Pour Lost Things

“I only have about a quart,” Mariole said. “Less after we boil it.”

Jack clenched his teeth. “We’ll make it work.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, kid, knock yourself out.”

Mariole’s face lit up behind her mask, and she clapped her little hands together. Jack swept the rubble off of a table while Mariole set up the propane burner, even though the cannister was feeling a little light. The flame kicked on, and Jack poured purified water from his flask into a camping kettle. “In the old days, you were supposed to have a kettle that whistled,” he said. “To let you know when the water was almost boiling, but not quite. That was supposed to be the perfect heat. Today, though, I don’t think the queen of England would mind missing dysentery.”

“Stop! That is not tea party talk!” Mariole paused in the middle of laying a handkerchief across the table to adopt an upturned nose of disdain, holding her little pinkies in the air. “The queen would not approve.”

“You know that pinkie thing is a misconception,” Jack said. “The very first tea cups that came to England from China didn’t have any handles on them, so people put their pinkies out for balance. Once they got handles, the pinkies went down again.”

“You’re such a nerd,” Mariole groaned. “I don’t want some authentic, seventeenth-century reenactment ceremony. I want a fairy princess, Alice in Wonderland, pinkies-up tea party, okay?”

Jack snorted. “Take your antihistamines now; we don’t want to be sneezing all over the imaginary petit fours.”

“What’s a petit four?”

A frown floated behind Jack’s mask. “Can’t explain it. I could draw it, though.”

“Draw a few.” Mariole clicked back the latches on the wicker case and lifted the lid.

Blue light from the emergency lantern gleamed on the polished surfaces of glazed China, preserved without a spec of dust on their glossy curves. There were four little spoons, shaped like little shovels, and little silver forks like tiny trowels. Four little saucers were scored and painted golden like improbably identical nests for four cups molded after perfectly plump chickens, tail feathers spiraling into handles behind them. The teapot was a cherubic farmhouse with a blushing cow leaning out and lowing as the spout. Another cow was at rest on a grassy bank that wrapped around a clear blue lake shaped exactly like a plate for biscuits. A sheep made for a curly white sugar bowl. A goat stretched its neck out to pour the cream. And two dainty little piglets sat down snout to snout until someone wanted pepper or salt.

Mariole lifted each one, bathing every item with a disinfecting cloth. She peered through a silver ring with a tiny egg on top. “What’s this for?”

Glancing up from the kettle, Jack said, “Serviettes. Cloth napkins. You know there was this queen who used to have a little pretend farm, and she would walk around cosplaying as a milkmaid or something, and picking up eggs out of the hay that some servant had placed there for her. Like poor people just found food lying around.”

“We do find food just lying around.”

“Well, takes a lot longer for us to find it.” Jack tapped his pressure meter. “And it ain’t all food.”

His steel-toed boot kicked aside a flattened potato chip wrapper. Those and the plastic water bottles never went away. This hall had probably once been a library or a school, the floor to ceiling windows half buried under broken things. The interior had barely been touched by the corrosive fungal particulates that were eating through the remnants of civilization, barely singed by the highly combustible elements swept over the landscape by sudden storms. There were two vending machines filled with nothing but shattered glass, but Jack thought there might be something worth seeing in the tall standing cabinets, and that was where they found the wicker chest.

Picking through the fanned sachets in the bottom of the basket, Mariole ignored most of the unfamiliar vocabulary and waved her particulate wand over a lemon ginger zinger. When the reading showed green, she said, “How do we make this tea?”

“You never made it? Not once?” Jack took the packet and removed the inner bag, slipping it into the pot and draping the tag outside on its string. “I don’t even like tea, I must’ve done this a dozen times.”

“You don’t like tea?”

“I like it fine, I just had other options.” He waved his hand over the table. “I didn’t have it like this. Not enough time, not enough space. Not enough people, usually, this set up is supposed to be shared."

Mariole studied Jack’s face, or what she could see above his breathing mask. “Now, you're stuck with me, grumpy. We might be the only people to have tea parties ever again.”

The water started boiling. Mariole clicked off the burner and picked up the kettle, but Jack said, “You should let it rest. China like this can’t handle water that hot.”

Mariole snorted. “What’s the point of making a thing for hot water that can’t handle hot water?”

Jack pointed. “Look how pretty it is. Not everything was built for utility. Take your antihistamines.”

After a while, Jack told Mariole the water was cool enough to pour. She picked up the kettle and let the hot water flow into the little ceramic barn, steam rising from the cow’s mouth. She picked up the handle.

“Hold on, kiddo,” Jack said. “Gotta let it steep.”

“Sheesh,” Mariole huffed, sinking down on one elbow. “Who knew being civilized took all this waiting?”

“Elbows off the table.” Jack took off his mask, massaging his unshaved jaw. “We got time, kid. That used to be something only rich people had. Now, we all got time.”

There was a crash from the east wall. Jack and Mariole jumped to their feet, Jack holding the mask to his face with one hand while the other hand grabbed his cattle prod. Mariole had a sickle and a flail, but her eyes were on the meters, watching for that spike in particulates that would force them to evacuate. The light of a high-lumen lantern flooded the chamber.

Footsteps crunched over rubble and dust. A massive shadow narrowed and condensed into a lumbering figure; a full-body hazmat suit reinforced with tribal duct tape. The lantern swung above a loaded pack, and the intruder had his face down in his own meters, following the tell-tale heat signature to living heart beats. Then, his mirrored visor turned upward, reflecting two battle-ready faces, and he leveled at them a bolt gun.

Jack stepped in front of Mariole. “I’ll block you; just run.”

“I’m not running.”

“Fucking live, kid!”

The intruder dropped his meter, putting his other hand under the bolt gun to steady his aim, raising the sight to that eyeless mask.

Mariole jumped in front of Jack. “We’re having a tea party!” she cried. “Wanna come?”

A single moldering ceiling tile broke free and dropped onto the moldering ceiling tiles on the floor. Something that had evolved from rats skittered back to its subterranean nest. Somewhere in the distance, a gathering storm was drawing in its first deep breath.

By the time the storm reached the ruined hall, Jack, Mariole, and the intruder were seated around the small table, each with a picture of a petit four on a little side plate. Tea poured from the China cow’s mouth into three chubby chickens, while thick gloves and grease-stained fingers curled around their delicate tails.

With their masks beside them, the three guests raised their cups in a steaming salute. The grizzled and war-torn face of the intruder twisted into a one-eyed smile. “This is really lovely.”

“It is,” Jack agreed. “Everything you wanted, princess?”

Mariole smiled. “Pinkies up."