Here is the longer version of my E/O drabble challenge for this week.

s/9419581/1/EO-drabble-challenge-Slab

The challenge word was Slab.

A Moment with My Brother

Chopping

Dean is chopping vegetables.

The knife moves like it's a gleaming, metallic extension of his body, like the brushed aluminum of the blade and his flesh are symbiotically but happily co-dependent (Umm, but then he know's something about co-dependency, doesn't he? So maybe it's not really that surprising).

He's humming contentedly as he exquisitely deconstructs the trembling viand that lay like supplicants at the marble altar that is his chopping board. The near professional speed with which he works is mesmerizing and I find it impossible not to smile as I realize that he is sacrificing the celery in-time to the beat of his internal metronome.

Chop-chop-chop, the blade flies fluidly matching the heavy-rock 4/4 beat, the uber-sharp tip near-kissing the skin of his fingers as he advances the aromatics to their necessary demise.

The honey-honed blade tings percussively on the cold, slick stone with each powerful thrust and my eyes are drawn to the pretty pink and grey swirls of the marble slab that is Dean's custom cuttery.

The wedge of granite is unusual, it's sides nowhere near linear and I find the wainy-edges, though eclectic and individual as I pride myself on being, at odds with my obsessive Charlie-pulsiveness.

I realize that I haven't seen the chopping-board before and as he sweeps the last of the mirepoix into the softly sizzling saute pan on the hob, I rise and move closer to truth-see for it's origin.

The stone is heavy as I heft it and I know from the weight that it could find a happy home in some designer chef-y boutique but I doubt, despite the empowering emergence of his latent but serious skills, that I would ever find Dean in such a place. Well not unless he were there to exorcise the cilantro...Ugg, cilantro...work of the devil!

So, that leaves me thinking, where did he/we/the bat-cave crew acquire such a killer piece of kitchen-kit?

He smiles at me as I examine the goods. It's a playful tease of a smile that sings a playground song of 'I know something you don't know' and I flare my nostrils for him, allowing him a precious moment of sibling-superiority as we all know he'll rarely achieve another, simply because of his unfortunate xx chromasome-y. (Come now...I just mean he's a boy and boys suck compared to girls!)

I turn the board in my hands and though the top surface is smooth as a...peach? (Can't apply that descriptor to rock can you? Need another example for ya...Smooth as a..? Humm..? Oh the hell with it. Smooth as a really smooth thing. Okay?), the other side is, I am surprised to see, sculpted.

Letters are deeply embossed into the raspberry-ripple marble...the first row, due to the nature of where the rough crack that has delineated it's shaggy edge, holds just capital I.

The second row sees a capital L, followed by a lowercase o and v and the final row, (there were, I think, more but here another rift in the parent stone has abridged the verse), has a large M followed by a baby e and m.

So here take a look at it with me...

In

Lov

Mem

Shit!

Do you see what I see?

Are you putting two and two together and seeing revered memoriam turned to Winchester workstation?

I turn my 'I'm-mock-shocked-beyond-belief' face to my smirking brother as he attempts to innocently stir the sweet-smelling pot.

"In Loving Memory?"

My voice is all disapproving accusation and he has the grace to look a wee bit sheepish as he nods guiltily.

"really? I don't believe it...You stole an actual gravestone to be our chopping board?"

Dean squinshes his face up, raising his hands and so, wooden spoon, in his defense.

"Well...Not exactly stole...It was just lying there...and the graveyard had been abandoned for years..."

I tut and he diddles his leg a bit like a scolded child as he continues.

"And anyway...it's not a whole gravestone..."

He pouts a little as my big, brown eyes scold his blushing freckles.

"Oh well that's okay then!"

I chide and he rolls his big green eyes as I continue.

"And anyway...Ewwh, Bro!...gravestone...churchyard...decomposing bodies. And hello! Maybe evil spirits or religious backlash as well."

I gesture with girly trepidation at the dismembered memorial tablet where it sits on the counter but he shakes his head, his gaze defiant...proud that he has thought this through and can foreswear all my objections.

"No, Charlie, it's cool. Really I thought of all that and believe me this baby has been KrudKutter-d, Holy watered and exorcised to within an inch of it's life. Every single, slimy sucker, be it corporeal or ephemeral that ever lurked there has been nuked outa existence.

I eye him suspiciously, but my face must give him a clue that I'm impressed.

"And it's really eco-friendly...ya know...re-cycling!"

He grins disarmingly and I sweat him for just a few seconds before grinning with him.

"Sam'll be proud."

I praise him and Dean smiles wider.

"See he's not the only eco-warrior in the family."

He laughs as he goes back to his cooking and I'm left to glance at the back of him as I think warrior, yes definitely but eco I not convinced.

ends

Many thanks to all those reading and especially to those commenting. Your views and comments are lovely.