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This was a really cute fluff piece! Poor Gall, throwing out hints left and right and Derik resolutely not noticing them.

(And now I have a sad knowing they don't work out in the end, because they're just so cute here and I want my OTPs to be happy, dangit.)

Gall thunked her third glass of mead down on the table and stared across it at her partner. “You’ve never cooked for yourself? Not once?”

“Why would I?” Derik glowered at her, taking umbrage at her extreme disbelief. “More to the point: when would I? My time was thoroughly occupied with studying, then raising a dragonet, then being a dragonrider.”

Frowning in skepticism, she held out her hands as though to encompass a simple object. “But it’s, like, a basic life skill.”

He snorted. “It’s called division of labor. I sing, they cook; I fly, they cook; I mission, they cook.” He indicated Rudi’s kitchen with a gesture.

“But . . . you never even cooked out or anything? You know, meat on a stick, fire, something even the biggest, dumbest idiot should be able to do without totally screwing it up?”

“With that attitude, I suppose you’re some sort of culinary expert.” He chuckled, plainly very amused with the notion.

Gall regarded him quite seriously. “My father and I lived in exile for eight years. You met my father. Who do you think made that whole thing work?”

That gave him pause. “Well, all right, but feeding yourself isn’t the same as cooking. Like you said, any idiot can roast meat on a stick, right?”

She rolled her eyes. “Freya’s tits. That’s it. You. Me. General Store. Now.”

“What? But—” He gestured to the half-finished food and drinks on the table, but Gall was already up and tugging on his arm.

“Now!”

“All right, all right!” He downed the last half of his ale as he rose and just managed to get the glass back on the table upright as he was dragged out of the pub.

Twenty minutes later, Derik found himself sitting in the moon-lit Courtyard with his sleeves rolled up and his fingers sunk into a mound of barley and wheat flour on a flat, freshly scrubbed rock. A small fire, courtesy of Fellrazer, gave additional light. Occasionally, a horse or a wolf would wander by to see what was going on, but the presence of the dragon, curled up on a patch of ground he’d toasted to a comfortable warmth, discouraged them from getting too close.

Gall hovered at Derik’s elbow, watching his progress. “Okay, you’ve got your flax, your lard, and my personal very secret ingredients that you will not share with anyone on pain of asskicking. Now just work it until it comes together—carefully! If you mess up that well, your bread is screwed. Here, look. Like this.”

She pushed up her own sleeves and slid her fingers in with his. Derik followed her guidance, and together they pulled the dry ingredients into the wet, first mixing, then kneading. Their hands got slick with the grease and flax, and slid easily over each other. After a few minutes, they had a uniform round of dough.

“There. That’s good.” Gall nodded, then gave him one of those looks, like she expected or hoped for something from him.

After a moment spent deciding how to respond, Derik folded his hands in his lap and said, “So now what?”

Gall shrugged. “It rests overnight, and we get fresh, hot bread in the morning.”

“Really.” Derik raised an eyebrow. “I don’t see an oven.”

“You don’t lug an oven around on a raid, genius.” She punched his shoulder for his quibble. “It bakes on a rack over the fire, or you wrap it around a stick. In this case, stick-bread. Only one rack to be had around here, and it ain’t for baking.” She grinned.

Derik’s mind resolutely sidled around the come-on. “In the meantime, we’ve got a lump of dough sitting on a rock in the middle of the Courtyard. What’s the plan for that?”

“Wanna camp out?”

“You don’t get enough of that on missions?”

“That’s because we have to. This is because we want to. It’s totally different.”

Try as he might, Derik couldn’t fault her logic. And it was nice to be safe from Suvians or rogue time skips under a wide, starry sky, even if it was fake. He couldn’t think why he didn’t come here more often.

“You don’t think it’ll get too cold?” he said.

“Well, if it does,” Gall started eagerly, and then, with a visible effort, turned the remark in a different direction. She’d tried the spooning for warmth tactic before, to no avail. “I’ve got Fellrazer,” she finished. “Anyway, it’s not like we’re in the Archipelago or somewhere it gets proper cold. This is nothing.”

“True enough. All right, I suppose I don’t mind. And in the morning, we’ll see if this recipe of yours actually turns out edible.” He got up to go wash off in the nearby stream.

Gall sprang up after him and gave him a shove, setting him off-balance for a step. “No, we’ll see if you aren’t a completely pathetic waste of space when it comes to practical skills.”

Once recovered, he shoved back. “I have many practical skills.”

“Oh yeah? Name one.”

“Functional literacy?”

“Nah, that’s a fancy-pants Harper skill. Try again.”

This continued while they scrubbed the fat off their hands and while Gall wrapped the bread dough in the empty barley flour package. Finally, they settled down on the grass under a large elm tree and went to sleep.

In the morning, there was fresh, hot stick-bread, it was indeed edible, and both partners considered it time well spent.

---

Viking flatbread recipe yoinked from a YouTube video I've since lost track of, based on findings from this study.

The stick-bread comes from commenters on the video, who remarked that the recipe sounds similar to something still made in Scandinavian countries today.

I kinda want to try this myself... we'll see.

~Neshomeh

And I love it.

Might analyze it further a bit later. What you mentioned about Fireworks Factory is right - reminds me of a video I saw where a guy ranted about how winter level music can't ever seem to ditch those god dang sleigh bells. If you're interested, I can find that.

-Twistey

...I could check them out and see what I can dig up music theory wise. Or you could link to a YouTube thing, either way works.

-Twistey

/deliberate misinterpretation of what you wanted to be given, activate!

Every Other Beat makes remixes of songs where every other beat is taken out. Check out their rendition of Smooth Criminal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLvDnRU_ajk

-Twistey

Let's give 'em a look, shall we?

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8P_raHQ4EoWTSH2GMESMQA

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeZLO2VgbZHeDcongKzzfOw

https://www.youtube.com/user/ongakuconcept

-Twistey

...but I don't know much about Quake. I'll click on that Quake 1 title theme because I'm retro...

What really stands out to me is the fact that it has a pattern that lasts 3 measures long, instead of a conventional power of 2. Or it's just very slow 3/4 time, take your pick.

Wait why's there someone screaming fading in and out on loop? Oh yeah, dark edgy game. It's getting ol- okay now it's fading out entirely. Good. Starting to hear that ambience now. I really like that.

Yeah, that does a really good job. Thumbs up!

-Twistey, suddenly laughing about her stupid idea for a bootleg Quake called Quack

...weren't Zeus and Hera siblings too? I mean from what I remember, they were both Cronus's children?! Or is the book I was taught out of getting it wrong?

Whatever the case, when you look into it deep enough, ancient mythologies are basically the weird stories the human race wrote when it was a kid! Am I right?

-Twisthalia (see what I did?)

Either user pages or agent pages, if they exist.

Though, every mission of mine links to my user talk page, and I think it's been used once in the many years since I started doing that. I don't know if that's because there's an aversion to it, or because the people who tend to use the wiki tend to be active and thus review when things are first published, or what.

~Neshomeh

Have a pile of multi coloured pens.

Because of our tendency to roll our own mission hosting, and double especially because a lot of stuff has moved to Google Docs, there's no good or uniform ways to leave a review (or even some sort of "I like this") on things that have fallen off the front page or that are sitting on the wiki, such as, say this Young Wizards mission by hS (thoughts: the chocolate scene at the beginning was funny, "only when so inclined" and surrounding was a nice bit of dialogue, the execution method was clever).

Does anyone have any suggestions here? (I don't, really, but pointing out the issue seemed important.)

- Tomash

And we have clearly passed it...
But let's keep going and see what happens.

I laughed so hard at this version of the story, and we clearly need more. Going down that rabbit hole is best decision ever.

But now I think about this, the fact Pirithous is a son of Zeus and wanted to marry a daugther of Zeus... barf.

Ixion and Dia

Ixion was a son of Phlegyas the Lapith king, and of his wife who no-one bothered to name. Typical, isn't it? Anyway, Ixion agreed to marry Dia, daughter of Eioneus, promising rich bridal gifts and inviting Eioneus to a banquet. You'll note that he didn't invite Dia, or even speak to her. Again - typical.

Of course, it turned out that Ixion had no intention of paying the bribe he was offering Dia's dad. He set a pitfall in front of his palace, with a great charcoal fire underneath, into which the unsuspecting Eioneus fell and was burned.

(The gods, of course, receive sacrifices through burning; I have it on good authority that a certain someone whose name rhymes with Blapollo was heartily sick after sniffing this one.)

Though every woman on Olympos thought this a heinous deed, and refused to purify Ixion, Zeus, having 'behaved equally ill himself when in love' (yes, that's an actual quote; some of these mythtellers are on my side), not only purified the wretch but brought him to eat at his table.

I - sorry, Hera, the divine Queen of Heaven, absolutely refused to share a meal with that beast. Luckily, she had Nephele, a cloud-form that she used for... certain... recreational purposes; it was a simple matter to transform it to look like herself, and send it to the meal in her stead.

The Queen then paid a visit to poor Dia. With her father dead, and her husband an outlawed, abusive sociopath, she was in sore need of comfort, and Hera was happy to oblige.

Things were going exceedingly well, when suddenly there was a clattering of hooves. Barely had Hera hidden herself behind a pillar when a horse cantered in, twenty hands tall, crowned with lightning, and very obviously a stallion, if you take my meaning. Poor Dia was caught entirely unprepared, and, well, there are none who can stand between Zeus the Thunderer and his desires.

Yes, Zeus, realising that Ixion's presence on Olympos had left his beautiful wife alone, had sculpted his own, inferior cloud-form and snuck down to the mortal realm to have his way with her. I know the Zeus-cloud was inferior, because a quality cloud-image would never have allowed what happened at the high table.

Ixion, obviously, was utterly ungrateful of his undeserved honours, and planned to seduce Hera. Being completely without a functioning brain, he did this with only the barest attempt at subtlety, and there was no-one in the great temple who didn't know what was going on.

Yes, they all allowed this mortal to outright assault the Queen of Heaven, and yes, very harsh words were had on my - sorry, her - return. The cloud Nephele was built to be receptive to such advances, but someone should have done something. Not least any properly-designed Zeus-cloud - you'd think 'protect my wife' would be priority number one!

Zeus returned midway through the disgraceful ocurrance, leaving poor Dia an utter emotional wreck. Luckily she had a kind goddess to hand to offer her comfort... meanwhile, Zeus surprised Ixion in the very act of his defilement, and promptly claimed that it had all been part of his master plan. It's amazing how often he does that.

The Thunderer ordered Hermes to scourge the mortal mercilessly, and then bind him to a fiery wheel which rolled ceaselessly through the sky thereafter, which frankly was better than he deserved. Poor Nephele was banished to earth before Hera could get back; she bore him a child by the name of Centaurus, who was ultimately the father of Chiron. Then she married a king, got thrown over for a maenad, ended up running a taxi service with flying golden sheep... look, it was all a bit of a mess.

As for Dia? Unlike her fickle husband, Hera is always faithful to her lovers. Once everything had blown over, and Dia had found someone to look after her son by Zeus, Pirithous (lovely boy, not very lucky though), the merciful and just Queen of Heaven spirited her away to the courts of Olympos. A little light cosmetic surgery, and she passed for one of the many nymphs who populate the place. No-one would take the slightest notice of just another nymph heading towards Hera's private quarters... ahem.

((With sincere apologies to Robert Graves, author of The Greek Myths, whose text has been thoroughly mangled for this purpose. ~hS))

I mean, I'd even want to talk about the same level you did!

Spyro 3 remains one of my all-time favorite games. This is a big part of why.

It paints the relationship between you in a so screwed-up way, even beyond the 'official version'...

Science and mythology need the authentic versions of these stories. Think you can spare some time to do so someday?

Those Greeks were so ashamed, they tried to write me - me! - out of the official mythstories, and when they couldn't quite manage that - hello, Queen of Olympos here! - they cast me as the jealous-slash-murderous abandoned wife instead.

Io? Io was mine, my very own priestess, until that husband of mine pulled his cow-transformation trick. Ha! He'd have been better trying that on Europa; she would have appreciated it, unlike my poor Io.

Danae? Mine. Okay, yes, I encouraged her father to keep her safe, but wouldn't you? Women in these murder prophecies never end well.

Leda? Mine, until Zeus got his swan on. Why do you think I was so against Scaphrodite's Helen plot? The girl was practically my daughter!

I swear, I wouldn't have minded so much if he hadn't gone so unerringly for my girls...

In return for your gift, I can in return gift you with the wisdom to conquer your enemies swiftly, rule your subjects prosperously, and woo the lady fair, too, if that's what you're into.

How do you think I got where I am, eh? Waving a big stick and batting your eyelashes are well and good, but only if you're smart enough to pick the best time to do it.

~Neshthena

Some people would say that line of thinking has run to its end. I think this trainwreck needs to continue. For science.

Uh... what about if I offered to let you rule them too? That would include Helen, obviously...

I mean, personally, given the presence of multiverally-aware goddesses, I would've gone for a bigger name than Helen. Luthien, maybe?

_{((... does this mean I'm now roleplaying Lesbian Hera? ~hS))}

In my head I have this pegged as The Flashback Episode, and because of that I've got half an eye open for Chekhovs. I'm assuming on general principles that every single person mentioned is going to come back up; that's just how this sort of thing goes. ^_^

Sergio talks at times here like he's regurgitating a prologue, and I don't think that's accidental. It makes perfect sense to me that a character telling their own backstory would drift into a more narrative tone; it's a mild case of Tom Bombadil way back in Suedom, who could only speak in his canonical lines.

I deeply appreciate the girls' eminently sensible behaviour - when confronted with a question that could be answered by a CAD, Nikki goes right to pulling out a CAD, and when there are questions outstanding, Corolla does the research and forms a viable theory. There's no plot-forced artificial stupidity here.

Favourite line: [We kinda have a bigger problem to deal with here, and angsting won’t solve anything. And the problem is: what the heck is up with this mission?]

... it is possible that Corolla is my favourite character so far.

hS