@tizzyent69@archibaldxiv Iโm in the same boat but with Egyptian mythology. Which is odd as a white guy. Go watch close encounters of the third kind, weโre shown this random stuff for a reason.
USA. There is a beast that lives beneath the American sink. It is always hungry. I have chosen to honor it.
The young man showing me the apartment said it casually, as if it were nothing. "Oh, and there's a disposal." He flipped a switch, and the drain ROARED โ a grinding, growling thunder, hungry and alive โ and then, at another flick, fell silent. Waiting.
I did not flinch. But I understood at once what I was dealing with.
For it is written that the oldest houses keep a guardian at the threshold of fire and water: a spirit of the hearth, fed in exchange for protection. Here, that spirit lives beneath the sink. It does not ask for prayers. It asks for scraps. And in return it devours what would rot, and keeps the whole house clean and sweet.
So I fed it, with respect. The rind of an onion. A bow. The switch. The roar of a grateful god. I thanked it each time. I named it. I began to leave it the best scraps, not the worst โ for a guardian deserves the finest tribute a kitchen can give.
And here my heart rose, and I declared the thing a calmer man would not:
"I will feed this hungry spirit so faithfully, and so well, that on the day misfortune finally comes for this house, it will rise from the drain in a column of righteous thunder and devour my every enemy whole โ and I will stand calmly beside the sink and say, 'this one has been with me from the beginning.'"
My landlord, doing the final walkthrough, heard the disposal roaring at midnight and knocked, concerned.
"Everything okay in here?"
"We are well," I said, gesturing to the sink. "He and I."
He did not understand. But he nodded slowly, and left us to it.
The drain has never clogged. The kitchen has never smelled of anything but morning. We have an understanding now, the beast and I.
So tell me, America.
You call it a garbage disposal. An appliance. A switch you flip without a thought.
I call it the loyal hearth-beast of every house โ
fed in scraps, paid in thunder,
asking nothing but to be remembered at supper.