We're clustered around the card table again. There are only five of us now - me, Magister, the other two librarians, and my classmate. When she and her boyfriend broke it off in an acrimonious sort of way back in October, she got custody of Sunday gaming nights. Some of that custody arrangement might have been due to his character's having lost so much sanity after summoning an Elder God that the character wound up permanently institutionalized as a drooling, gibbering wreck, an encounter only even survivable by his making an astronomically good save roll; but had also recently picked up a new part-time job that was going to get in the way of his gaming, so he didn't really have a good reason to fight for his spot at the gaming table.

Interestingly, this means Magister is now the only male in an otherwise all-female group of role players. That doesn't happen very often. If I'd been in his position, I think I would have made one obligatory teasing comment about having a harem, just to see what kind of reaction I'd get, but so far, he's refrained.

"Make a perception check," I tell my classmate, who is playing an archaeologist. It's a fairly easy challenge - the party needs to find out somehow that there's something a little off about the hieroglyphics on the wall of the pyramid. If all else fails, another character can spot the alien drawings. In the meantime, though, my classmate needs to roll, and she needs to borrow my dice, because while she got custody of Sunday game attendance, her ex-boyfriend got custody of all the dice. She still hasn't replaced her dice.

It was an extremely messy break-up.

When I pass her my twenty-sided die, our hands brush up against each other.

"Sorry," we both say, more or less at the same time. Of course, this makes us apologize again, with similar timing.

I feel blood rush to my cheeks. No doubt I'm blushing as hard as she is.

Her roll is successful.

The grape and yogurt salad chills on a shelf in the refrigerator. That was the easiest dish to prepare. Everything else we're advance-prepping for our Yule feast - tiropitas, spanakopitas, and baklava - requires actual work.

If I roll any more phyllo dough, I think my arms will fall off. I have rolled so much phyllo dough that I know I will be dreaming of rolling pins and dough when I fall asleep tonight. I think I've rolled about eight feet of dough so far. If it hasn't been that much, that's only because after a couple of hours I lost track of how much dough I rolled. Maybe I've rolled more than eight feet. I can't tell.

Large plastic containers filled with ingredients sit on a section of the kitchen counter - feta cheese, parmesan cheese, ricotta cheese, and a thawed bag of spinach leaves. Next to them are cartons of eggs, freshly ground cinnamon sticks, the grater I used to grind the cinnamon, a massive jar of raw local honey, and, mixed in with sugar and cinnamon, several pounds of pistachios and walnuts that were a royal pain to chop fine, even using a blender. A saucepan containing several packages of butter I'd clarified earlier this morning sits on a warm stove burner to prevent the butter from firming up when we want to be able to drizzle it over pastry. It sits next to a smaller saucepan of homemade simple syrup that he had me cook up from rose water and sugar before I clarified the butter.

We're making everything from scratch this time. That is if my arms don't cramp up and freeze in mid-roll.

Magister is bent over a funnel, sprinkling herbs he ground in a mortar into a bottle of ouzo. Contrary to popular belief, real ouzo is not illegal to import into the United States, and it does not contain extract of opium poppies. Real ouzo is just absinthe without the wormwood, but with a lot more sugar added; it's an alcoholic jellybean. There are no controlled substances in ouzo.

That's why he's adding them himself.

"Exactly where does one find poppies and wormwood?" I ask. "Aren't they kind of illegal?"

"The dried poppies came from a craft store, where they're sold as flower-arranging supplies. The wormwood leaves and roots came from an occult supply catalog, which is also where I got the mugwort, which is a cousin of wormwood that is traditionally used to induce vivid dreams and prophetic visions. There's no 'kind of' about it. Both the opium poppies and the wormwood are illegal." He frowns. "Quite silly that wormwood is illegal. Wormwood and other plants that have thujone in them, and those would include oregano and sage, aren't even psychotropic - the notion that absinthe causes delusions and seizures is based on pure propaganda, and maybe on patent medicines labeled as absinthe that were tainted with wood-grain alcohol. Some of the things medicine show salesmen peddled were astonishingly unmedicinal... The closest thing to a consciousness-altering side effect from thujone is that some people who ingest it experience temporary mental clarity, like what you'd get from caffeine, only without the jitters, as thujone is not a stimulant. I suppose it would be possible to experience weird side effects or to poison yourself if you consumed an essential oil made from wormwood, because that would contain a much higher concentration of thujone, but only an idiot would want to do something like that."

He's cute when he harumphs.

"And the pieces of dried poppy I'm steeping in the bottle - if you made a tea from the entire poppy, it would probably be no stronger than a dose of codeine cough syrup, and drinking one shot of infused ouzo won't even give that high a dose. Really. The overall effect of this should be to create intense and lucid dreams if taken before bedtime, or clarity of thought and openness to visions if used before meditation, no more." He removes the funnel and recaps the bottle. "There. It should be ready to strain in about two weeks. It won't taste like ouzo anymore, of course, because the herbs I added are very bitter, but the taste will probably be the closest thing to real absinthe one might get, outside of Portugal. Let's see how you're coming along with the dough. Gracious. That's a lot of dough. After we're done making Greek pastries, there might be enough phyllo dough left over for me to make a strudel and use up the rest of the apples we have in the fridge. Ready to start?"

He pulls out baking pans and paintbrushes and brings the various ingredients to the table, and after oiling the pans, we get to work on pastry-making. He puts the kettle on for tea; when it starts to whistle, we each pour water into mugs so that we can drink herbal tea while preparing pastry. Almond Sunset. I bought it mostly for the romantic picture on the box, which made me think of Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour in Somewhere in Time, but I found I like the taste, especially after I've added a little milk and sugar. It's one of the sweetest herbal teas I've ever had.

"There was a Greek restaurant a few streets down from my old college," I say as I brush honey on layers of phyllo, before sprinkling candied nuts on top of the honey and drizzling everything with melted butter, repeating as necessary. Usually, the honey does not come until the very end, when one pours simple syrup over the freshly sliced pastry, but Magister has always liked his baklava extra sticky and sweet, hence the extra step. If I'm careful applying the honey and the butter and don't go overboard the way I did the first time I helped him make baklava, the baklava should be crisp, rather than soggy. "The food was delicious - the proprietor came from the old country. I loved the tiropitas he made. They were huge, not like these little ones we're making. They were the size of large burritos, and came in ceramic dishes, piping hot, straight from the oven. Tiropitas the size of your head. One of those would fill you up for the rest of the evening. They were incredible. The two of you should have a cook-off someday. I don't know who would win."

"He's a Greek chef? And a first-generation immigrant, at that? Ah. Well. He'd probably win. Cooking is a hobby for me, one that I happen to love very much, especially when it's Mediterranean food, but it's still only a hobby. And Greek cuisine is not in my blood."

We continue to sprinkle cheese and spinach, layer dough, and paint honey. Eventually, we have several pans of tiropita and spanakopita that go into the oven, and two pans of carefully sliced baklava that he pours simple syrup over before cramming them into the large convection toaster oven that sits on a corner table. (The convection oven is his latest kitchen toy. I suspect he planned our Yule feast intending to test out the toy). The oven timer gets set for twenty minutes. The leftover ingredients go into the refrigerator, as will the pastries themselves, once they're done. Much of our handiwork will be stored in the freezer for later reheating. Meanwhile, we've run out of baking pans. Darn. I was hoping for more baklava. I've developed a taste for extra-sweet, extra-sticky baklava, myself.

"Much better than frozen burritos or breakfast pockets," he says. "And less expensive, in the long run. Food is generally cheaper and more nutritious when you are willing to do everything from scratch."

I sigh. "Yes, Mr. Miyagi."

"Just wait until you taste the pastitsio I'll make for you. I'm doing all the work on that one."

He reaches over the corner of the table to stroke my cheek. I close my eyes and lean into his caress. One of his fingers brushes against my mouth; it tastes of honey. I take his hand in mine and suck the honey from his finger.

"Mmm. More."

"More what?" he asks, amusement in his voice. "More honey, or more of me?"

"I'm not sure. I like both. You do go very well with honey."

"I do?"

"Mmm-hmm. You do." I feel a wicked smile start to play at the corners of my mouth. "The jar is just a bit out of reach. Could you help me get it?"

I start unbuckling him when he reaches across me for the honey jar, which causes him to chuckle. "I think I have an idea of what you have in mind."

"I'd be worried if you didn't." I dip into the jar with the tip of my finger, draw out some honey, and dip it onto the obvious target.

He goes very well with honey.

The oven timer goes off. Stupid timer.

"Time to check the tiropitas," he mutters. "Well. We can come back to this in a few seconds. The honey will still be here, as will I, I think."

He refastens his trousers and gets up to open the oven door; upon inspecting the pastries, he decides that it is indeed time for them to come out. The next set of tiropitas and spanakopitas go in. He closes the oven door, sets the timer a second time, and comes back around the table to where I am. When he puts his arms around me, they burn with warmth, despite the cotton barrier of his shirt. He kisses me deeply on my mouth, then my neck, making me moan with expectation. I feel his hands quickly and deftly unfastening the buttons on my own clothing, and I reach down to help him, but by the time I get there, I'm already completely unbuttoned and unzipped. I lift myself off my chair to help him pull off my jeans. Stupid things are in the way. Can't have that.

"You gave me an interesting idea a few minutes ago," he murmurs into my ear. "Onto the table, please."

"I hope I give you lots of ideas." I hoist myself up onto the kitchen table.

He smiles. "Always. I find you a wonderful source of inspiration." This time, when he kisses me, he pushes me gently but firmly onto my back. "I'll need you to hold yourself still for this. If you wiggle too much, you might make a mess of my work." The mugs of tea are still on the table, as is the jar of honey; he moves the still-steaming mugs to the counter and covers them with saucers to keep the tea inside them warm before returning to me, this time with a paintbrush in hand. He dips the brush in the honey jar, lets a single drop fall back into the jar, and then brushes the honeyed bristles across my lips. He's painting my lips with honey. It tickles. I find myself giggling. Then he bends down to lick the honey off my mouth, and I gasp, because I like what he's doing with his tongue a lot more than I like being tickled. When he bites down on my lower lip with careful, methodical slowness, the sensation makes me writhe.

"Hold still," he whispers, and picks up the brush again.