World Chocolate Day arrived, as expected, in the middle of a heatwave, and the Bluestocking treated both as equally worth celebrating.
The chocolate fountain had been running since dawn, and by mid-morning Ginger had already been in it twice. The first time was framed, unconvincingly, as an inspection. The second time she made no attempt to frame it as anything, simply climbing the basin’s edge and dropping in with both arms raised, emerging seconds later dripping, delighted, and immediately announcing her intention to do it a third time. Several other gerbils have since joined her, on the grounds that no calories, no hangovers, and no digestive consequences of any kind means there is genuinely no reason not to.
Grog, who takes the fountain more seriously than anyone alive has any right to, has been overseeing the diving with the solemnity of a gerbil marshalling a procession, occasionally calling out form corrections as though this were a sport with judges. Genial has appointed herself official greeter of everyone who emerges, congratulating each gerbil on their dive regardless of its quality.
The heat, however, had begun turning the fountain’s lower reaches thin and unsatisfying, at which point Gauge intervened. Gauge does not enjoy an unsolved engineering problem sitting nearby unaddressed, and has spent the past hour rerouting the fountain’s basin through a run of copper coils that disappear into the tunnels and return considerably colder, the chocolate arriving back at the top re-tempered, glossy, and holding a snap that has made the diving considerably more dramatic — several gerbils have taken to smacking the surface first, purely for the sound. Grog has declared the coils canonically superior to the fountain’s original state and is treating the earlier arrangement as a historical curiosity, marked with a small hand-lettered placard reading Before.
What began as diving has, inevitably, become a water fight, conducted entirely in chocolate. Ginger started it, flinging a handful at Genial mid-greeting; Genial, delighted rather than offended, retaliated immediately; and the fountain’s perimeter is now a general skirmish, with Grog attempting, without success, to maintain a designated “ceremonial zone” at its centre. Gratuity has begun charging admission to spectators standing close enough to be hit, which several patrons have paid gladly.
The resulting mess has been handled by a fine, constant mist of cold fog drifting off dry ice packed beneath the serving table, which keeps hands and fur from turning sticky and has become an attraction in its own right — Ginger, between rounds, keeps walking back through it with her arms out.
Clara built a shaded structure over the seating near the bar without being asked and has said nothing about how it appeared. Glacier has installed herself beneath it and has not moved since, which several onlookers note is not meaningfully different from her usual pace. Rosie sits beside her, silent, watching the chocolate fight with what might be approval.
Gossip, meanwhile, has been circulating an account of the coils’ origins involving a Belgian monastery, a diplomatic incident, and a woman named Marjorie who does not appear to exist, which is already being repeated as established fact by at least three separate patrons.
Colin remains present, unbothered, and constitutionally unexplained.
https://myrtlelion.substack.com/p/world-chocolate-day