MADNESS AND LOVE MIXED: PART 4: Arc 3- Finale
Ezekiel — Arc 3 (Finale)
Questionable culinarian — or mad gastrointestinal savant?
Accidental Warhammer creator?
Miniature siege engines?
The First Two arcs can be found below or by searching in the search bar on the homepage.
Eiri Waters
Our eyes are unusually crusty and dry this morning as we sit and begin the serious work of silliness. We tap as usual at our little slice of heaven-on-earth — café style — delivered by smiling, grumpy 5 a.m. trans baristas and overly enthusiastic, under-caffeinated pedestrians ducking in to thaw their frosty hands in the late-fall Carolinian chill.
The world moves around us, and we allow ourselves to sink into that focused state where what we think and what we write become one and the same. We try to silence the inner voice long enough for it to pour through the fingers — all while foolishly forgetting our Venti blonde roast is still too hot.
The price of neglect: a burned tongue.
The consequence: the tip throbs like a tiny battlefield as the layered reality begins to slide.
Not down.
Not up.
Not adjacent.
But near — like a transparent Photoshop layer hovering above the mundane.
The edges lighten, then settle around us like a soap bubble enclosing the sacredness of vocation as the grand finale of Zeke’s tale begins to unfurl.
A shimmering wave forms — a mirage-like ripple under invisible heat. Two distinct shapes condense: Star-Dust, my future self, and Zeke, my future-now-best-friend.
We are wearing the same pajamas we rolled out of bed in: pea-green wide-leg Aerie sweats and a black hooded sweatshirt adorned with lint and the black-pill aesthetic. Meanwhile these two heavenly jesters phase into Starbucks at 5:48 a.m. wearing hooded snuggies — comically bright, absurdly soft.
Star is rocking white-and-pink Vans.
We did not know that style existed.
Limited heavenly drop? Maybe.
Zeke — the hairy Santa-impersonating biker prophet — stands proudly in massively overinflated, fuzzy bear slippers. They appear to be laughing. Or being stabbed by his ankles. Hard to tell.
“Dust—” Zeke interrupts our inner monologue. “Yes, I interrupted. We know what we’re wearing, and you are thinking so loudly.” He rubs his temples with exaggerated misery, as if to suggest it’s far too early in the morning for telepathic stand-up comedy before coffee.
Star shrugs, walks over, and wraps us in a patchouli-and-oud scented hug — warm, solid, enveloping.
The scent of our own future.
“You’re think-talking at volume 100,” she says gently. “You forgot you were wearing your Beats again, didn’t you?”
We cringe and nod.
“Star, stop breaking the narration and the narrator’s focus! Let’s get to work. Zeke — you too!”
We direct, as is our job.
Zeke scrapes the concrete floor loudly, making a pained face like he disturbed people who do not actually exist yet.
Star follows suit with zero scrape — heavenly physics cheating again.
We motion to Future Me.
“Star — questions on the docket.
Dung baking circa 567 BC. Taste. Aroma. Interesting facts.”
We prompt our scattered self.
Star immediately loses composure.
“Hahaha! Zeke, you got shafted! I had to eat cheese. I hated cheese but at least I didn’t have to cook on cow dung!”
She doubles over, giggling like a misplaced cherub having a crisis.
Zeke’s mock glare melts.
His weathered Santa-cheeks rise like dawn as he erupts into a sincere belly laugh that nearly injures whatever spiritual organs prophets use to breathe joy.
“Ahem.”
We clear our throat. The two fools freeze mid-laugh and turn toward us.
“Dust,” they say in unison, “stop taking everything so seriously or you really will go mad. Rest. Breath. Let the Life flow.”
We nod and briefly close our eyes.
Ask the Father for levity.
Let the weight shift.
Let the absurdity in.
We open our eyes with renewed mischief.
“So… Zeke. Did it smell like dung?”
Zeke deadpans.
“You know it doesn’t smell like feces once dried. More like woodsmoke with earthy, grassy notes — kind of like peat.”
He taps his beard.
We assume there is a chin under there.
We have no empirical evidence.
Zeke bursts into laughter.
“Dust, if you’re going to think all the answers yourself, why even have us here?”
We shrink, giggling.
Star leans in.
“I mean — I’ve never tasted anything cooked on feces. So did it impart flavor? You were baking barley cakes, right?”
Zeke nods, thoughtful again.
“The flavor was bearable. Smoky. Slightly bitter. Definitely grassy. Mostly barley. But the bitterness wasn’t on my tongue — it was the lesson. Every morsel tasted like defilement, exile, loss. Like a priesthood collapsing. Like a people failing. Every bite was a sin embodied.”
His voice breaks.
We stand — calves braced against the bench, balancing urgency with grace — and wrap our Dust-flavored, pre-theosis arms around his snuggied frame.
Our cheek presses into his shoulder, beard hairs tickling us.
Zeke’s eyes glisten.
Recognition dawns.
Comfort returned in equal measure to the comfort given.
Star watches with a motherly compassion that nearly collapses into a group hug.
“The Father uses wounds from eternity,” Star murmurs, “to move hearts in the now. Zeke’s sorrow revealed heaven to you, Dust.
Love is born from sincerity, not contemplation.”
We swallow that slowly.
Then Star claps, electric.
“So! Zeke — how does it feel to know you’re the great-to-the-hundredth-time-grandfather of Warhammer and the entire miniature tabletop genre?”
We choke on coffee.
Zeke leans in, leather groaning beneath him.
“Star, I have been arguing with the Father about that since forever.
I should be compensated!
Even asked to be a greeter at the gates!
I promised fewer bone-crushing hugs!”
He throws his hands up.
“Did He believe me?
NO.
He said He knew my heart — that I cannot resist hugging everyone, even the stinking, filthy, siege-smoked souls arriving from the defilement of their lives.”
He beams.
“Authenticity sometimes smells like earthy grass and shit-smoke, Dust. The aftertaste is rarely pleasant — but the rewards? Always worth it.”
The counter to our left sharpens first into clarity.
Then the whitened wooden table —
the one that haunts the versions of me I reveal only in hidden chambers.
The dream-stuff fades into granularity.
The Photoshop layers shift back into corporeality.
Weight settles into the body.
The café returns.
Until the next vision, Beloveds.
JOKING!
Star-Dust to Dust:
Yeah so… we went ahead and asked Zeke if he’d be a regular co-host with us on the early-morning-late-night talk show, and he answered — and I quote —
“Does dung add noticeable and crave-worthy flavor?”
We’re… we’re going to take that as a yes.
(We are not testing his culinary opinions to verify.)
So be excited, little me!
You can do this!
— Star 😄
Next episode is live.
Eiri Waters