"See Yan. See Yan cook. See Yan cook eyeballs. Yan can cook." - Tem42
Met some old lady today. Ran into her while I was out wandering the Wastes. She was holed up in some shack, hiding out. Nearly blew her head off when I found her, she spooked me so bad!
She was sittin at some table with a mug in her hand - cupping it close in her wrinkly old hands. Invited me to sit down with her, in her "little kitchen". It was weird, but I said alright.
It wasn't til I sat down that I noticed there weren't nothin in her cup. She had this funny look in her eye, too, like she was in an altogether different place.
"Oh yes... It's a lovely day outside. I'm just waiting for my boy to get back from the store. He went down to get some milk. But oh, that was a while ago. I wonder what's keeping him?"
"The store? For... milk? Uhh.."
"He's been gone for so long. I do hope he hurries home. Supper is getting cold!"
I didn't know what to say. The far-away look in her eye - the disarray of the abysmal shack. Wasn't a thing in it but that table she was sitting at. I tried to explain this to her - there wasn't no store. No milk. Probably no son. This was the Wasteland, and didn't she remember? Nuclear apocalypse..? The Great War?
"What are you talking about? Why, I do believe you're being rude! Please leave my home!"
"You mean this shitty little shack? No problem, lady!"
It was then that she threw a book at me. I have no idea where she was hiding it - maybe she just picked it up off the ground. There were plenty of the scorched things littering the floor. But the old maddie threw it, alright. Hard. Hit me square in the chest.
"And take your garbage with you!" she screamed.
What a nut.
So I took it. Left there and kept heading south. I ran into some nice roving traders later that let me sit at their fire with them. Even shared some mirelurk with me.
It was then that I actually looked at it. It was some sort of really old cookbook. "Yan Can Cook!" Most of the pages were charred black, torn and destroyed. I flipped through a bit until I came across something I could actually read.
"Eyeball Stew"
Some recipe, hand-written on a mostly unscathed page, about how to use human eyeballs to make stew. There weren't really any more recipes that I could see, but I found a small note between the pages in the back.
"It's over. Daniel's gone. Took my caps with him - the bastard. All I got is my rifle and some stimpacks. I passed a small shack a while ago. It wasn't much but it's somewhere to sleep until daylight. I think I'll go there."
It was covered in blood.