[JUL-24] Astrilla (attempts) a Cookout!

Astrilla was hungry.

And-bored. Sure, the circus had food, but the various vendors never had anything new. Or exciting! It was the same popcorn, cotton candy, corndogs, whatever other fried nonsense for patrons. 

So, she decided to make something herself!! 

Striding out from the back of the tent, she immediately spotted a dumpster nearby and dashed over. He eventually found a slab of…some sort of meat, a long past dead salad, a broken juggling pin that looked like corn on the cob and a Mystery Package™. 

Perfect!!!!

Astrilla quickly spread her wings and flew off, ready to pounce onto any available grill. He headed towards a neighborhood, hoping to quickly throw everything onto some unsuspecting familys grill while they were out. But it was a fairly nice summer day—not too hot, but the sun was still out—so a majority of people who had grills in their backyard were using it. She kept everything clutched in her arms, waiting for the perfect opportunity.

And finally. He SAW it. 

A spacious backyard, enough room for her to spread out, and a bunch of grilling utensils already outside. She couldn’t have asked for a better place to try barbecuing! 

For the first time.

…How did people do this, anyways??

She landed gracefully, making sure she didn't knock anything over in the process. Padding over to the grill, he stared at it for a moment before remembering the incomplete ingredients he held in his arms. 

Oh. Yeah. Those needed to be fixed!!

Delicately, all in a row, she laid them out on the grass, staring at each of them in turn. Sure, he could eat all of them, but they wouldn’t really…taste good. At all.

So, she made her right hand into a finger gun, and pointed it at each of the ingredients. 

Electricity built up down her arm, resulting in a blast of chaos magic out the tip of her clawed finger. It hit the salad first, turning it into a dead alien plant of some sort. It was purple with streaks of cyan, and roots of bright yellow. It even had a mouth at the end—EXCITING!! 

Grinning at the prospect of tasting whatever that was, he immediately shot more chaos magic at everything else. The rotting meat turned into an overly large leg with a pink and black checkerboard pattern on the skin, and the Mystery Package™ morphed into a fruit that looked like a combination of an orange, a pickle, and an insect. She oohed and ahhed at each one in turn, before finally moving onto the last item. 

A terrified scream suddenly sounded from the house. Whipping her head towards the sound, Astrilla immediately saw—a girl, probably only 10 or so. Absolutely horrified at her.

Surprisingly, people were always terrified of him outside of the circus. 

But it was fineeee!! She quickly yelled out a loud and apologetic “SORRY!!!”, grabbed all of her stuff, and immediately took off again, knocking over the grill and setting the grass on fire. 

She didn’t quite notice, though, too busy trying to find somewhere else. 

He did notice that he left his corn on the cob bowling pin on the lawn, which made him groan internally. She didn’t even get to change that into anything!! What were those people going to do with it?? 

Either way, he had to find somewhere else to finish up her meal. 

After flying for a bit longer, he came across a park. One with mostly dead grass, and broken playground equipment-but with nobody around. And concrete gazebos, with empty grills filled with charcoal at each one. 

Immediately, Astrilla whirled into one, almost knocking the table off of the bolts connecting it to the floor as she did. 

She tore every ingredient apart into very uneven chunks and leaves and…sections, before placing them all on the table behind her. Someone had left a lighter just next to the grill, so she flicked it on and threw the whole thing into the charcoal filled cubby. Eventually, it got to a suitable roar of orange and blue flames.

And…Astrilla realized she had NO idea how to do a cookout. At all. Her host didn’t even do it before the three crabs got to her, so there weren’t even any latent instincts to fall back on.

So she threw everything on and waited until each and every piece was a blackened charcoal.

Proud of what she had done, Astrilla grabbed them off the grill with her paw, not worrying about the heat. 

And it tasted…awful. 

But she still ate and found a way to enjoy every new, interesting bite.