.سم الله, الرحمن, الرحيم

Bism Allah alrahman, alrahim.

In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.

- The Basmalah (610 A.D.)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Hank emerged from the bathroom after having cleaned Anna's snot and tears off his new cashmere shirt. The living room held not a soul, with delicious smells from the kitchen replacing the women who'd been teasing him earlier. He heard Teek giggling between murmurs of conversation, sometimes plucking at her violin as she spoke. Anna was seated on her barstool throne and, with the commanding view of the apartment it provided, she was the first person Hank saw as he approached. She munched a rice cracker while resting an elbow on the café table beside her. She grinned around her cracker when he caught her eye, holding it motionless to her lips.

Hank swooned when she gave him a wink, but all hell broke loose when Teek caught him in her sights. She still wore her French cut blouse, now under her over-sized pinafore apron, but the silver skirt was gone. It had been replaced by a pair of lime green shorts, tight and skimpy enough to make Sue Marie proud. Tiny slippers graced her feet as she twirled while playing an evocative tune on her violin. She danced near Hank's face as close as she dared, menacing him with her bow.

"How did you like your time spent in our bathroom?" she teased, performing for his pleasure, and exchanging a sly look with Anna. She asked a second question in an equally sexy voice when all Hank did was stare. "And how do you like your noodles?"

"Uh… Huh?"

Teek popped the bow on her strings and instantly stopped playing. She scampered to put her violin in its case, sitting on the café table where Anna's elbow rested. Teek then twirled around the kitchen, her pinafore apron billowing.

"You may have chicken or seafood!" she cheered, sounding a bit ditzy.

Last time Hank saw Teek in her kitchen she was a blaze of activity, tending to more pots and bowls than he could count. This time she had only one pot, huge and steaming on the stove. She stood as high as her tiptoes would allow to peer into the pot. Even so, her nose nearly touched its rim as she stirred its contents with a giant wooden spoon.

Teek sang as she stirred. "Come here, Hank! Come over here. See what it is I am cooking!"

"Ah…"

Hank was more than a little concerned about getting close to the dervish while she was near a boiling pot. Instead, he stood by Anna, as he'd done during his previous visit.

"Good choice," she said quietly, munching on her cracker. "Don't get close to Teek when she cooks."

"Or like, ever," Hank added, recalling how she assaulted the tail poking out of the ass of Aika's Neko cat costume during his last visit.

"Oh, Hank," Teek enthused as she did another twirl while holding both the spoon and the hem of her apron. "Isn't our kitchen gorgeous?"

"It's amazing," Hank said with an ear-to-ear smile, still glowing from having made out with Anna. "And dinner smells so good!"

"Give him a big bowl, Sugar Teeks," Anna said. "He seems hungry to me."

"I'm starved!"

Teek sang a nonsense song as she twirled. She pulled out a wheeled step stool from under a rack of spices and danced with it towards a cluster of pots and pans hanging from the ceiling. Once near, she grabbed a clean wooden spoon and climbed up the stool, holding her arms out wide.

"Look at my pots and pans!" she sang, directing them with the spoon as if they were an orchestra.

"We're having sesame Thai noodles for lunch, with chicken," Anna informed Hank.

"And you can also add seafood!" Teek announced, before banging on the pots and pans with the spoon.

"Chicken will be fine!" Hank called out over the din.

Teek banged away harder, her tongue poking out from a grin. "Okay!" she hollered back.

Anna was not amused. "Teeks," she scolded politely.

Teek stopped banging and scampered down her stool. "I can't believe I wasn't told I'd be a Genius Chef!"

"Well, I'm sure you are," Anna said as a compliment.

"There's no doubt in my mind," Hank added, as his stomach growled.

Teek suddenly grew very serious. She put her stool away.

"Oh no," she solemnly said. "I'm not. I'm a musician for sure. A concert violinist."

She approached her violin case with care, sneaking up on it as if it were alive. "This is my true love. My patron Saint Cecilia," she said as the name of her instrument. She caressed its curves with her fingers. "I've never loved anything more than this, and I never will. Have you ever loved something so much?" she asked Hank in all sincerity.

He pondered what seemed like the million new things that had happened in his life over the past few days, and realized he loved them all. Teek's attention remained on her violin, and Hank turned his to Anna.

"I'm loving everything," he said to her, answering Teek's question. "Everything and everyone."

Teek's big black curls bounced on her shoulders as she laughed and danced and twirled. She then ran her fingertips over the backs of the chairs along the dining table while strolling up to the pot on the stove.

"Come eat! Come eat!" she cried to everyone in the apartment.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Seated again at a table, now with four lovely women, at a feast prepared in his honor, Hank looked for a way to show gratitude. "You must let me wash your dishes," he said to Teek, eyeing the giant pot she had served dinner from.

"Okay!" she replied. "I'll dry!"

"No," Aika said, quiet as a mouse. "You're not here to do chores."

"I see things differently."

Hank spoke with so much authority that everyone stopped and stared. Even Aika's eyes rose from her bowl of noodles. The sudden attention made Hank blink, but he didn't back down.

"You think I want to do your dishes because I'm returning a favor, but that's not how it is. Doing things for other people—we should always be that way. It's the way we're meant to be."

Everyone wanted more.

"Good people don't wait for someone to ask for before they offer help. They just dive in and do it. I've been this way my whole life, and I'm not going to change. Now if Teek will let me wash her dishes…"

"Sure!"

"… then I won't be denied." He turned his attention from Aika to Teek. "If there's anything else I can do for you, please let me know right away."

Teek reached across the table and gently touched Hank's hand. "Say Grace," she suggested.

Again, everyone stared at Hank. He looked at the faces of his new friends.

"I don't know," he said with humility. "We all seem so different."

"Well, I'm Catholic," Teek said. "How about you?"

"I'm Christian, but there are Jews in my ancestry."

"I think I'm a witch," Aika said.

Anna laughed. "Oh, Senpai. I know you are."

"What religion are you?" Hank asked Anna.

"I don't know. Nothing, I suppose."

"Oh."

Teek disagreed. "That can't be so. Your family must be Buddhist."

Anna defended her agnostic belief. "Well of course my family is. But I think there's no way a normal person can know how the Universe works. I think I'm like Aika—a witch more than anything else."

Aika smiled at her noodles, acting like she agreed.

"How so?" Teek asked Anna.

"Well, I believe there's no difference between the spiritual world and what's real, and we control everything in it. Like, everything comes from one place, you know? Including our thoughts and dreams."

Hank agreed. "Yeah, that's kinda me too. The world is simpler than we're led to believe."

Anna disagreed. "Oh, I don't believe that at all."

Sehrish defended Hank. "No, he's right. I mean, the world itself is big, that's true, but the part of the world that you believe in can be very small. It's whatever you want it to be."

Anna pondered Sehrish's words as Hank added his thoughts to them. "If you believe the world is this way or that, or whatever you think it to be, you fill up your part of the world with the things that make it look like what you believe."

When Anna did nothing but stare at her food, Hank gently placed one of his hands on hers, and the other one on Aika's, who sat to his right. He bowed his head and offered thanks.

"Help us to be generous," he prayed, "and to give to those in need. Teach us to show respect, and to place the needs of others before our own. May we show mercy and be kind, and may goodwill always be with us, making each day a joy."

Hank took a quick breath and looked up at the bowed heads before him.

"Let good conquer bad, let love triumph evil, and let God's grace protect us, guiding us with His might."

"Amen," Teek said to her food.

Sehrish reached across the table and swallowed both Hank and Anna's hands with a big one of her own. "That was beautiful," she said, squeezing hard. "Bism allah alrahman, alrahim, nahn na'kul."

The Book of CHASTITY - Chapter FIVE

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