#2024MakeAMonster day 9: Coffee

 #2024makeamonster

Coffee

Good morning and welcome to Waker's Coffee! No sleep too deep, that's our motto.

Yes, we have all kinds here. Blonde roasts, single-origin, even Kopi Luwak. You know, those coffee beans that pass through the digestive system of a civet cat and get mellowed on the way?

Ethical? Well, mostly. If you want wild-harvested civet droppings you'll have to pay wild-harvested prices, I'm afraid, but those'll run you pretty high. Civets don't eat coffee beans every day, and even if they do, they have to live long enough to pass them out. They aren't apex predators you know: crocodiles, hyenas, even snakes can take them out. So the real wild stuff's a pretty penny.

We do have a discount, and it's - well, ethical enough, I think. We don't used caged civet farms, that's for sure. We're . . . barnyard civet, let's say. Dotty and Fluff out the back are busy little creatures. Pretty mad with caffeine, I'd admit, but it's not iron bars that hold them in. We have . . . gentler methods of discouraging escape. There's things they can't break past - and then there's things they don't want to pass.

No, I don't think that's a kettle boiling. Yes, I can hear the hiss, but I assure you, it's purely an illusion.

As I said, they aren't apex predators. Not fond of snakes. Just don't laugh too loud where they can hear you; a snake's something to stay away from, but hear a hyena and they might run.

Ah, Jimmy sent you. Well then, let's talk real business.

Show me your palm. Ah. Interesting life-line you have there. More than one break in it you've been brought back from.

So all right, I'll ask the two real questions: how deep a sleep do you want your patient woken from? Because the real sleep, the long sleep, like the kind you've woken from - more than once, if I don't miss my guess - well, the beans for that'll cost you more than a pretty penny. That'll take a positively beautiful one, if you get my meaning.

And if we're talking frankly, I must ask - are we talking about a loved one you want to bring back? Or are you more in the market for a mere servant?

Because when we're pricing out your coffee beans, that's the other question: how awake do you want it to be?