The Potion For Eternal Life

An excerpt from The Thirteenth Hour, soon after the protagonist, Logan, learns about living forever, coffee, and other things.

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“No one’s gonna believe me.”

“I’ve already thought of that. If you try to explain all this to your King, you’re right, he probably won’t believe you. So don’t even bother. He’ll find out the truth when his time comes. Just take this scroll and give it to him. It contains the ingredients for a special potion that he can drink. He doesn’t have to know that it won’t make him live forever.”

I opened the scroll. It said:

The Potion for Eternal Life

sugar

ground coffee beans

milk or cream

boiled water

thin piece of cloth or strainer

Instructions: Coffee beans look like small red beans when ripe. The outer red shell should be removed, exposing a white bean with a lengthwise indentation on the flat side. A handful should be collected to make a few servings. These beans should then be roasted in a pot until they are brown, but care must be taken to not over–roast them, otherwise the flavor will be affected negatively. Using a mortar and pestle, grind up the roasted coffee beans into a granular powder (the more coffee you put in, the stronger the potion). There are two ways to get the coffee from the grounds into the water for drinking. 1.) Pour the grounds into the boiling water. The entire mixture will start to turn brown, like tea. Place a strainer over a cup and pour the boiling mixture through. 2.) Alternatively, wrap grounds in a thin cloth. Put cloth with grounds in boiling water for several minutes until water is black. Squeeze the bag until no more black liquid comes out. Although not necessary, you can add milk, cream, or sugar for taste without diluting the effectiveness of the potion. This potion works best when taken first thing in the morning or when fatigued.

Aurora studied the scroll for a moment, twirling her hair around a finger.

“What’s coffee?” she asked, scrunching up her nose at the sound of the strange word.

“Oh, just something that your King hasn’t discovered yet. It’s a little bean that grows in some places in the world. If he looks south, Your King can import them, probably already shelled and roasted, no problem. The beans contain something called caffeine – another thing that will get discovered one of these days – it wakes you up and makes you feel more alive. It’s … a little like magic. So the potion isn’t a complete lie. It will make your King feel as if he could live forever, even though, in reality, he’s still a mortal. But don’t tell him,” said the Dreamweaver, with a sly smile.

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