Patin’s Lessons Part XO — Dinner at the End of Time
Posted on Sun Nov 9th, 2025 @ 5:20pm by Patin
858 words; about a 4 minute read
Mission:
Character Development
Location: Celestial Temple
A Culinary Catastrophe in Five Dimensions
The Celestial Temple shimmered like a dream caught between light and laughter. Time folded lazily in on itself, stars dangling like ornaments above an invisible table.
Patin was whistling.
“Well, you lot said you wanted to understand sustenance, so buckle up, butterbeans, I’m about to feed the unfed.” She snapped her fingers and a table stretched out of the void, endless and round, the kind of table that shouldn’t fit anywhere but somehow fit everywhere.
We do not consume.
“Oh, I know that,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You exist outside of physical need. But I exist inside a memory of flavor, and that’s just as sacred.”
Explain the purpose of consumption.
She grinned. “Pleasure, survival, and bragging rights.”
The air trembled. Plates appeared. Cutlery from seventeen timelines arranged itself in synchrony. A Vulcan salad fork next to a Klingon bloodwine goblet, she called it “cultural fusion.”
Patin clapped her hands. “Our amuse-bouche: Bajoran springfruit… circa four hundred years ago, before industrial pollution made ‘organic’ a swear word.”
She placed delicate slices on their plates, but the fruit shimmered, flickered, and vanished.
It is gone.
“Oh, it’s not gone,” Patin said, squinting. “It’s early.”
The fruit blinked back into existence, but this time as a seed.
Then a sapling.
Then a fully-grown tree sprawling across the table, roots dipping into eternity.
One Prophet leaned forward. It is… in motion.
“Temporal ripening,” Patin said proudly. “The secret ingredient is quantum uncertainty. Adds a zing!”
The tree exploded into petals of light.
The Prophets collectively flinched. You weaponized a fruit.
“I enhanced a fruit,” Patin corrected. “Big difference. One makes jam. The other makes history.”
Next came something in a cast-iron pan that hissed like a viper. “Entrée time, sweethearts. I call this ‘Volcanic Stew à la Patin.’ Ingredients: fire peppers from Qo’noS, Romulan ale for bite, and one unfortunate Nausicaan’s lunch pack for texture.”
She ladled portions that glowed red.
It emits radiation.
“Yeah, that’s flavor trying to escape.”
One Prophet, curious, extended a hand into the bowl. The stew shimmered, then imploded, then reappeared inside the Prophet’s essence like a sunburned conscience.
It burns.
“Means it’s working!” Patin cheered. “Congratulations, you just experienced spice.”
Spice is… suffering?
“Sometimes. But good suffering. The kind that reminds you you’re alive. Or that you were.”
She paused, stirring her own bowl slowly. “Back on Bajor, during the Occupation, a good burn meant you’d found something unspoiled. Even if your throat closed, even if your eyes watered, it meant the world hadn’t beaten you yet.”
For a long moment, the Temple was silent except for the low simmer of the stew.
Then another Prophet said softly, We begin to understand… seasoning.
Patin raised her spoon in salute. “That’s my little gods. Season your eternity.”
“Now,” she said, rubbing her hands together, “prepare for pastry-based philosophy.”
A soufflé materialized on the table, perfectly risen, then immediately collapsed.
The Prophets gasped as if a sun had died.
It has failed.
“Not failed. Evolved prematurely.” She leaned down, inhaling the faint scent of burnt sugar and regret. “You know, sometimes perfection can’t handle the pressure. Kind of poetic, really.”
She snapped her fingers, and time reversed. The soufflé rose again, proud, defiant.
Then collapsed again.
We are trapped in repetition.
Patin cackled. “Welcome to baking!”
This… is comedy?
“Oh, it’s tragedy and comedy. The twin pillars of dessert.”
The Prophets, ever curious, rewound the soufflé once more, but this time, it exploded into a whipped cream nebulae, splattering across infinity.
Patin wiped custard from her cheek. “And that, my friends, is dinner.”
Silence. The kind that feels like a sigh from the stars themselves.
Patin sat back, folding her hands behind her head. “So. Did I blow your cosmic taste buds or what?”
We are… uncertain.
She smirked. “Good. Uncertainty is flavor.”
You have fed us confusion, sensation, paradox, and flame.
“Sounds like a Tuesday.”
The Temple began to shimmer, the table dissolving into starlight. One Prophet lingered. You give meaning to absurdity.
“Yeah,” she said quietly, “and you give absurdity meaning. Fair trade, right?”
A pause, like a heartbeat across eternity.
We thank you, Patin… for the meal that cannot exist.
Patin smiled crookedly. “My pleasure. Oh, hang on.”
With a flick of her wrist, she conjured two steaming mugs of kanar-laced cocoa and a loaf of bread still warm from an oven that never was. She tore it in half and offered it to the void.
“Next time,” she murmured, “I’ll bring dessert that stays put.”
The Celestial Temple shimmered with laughter, soft and infinite.
Patin leaned back, boots propped on nothing, and whispered to herself, “Dinner for the divine. Not bad for a girl who used to steal rations.”
The stars winked, and somewhere between seconds, a soufflé rose one last time… and stayed.
TBC
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