, perhaps hundreds of miles, grain sprouts in a field, rich wheat, and butternut squash, only an acre over. The wind whistles through the fields, running like gleeful children through the tiny, green plants. Some will be eaten by birds, worms, or moles, but some will reach high into the sky, where they will be plucked and ground into pasta dough. You have seen the birthplace of this soldier. It is humble, a beautiful childhood, and so, so long ago. An entire pasta-lifetime, now.
FORSAKEN RAVIOLI - I thought I had finally made it. And with my brethren...
YOU - You look at the bowl, the rest of the ravioli, steaming in mournful, pyrrhic celebration.
My company...
EMPATHY - This ravioli could be you. You can't give up on it now. Not because of your own mistake.
AUTHORITY - This is not what a dignified man would do. send him off and mourn, perhaps, but do not spend one moment more considering his limp, cooling corpse.
DRAMA - Where has your heart gone, O Honorable One?
Authority - …
EMPATHY - the greatest service you could do for this little soldier, and for all those beyond you that forged him, is to eat him. What else is rightfully to be done?
VISUAL CALCULUS - It was on the floor for less than 4.7 whole seconds.
ENCYLOPEDIA - most forms of bacterium are able to jump, especially to wet materials, in about 1.2-
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT - any residue on your kitchen floor may well be material which was once already in your stomach.
CONCEPTUALIZATION - if you think about it, that means you've already kind of eaten the ravioli.
INLAND EMPIRE - From the Floor, Of the Floor, To the Floor. To be, or not to be, one with this eternal cycle?
ENDURANCE - Anything the floor could not contain, you could digest. (with VOLITION) We are iron.
HALF LIGHT - Bite into its soft, warm flesh.
EMPATHY - Give it peace.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY - Eat the floor-violi, pasta slut!
YOU - weeping, bring the ravioli to your lips, and then, impossibly, with infinite mercy, love, bring it into you. It tastes fantastic. You would have never know it was on the floor at all. You can feel the hum of satisfaction, the glory of it in your lungs, swelling to fill you more than even a pasta-feast could. This is the mercy you wish your God could cast on you, when you fall.
KIM KITSURAGI - "Harry,"
