Enter Kitchen

You emerge into your kitchen. It is illuminated by two uniform windows with hinged plank shutters that look out upon a bustling street below. Men and women are already busy cleaning fabrics, carrying water, and moving scavenged detritus--hunks of metal and glass that may be of some value to traders. Your hope that your first adventure into the city beyond will yield more valuable fruits, but you suspect that beginner’s luck is just a myth.

The kitchen itself is bare and not entirely useful. A cast iron skillet, rusted brown, hangs from the wall. The stove is a cheap iron box that is an utter pain to clean. The flue duct is perennially caked with soot and gets stuffed up more often than would be pleasant. You try not to cook anything if it can be helped. Thankfully, the tinkerer next door is always eager to have you over for company and dinner, but you have to beware his propensity for never shutting up.

The sink gleams despite water stains. A cabinet with a cracked wooden hatch contains rations of wheat biscuits, a vial of salt (too little to ever justify wasting), and some ancient jars of preserves. There may be some jerky lying about. Fresh meat, when it can be got, is immediately cured and kept mostly by the butcher. The butcher is one of the most trusted men in the settlement, and therefore the wielder of the role changes often as butcher after butcher is caught sampling the sausages. Eggs are a welcome rarity. You don’t have any. 

In the corner is a dilapidated white cube with a door. You aren’t really sure what it is for. It is like a safe without a lock. Inside are shelves of a strange rubbery but hard material.

A round table once acted as a centerpiece to this space, but it had to be broken up and used for fuel during the endless winter a few years back. Rest in pieces, faithful eating surface.