Dried pine needles crunched below his expensive hiking shoes. He followed the slope to the right. The late afternoon sun filtered through the trees, winking at him with each step.

A few minutes later, Leonard reached two striking boulders. The tallest one stood bolt upright, with a stout, round one next to it. The local kids had an unimaginative name for the rock formation. He remembered the days when he, too, thought it was the funniest thing in the world.

He scrambled over the stout one and approached the opening. Leonard sucked in his stomach and squeezed his way inside, remembering the days when he could slip in with ease.

The cavern below was dark and cold. He weaved his way past the first few stalagmites from memory, then turned on his headlamp. Odd bits of rubbish were scattered about. No doubt from teenagers who had dared each other to go inside, Leonard surmised. This time it was littered with a few empty energy drink cans, some chip packets and some nitrous oxide canisters. Nangs, he’d heard his students say. He would clear it up on his way out.

As he continued to move through the cavern, Leonard mused over what else he’d found inside over the years, the very worst of it being a condom stretched over a stalagmite.

He concentrated on his footing as the ground grew slick and steep. Almost there, he told himself.

He ducked past a cluster of low-hanging stalactites and approached a pitch-black hole. Leonard turned his headlamp off and clambered inside.

The sound of his feet landing on the limestone below echoed into the darkness. Leonard fished around in his pocket for a box of matches. He took three steps to the right and felt around. The cold cave walls met his clammy fingertips. He reached up high and found the first torch. The small flame took to the tinder just as it reached the end of the matchstick. The flame nipped at his fingertips.

‘Ow!’ He hissed and flapped his hand.

Leonard squinted into the surrounding darkness. All appeared still.

He circled the perimeter of the space, carefully lighting the rest of the torches with nimbler hands. About halfway through, he encountered the end of a big tail. He held his breath, pressed his back to the cave wall, stepped wide over it and continued on.

When the cave was reasonably lit, Leonard slung off his bag and kneeled before the creature that owned the tail. He pulled out an old blanket and laid it down. Next, he pulled out three Ziploc bags. Each of them almost bursting at the seams with enormous chocolate chip cookies.

Leonard began arranging his offering. As he dumped out the contents of the last Ziploc bag, the creature began to stir. Its sense of smell was sharp. Its teeth, even sharper.

Enormous golden eyes surveyed the offering before it. Next, it looked at Leonard and did a slow nod. Leonard’s pulse quickened. He nodded back.

Taking measured breaths, he grabbed the first cookie and tossed it high into the air. The wyvern pressed up from its winged forearms and snapped at the cookie like it was a fly buzzing past. As soon as the creature swallowed, it looked at Leonard expectantly. He tossed the beast another one. So had begun their ritual.

He’d once read that in Florida, it’s against the law to feed wild alligators. The logic was that if the creatures learned to associate a person with food, and that person failed to provide food, they would quickly become the food. Leonard considered this to be exactly the situation he found himself in.

He’d tried to stop the offering many times. But each time he did, news would quickly spread about someone mysteriously vanishing in the woods. To make matters worse, his wife Beth truly believed he enjoyed hiking. The small lie he’d told her twelve years ago had snowballed into weekends at National Parks, trudging up trails, when Leonard would have much preferred to be marking essays over a glass of red.

He tossed another cookie high up into the air. His shoulder clicked and burned a muscle in his neck. The wyvern happily snapped up the cookie.

When Leonard was fifteen, it had been rather exciting to befriend a wyvern, hidden away in the forest, but at forty-two, it was a nuisance. He grabbed two cookies and tossed them towards the beast. It caught them fast and stilled. Its eyes narrowed in on Leonard. It stooped towards him and bared its teeth. The wyvern did not like to be rushed. Leonard replied with a deep, apologetic bow. The beast’s nostrils huffed warm air down his neck and then pulled away. Leonard had received a warning.

The wyvern watched him closely as he collected a single cookie and threw it into the air. It snapped it up but kept its eyes on him.

They were smart things. Not fire-breathers, like dragons. And it had grown bigger than Leonard had expected. When they’d met, it was the size of a brown snake. Now it was the size of a commercial aircraft. He chucked the wyvern another cookie.

He’d considered writing to professors of mythology and ancient history, but the thought of having to explain it to Beth and his students (if the professors even responded) was rather embarrassing. What if it caused a media circus? Leonard rather liked the quiet life he’d built. Wyvern offerings aside, his life was peaceful. He’d managed to cut back the offerings to once a month, which had become easy to stick to without raising too many eyebrows. He could even go on holiday.

But there was the inevitable question of what would happen when he died. He had no children, and frankly, none of his students seemed up to the task. Leonard had resigned himself to accept that once he was dead, it would no longer be his problem. After all, how could a dead man be responsible for anything?

He laid out the last three cookies on the blanket so the wyvern could see the offering was almost over. He rose to his feet and tossed them one at a time. When the wyvern finished snapping them up, it stood tall and looked down at Leonard.

This was the bit of the offering he hated the most. He could never quite tell if the creature would gobble him up like that T. rex did to the man cowering on the toilet in Jurassic Park, or if it would slink away, disinterested.

The wyvern’s golden eyes stared at him intently. Leonard stared back and held his breath. They stood in silence. Leonard’s back twinged and his shoulder stung. Finally, the beast closed its eyes, lowered its head and turned away. Its heavy steps shook the cavern as it snaked off into another chamber. Leonard waited for the last of its tail to disappear into the darkness before he began to pack up.

He rolled up his blanket, snuffed the torches, replaced their tinder and began his ascent back to the surface. When Leonard reached the entrance, he whipped out a plastic bag that he’d saved from the chemist and collected the rubbish. As he approached the narrow crevice he’d climbed through to get in, he could see the sapphire blue night sky from under the stout rock. Moonlight shone over the forest, and for the briefest moment, Leonard was certain he saw a large wyvern fly straight past the full moon.

From the Stovetop is a collection of short stories and recipes, delivered monthly and written by Chelsea Emerick. This newsletter combines a love of storytelling (best done at the kitchen table) over something delicious, made from scratch.

This newsletter is free, always, because cooking and storytelling is for everyone.

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Hello reader,

Chances are, if you’ve received this email, you’ve read some of my work on Substack in the past.

You might be a friend who knows me in real life (I’m sure we’re overdue for a catch up—coffee soon?), a friend from my writing group (I equally fear and enjoy you being here) or you might be a stranger who is still getting to know me (hello, I’m Chelsea, nice to meet you).

Regardless of how we know each other, I am very excited to soon be sharing my upcoming newsletter From the Stovetop with you. The first edition will be popping into your inbox next Tuesday (Monday for you Northern Hemisphere dwellers).

From the Stovetop grew from a love of writing short stories (and never putting them anywhere) and a love of cooking and refining recipes (and also never putting them anywhere).

Whenever I read a Substack newsletter, I am always delighted to find a recipe included at the end. It’s common amongst the gardeners, homesteaders and homecooking publications I read, but not so much when it comes to fiction. So I decided to combine the two. If you know of any fantasy or fiction writers also doing this, I would love to know about it. A good recipe (and a good story) is a shared one.

I can’t wait to share the first edition with you!

Thank you for reading,

Chels

P.S. I feel this shouldn’t need to be said (but hey, these are the times we’re living in), none of the stories, recipes or messages in From the Stovetop are written with AI.

Everything shared with you on Substack (and beyond) starts out in my beloved and tattered notebook. I type things up by lamplight, with a coffee, and scratch my head at what the hell I meant, as the almighty universe intended. Shortly followed by racking my brain for the keyboard shortcut for an em dash (ALT + 0151).

The recipes I share are also tried, tested and frequent my kitchen table.

I am proud to be sending you things that I have written and created with great care.

Talk to you on Tuesday!

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