Cooking With Rocks

Shale took a long and deep breath as he strolled up to the house at the address Jude had provided him, double checking the slip of paper he had scrawled it on and squinting between the two numbers to confirm that they were a match. Everything seemed in order, and the gargoyle made his approach after attempting to shake off a bit more of his pre-hangout jitters. He delivered three solid knocks before taking a step back, stretching his arms and tapping his foot as he waited.

Truth be told, he was more than a little anxious, due in equal parts to this being his first time actually going to spend time with a friend here at their place, and the activity they were set to do. In fact, it was was so unfathomably out of his ballpark of expertise that a kitchen catastrophe comparable to the crepe incident a few weeks ago was nagging at the back of his mind. Jude was surely more well acquainted with the kitchen tools than he was though...right?

@Romi

Shale paled just slightly at the confidence and enthusiasm Jude displayed when he greeted him, laughing nervously and nodding after adjusting his headband on his forehead. "Oh, uh, yeah, for sure! Not a problem, I'm all good." It was pretty damn obvious that this change in demeanor, at least verbally, was entirely put on and not at all genuine. He just found it immensely embarrassing to seem freaked out over something as simple and low impact as cooking, especially with Jude informing him it was something easy.

He stepped inside, almost immediately looking anxious all over again, clearly unsure what to do with himself and mortified at the prospect of breaking something or touching some old family heirloom that was a sacred treasure, et cetera. He rubbed his neck, and in a badly forced joking manner, fished for at least a hint of reassurance. "Heyy, so...thanks for having me over and all that. It's definitely fine that I'm here, right? Not gonna, uh...like, walk on the wrong spot of floor and get banished or whatnot?"

Shale's gaze lingered on the shoe stack for a bit before he followed Jude's example, pulling off his ratty old combat boots and setting them neatly aside directly next to the rest of the pile. "You have a nice place here, uhh...yeah." Shale scratched his ear and followed Jude into the kitchen, internally cursing at his stilted attempts at conversation.

The gargoyle raised his brows when Jude revealed the selected recipe, his eyes scanning over the assembled ingredients and utensils. He couldn't help but cringe at how clean the place was, already envisioning it as a major disaster zone reminiscent of the other time he'd tried to cook. "Well, let's...go ahead and do this, then. I'll sort of let you lead, I guess; just tell me what you need me to do."

Shale's eyes widened to an almost cartoonish degree at the listing of ingredients and various preparations they needed, fidgeting with his bandana and silently pondering which task he should tackle. Both slicing the garlic and chopping the parsley were fairly comfortably in his wheelhouse; he was intimately familiar with blade-based combat. It wasn't exactly like making spaghetti was set to be reminiscent of a battle, but he would at least slightly know what he was doing. He truthfully couldn't make heads nor tails of a cheese grater, and thus decided to leave that to Jude.

"Uhh, I can go ahead and do the garlic, if that's fine?" Approaching the counter, he held up one of the garlic cloves and stared at it, squinting just a bit. "...It's kind of funny, really. If some of the popular stories in this world are to be believed, just one of these bulbous little things could've been a massive help for me." Gazing at it wistfully for another brief moment, he laughed that line of thinking off as best he could and set it down, picking up a chef's knife from the block and turning to Jude. "Alright, so...how does one go about doing this? Do you just want me to slice it into, like...discs?"