"So, what do we call this guy?" Arvid asked, with a mouthful of food. He chomped wildly on his meal, sending bits of eggs and bacon everywhere.
"Yeah? What do we call you?" Harper leaned in toward the hooded figure in a semi-flirtatious manner. The truth was she wanted to try and get a closer look under that hair and shroud.
"Brian?" Pax suggested, "Or maybe Kyle? No! No! Wait!—Steven!"
"What are you, stupid?" Arvid sneered at the pig-man.
Pax looks at him innocently, "What?"
"Those are stupid names. Surely, some badass-looking guy like this isn't named Steven. Steven's a dumb name."
"But Steven was my dad's name," Pax mumbled softly.
"We have to call him something," Harper chimed in.
"Maybe we should ask him?" Justice suggested.
"I don't think he'll say anything, but you can try," Beth said, "I've asked him to tell me his name a few times, and he has never muttered a word." She crammed a piece of buttered toast in her mouth, guzzled her glass of pom juice, and walked over to the rookie cook. "So, you want to tell us your name? And just be warned, if you don't, I can't protect you from whatever nickname these rapscallions give you."
The stranger just stood there, clutching the spatula, ominously waiting behind the grill for the shift to start. Everyone remained quiet, waiting for him to speak, but he didn't even move.
"It is Brian, isn't it?" Pax suggested again. This time, the figure grunted and looked down on the grill. "Okay, so it's not Brian."
Harper glanced out the front window. "Well, we have to figure it out later. It looks like we have a line forming at the door." She began bussing their plates, and after a few last-minute mouthfuls of food, the rest of the staff started doing what they do every day.
With the mysterious newcomer taking on the grilling duties for the first time, Arvid was finally able to work on the dilapidated sign that hung above the café. It had been a little worse for wear since the last dust storm rolled through. They weren't too common in Crest Town, but sometimes, high winds from the other side of the mountain become so strong that they get stuck in the valley, creating turbulent storms capable of kicking up dust, dirt, and debris. Most of the time, they are just temporarily blinding. Still, the last one that rolled through was among the strongest Crest Town had ever experienced, causing minor to moderate damages to the less stable structures in the village.
With the first few hours of the morning shift in the books, Beth couldn't believe how smoothly everything was going, especially in the kitchen. Justice, a quiet loner by nature who secretly longed for a family, seemed to work particularly well with the hooded cook. She liked to be around people but preferred not to talk or be talked to. The rookie griller didn't seem to be bothered by her company either, even helping her operate her station when she had to go prepare more griddle cake mix.
"They're really killing it back there today," Harper said to Beth, carrying a few dirty dishes to the bin.
"I know, right!" Beth was grinning from ear to ear, "It's almost too good to be true."
The second half of the shift went just as well as the first, with food going out faster, better, and tastier than ever. Harper and Beth both racked in an impressive amount of tips, and Arvid fixed the old, weathered sign and put a new layer of paint plastered on it. Justice felt good that she had a nice calm day without Arvid going all rage mode the moment everything got a little dicey, and the new cook, well, he was just as strange and mysterious as ever. Pax, on the other hand, was not the happiest of campers. Before the new guy took over, the food was average at best, which meant a lot of people didn't clean their plates. This is where Pax came in. Never one to let good food go to waste, no matter who bit off of it, the gluttonous pig-man was known to indulge in the occasional half-eaten sandwich out of the garbage can as long as it fell within his three rules:
It still looks good. It still smells good. It still tastes good.And even with these rules, his standard in grading was shallow, which he said was to reduce disappointment. But with the surprising skills of the fledgling hire, virtually every customer cleared their plate, and the ones who didn't ask for carry-out bags so they could enjoy the food later. Even so, Pax may have been starving, but deep down, he was happy to have a seemingly skilled chef in their ranks.
Later that evening, after all the cleaning was done and the café had closed up for the night, everyone went out to recharge with a little off time. Pax and Arvid filled their pockets with the extra money they made over the past two days and splurged on blue beer and whiskey grass shots at Milo's Tavern. It didn't take the two of them long to get shit-faced drunk. It wasn't because they were lightweights, but quite the opposite, really. Within the first two hours of their arrival, they had consumed more alcohol than the Tavern had sold all day. Once the booze was flowing, so too was the coin, and before long, Arvid and Pax were the proud owners of the most expensive bottle of pom wine Milo's had in reserve, dating back over 150 years and costing nearly twice its age.
Justice told everyone she was going out to find some friends closer to pal around with, but the moment everyone thought she was gone, she snuck back to the café and climbed up to the roof. She wasn't against making new friends, but it made her feel like she had to be someone else to get someone to give her a chance. She felt more at home lying on the roof of the café, drawing in her sketchbook, and staring at anything in the sky: stars, birds, or things she didn't understand, like the Skylands.
Beth and Harper retreated to the office in the office basement and caught up on some paperwork and payroll, using the success of the day to fuel them to do the deskwork neither of them was particularly fond of. This was the rest of the night for the staff of the White Moon Café. Arvid and Pax passed out in a heap of trash behind Milo's. Justice snuggled up in an oversized hoodie, the only thing she had left from her orphanage days, and fell asleep under the freshly painted café sign. Beth and Harper worked until after midnight before their eyelids would inevitably lose the battle of staying open. However, Beth wouldn't stay asleep long.
She found herself strangely awakened by a faint squelching noise coming from somewhere nearby. Careful not to wake her second in command, the café owner crept out of the office and tiptoed toward the off-putting noise. Finding the storage basement door ajar, she realizes that's where the slopping sound is originating from.
"Why the storage basement?"
Beth tightly gripped her short sword and continued down the steps, finding herself much closer to the unnerving clamor.
"Blood?"
There was a sizeable puddle of crimson spreading across the concrete slab floor. "What the fuck?" Beth intended to be quieter, but her loud exclamation alerted the drifter, who she didn't notice, in the corner of the basement. "Hello? Is there somebody there?" she called out.
With it being nearly two hours past midnight, the café was virtually pitch black, and Beth could only see what the moonlight shining through the small windows would show her, which wasn't much. Taking an old lantern off a wooden support beam, she lit it with a match to find her rookie line cook hunched over in the corner, covered in blood and holding two handfuls of raw meat. "Uhm—"
Grummpff...grumpff...grumpff...the figure continued devouring the meat, stuffing it into his hood and engulfing it like a rabid animal.
"I guess this explains why I haven't seen you eat any of the breakfast food. You're into the raw stuff, huh?"
Grummpff...grumpff...he lowered his head, appearing to agree with her.
"Well, I'm not mad or anything, but if you were going to hog out on our inventory, I wish you would have eaten the rat roasts we use for the scrapple. That is far cheaper than the sirloin you're housing right now, and there's always a ton of them to go around."
The creature stopped for a moment, shifting his attention to another bin on the bottom shelf where he found the meat. He pulled it out and grabbed one of the rat roasts Beth had just mentioned.
Sniff...sniff...he reared his head back, took a look at the tiny red, meaty morsel, and then inhaled it in a flurry of squelchy, crunchy gruesomeness. Beth winced at the sound of him munching on the roasts and crunching the bones.
"Ugh, you go ahead and enjoy as many of those as you want. I'm going to do my best not to puke and forget I just watched you eat that raw."