Inspiration Custard

"Don’t eat it because you’re hungry. Eat it because your narrative’s falling apart, you need an excuse to cry into a spoon—and because, just once, curiosity got the better of me."

— Seraphis Nightvale, after half a bowl

Inspiration Custard is not a dessert. It is not a food. It is a mistake with a spoon next to it.

It is not made. It arrives.

No one orders it. No one prepares it. No recipe exists, and any attempt to reconstruct one ends in failure, nausea, or poetry. The custard simply manifests—one bowl, one spoon, and no witnesses to explain how it got there. Mama Jori refuses to acknowledge it. Lucian once moved it with tongs. Sylvie tried to bottle it. She has not spoken of the attempt.

It is not edible in the traditional sense. It has no nutritional value, no origin, and no reason to exist. Yet it persists.

It appears when The One In The Backroom is creating too hard, too long, too emotionally. It is not sympathy. It is a consequence. Creative pressure, cooked down into something almost solid.

It is thick. It pulses. It waits.

And it smells.

Oddly, it appears most often in summer. Or at least when the Inn thinks it’s summer.

The Scent

Inspiration Custard is known not by sight, nor taste (though those do play a part), but by smell.

It smells like burnt sugar and crushed rose petals. Like singed memories and papercut feelings. It smells like the halfway point between breakthrough and breakdown. Like someone whispering a plot twist you’re not ready to write. Like the idea that ruined your sleep last week and the one you’re going to abandon tomorrow.

It smells like regret you haven’t admitted yet.

It is, without exception, the most emotionally aggressive scent in the Inn. Some patrons describe it as comforting. Others, as invasive. One man vomited on contact. Another wrote a four-act play. Both agreed the scent was undeniably effective.

It lingers for days. On clothes. On thoughts. On everything you forgot you felt.

Behaviour and Appearance

The custard changes colour. Always pale, never consistent. It begins glossy—like pride—then dulls into something stickier, harder to explain. Sometimes it jiggles. Sometimes it watches. It never moves. But you always feel like it could.

Its surface will not accept a second spoon. Do not try.

It is warm, but never hot. It is sweet, but not kindly. It tastes like too much and not enough, all at once. The spoon bends slightly when it touches the bowl.

It is not magical. It is not divine. But it reacts to resonance.

When eaten, it pulls at something. The emotional thread you buried under deadlines and plot armour. The hurt you didn’t write down. The version of your story that didn’t happen—but should have. It doesn’t inspire gently. It extracts.

Who Eats It

Those who eat it do so once.

They don’t plan to. They don’t want to. But some stories need a push, and some breakdowns need a flavour.

They take a bite. Then another. Then they remember.

No one finishes the bowl. Not even Seraphis.
Especially not Rika.
She took one look, said, “Nope,” and made instant noodles instead.

The custard does not care what kind of person you are.
Because it smells like everything you’ve been avoiding.
And once you’re close enough to catch that scent, it’s already too late.

It overrides judgment. It bypasses caution. You reach for the spoon without meaning to.
And then it begins.

Consequences of Consumption

The effects vary. But they always happen.

Some collapse in tears. Some write for eighteen hours straight. Others vanish into side quests they didn’t know they needed. One girl threw the bowl across the room and invented an entirely new pantheon. It was... messy.

The impact of consumption cannot be listed so much as described by analogy. Imagine your inspiration gland undergoing spontaneous detonation at the quantum level. Thoughts you didn’t know you were having tear free of their scaffolding and sprint across your frontal lobe screaming in poetry.

It’s not always productive. But it is always something.

Exactly what happens is not consistent. It is... variable. In the same way the weather is variable. In the same way ideas happen at 3 a.m. because a pigeon blinked at you wrong.

Other Uses

Though unfit for ingestion, the custard is wildly versatile. This has not helped anyone.

As a floor cleaner, it strips wax, secrets, and denial.
As glue, it bonds objects—and people—permanently.
As grease, it causes doors to creak ominously and timelines to warp.
It is used in pranks. These are never funny.
It is served on dares. These are never wise.
And if you mention you’ve tasted it, strangers will confide in you. You will not be able to stop them.

Sylvie once used it as a hair mask. It enhanced her intuition. Also her nightmares.

Cultural Impact

The custard is, officially, unacknowledged. Unnamed. Unfiled.

This has not stopped it from developing a legacy.

Some patrons use it as hazing—offering it to newcomers with a grin they do not explain. Others treat it like communion: a rite for the creatively unwell. Carmella insists it’s beneath her, but once spent an entire evening beside it, murmuring the word “almost.”

A group of young adventurers—girls with too many spells, too much energy, and absolutely no adult supervision—once spent three hours arguing about it. No one touched it. The bowl remained warm the entire time.

Eventually, curiosity—or narrative inertia—won.

They ate it. Dubiously. In turns. With the sort of caution normally reserved for cursed loot or unlabelled potions.

Afterwards, their ability to solve dungeon puzzles improved. Their chaotic endeavours multiplied. Patrons now avoid them entirely during meal hours.

The bowl has not reappeared in their presence since.
It is widely believed the Custard is… observing.

Why It Still Exists

No one knows why it’s not removed. It should be.
Every rule of narrative safety demands it be sealed, buried, or launched into a sun.

But it isn’t. It remains.

Because some stories need more than structure.
They need permission to break first.

Inspiration Custard is not a dish.
It is a threshold.

And some of us will always step through it.