You can get nearly anything you want at Siouzi’s Coffee & Books
(Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?)
Siouzi Wooten didn’t start in the coffee and book business. When she graduated from St. Remedius Medical College with a Masters degree in Applied Metaphysics, she planned on a career in corporate thaumaturgy: weather spells to strengthen shipping lines, secure cryptocantrips for interoffice communication, protective sigils to avoid corporate espionage, that sort of thing. After ten years of nose-to-grindstone spellslinging that only benefited the executives paying for chin implants for their entire families, she finally snapped after watching a long-promised raise evaporate to pay for “executive retention bonuses” for fools and psychopaths who should have been thrown feet-first into tree mulchers and decided “You know, going back to school isn’t so bad.” Three years and a Ph.D later, Siouzi had the world at her feet, with an explosive period of magical research at St. Remedius to keep her busy for the next decade, and she rapidly built a reputation as one of the most no-nonsense professors in the Metaphysics department. Students, postgrads, administrators, random passersby…all feared the ultimate sign of her disappointment with the first phonemes of her asking “Who are you trying to BULLSHIT?” Worse, she was a master at getting the recipients to admit the answer in public.
Ten years later, that question came back and smacked her between the eyes. A reasonably amicable divorce left her with custody of two daughters, both as inherently talented in the mystical arts as she was, but Siouzi was sick to death of not being available for them, and she was equally sick of teaching. She craved new challenges, new strategies, new paradigms…and she had no idea that she would find every challenge she ever wanted in 60-kilo burlap sacks full of one of the wonders of the modern world. Magic was everywhere, but it was just concentrated in coffee.
Most laypeople assume that the phrase “magical coffee beans” is purely metaphor. Coffee experts beg to differ, with at least eight cultivars either able to condense magical essence or draw energy flows to their vicinity during a growing season. Most of the “special cup” varieties are little more than luck accumulators, promising a wakeup and a slightly better chance of escape from the corporate nightmare than average. Some brands claim to improve that slightly, adding piezoforce crystals to the grind or growing the parent plants near energy accumulators, with varying results. The serious brews, though, depend upon multiple factors to develop their effects, and no place on Earth or its various satellite quantum pockets had the knowledge or the equipment to facilitate these brews other than St. Remedius. Whether it was for a regular cup of psionic buffer to keep out intrusive thoughts or special espresso shots for spirit travel beyond traditional time and space, Siouzi tracked down recipes and growing media, first as a hobby and later as an obsession, and patented the first Klein bottle espresso machine to concentrate otherwise insignificant factors into one absolutely perfect cup. When a coffee shop on the edge of the St. Remedius campus closed, she saw her opportunity to turn abstractions into concrete, and with the full blessings of the dean, Siouzi’s Coffee & Books opened six months later with the intent of changing forever the perception of what coffee could accomplish.
Not that Siouzi ever really left St. Remedius. A mage of her caliber was always welcome, especially on a reserve basis, and the shop was always full of professors and students in search of chemical enlightenment and augmentation, gentle or otherwise. However, getting her out of the shop during main hours was always a challenge, not when she had mystical visitors and temporal tourists just waiting to see what she had for them this time. She was perfectly happy to answer questions, but what she preferred to do was sit patrons with complimentary talents or perceptions next to each other and let them answer the other’s curiosities. This led rapidly to the center of the coffeehouse being open displays for mystical marvels, with regularly monthly friendly competitions in pyromancy, oneiromancy, and paleontological necromancy that soon spilled out onto the sidewalk outside so everyone could watch.
Another aspect that distinguished Siouzi’s Coffee & Books was Siouzi’s dedication as a judge for Zwinge Foundation assessment and accreditation, and the former band weenies wanting to take up tables for hours to banter about spirit healing, crystals, or necroscopy soon found themselves on the receiving end of her famed battle call. Those wannabes not offended by the poster over the bar quoting one of the great philosophers of the Twentieth Century (“A chakra is one of those places where if you hit it with a baseball bat, you die”) were usually personally insulted if they dared question Siouzi’s knowledge or skills, and attempts to draw off crowds with knockoff coffeehouses that promised not to be “so exclusionary” usually went awry as paying customers were outnumbered by Cat Piss Men taking over the places for card games. Not that this was a problem for anyone other than the wannabes: Siouzi taught everyone “make extraordinary claims, back it up with extraordinary results or get the hell out.”
Someone of her talents inevitably attracted attention, and that went beyond the typical travelers in space or time, although both were regularly waiting for the shop to open each morning. One of the reasons why any act of violence, from assault to demanding to talk to the manager, was an absolute rarity was because of a special dispensation from Lord Adramelech, president of the Infernal Senate of Hell and an absolute fanatic for a well-done doppio. Extensive warning signs inside and outside the shop, as well as sigils impressed in the aether surrounding the shop, warn of the extreme measures used to enforce a peaceful environment, and those engaging in violence after being given one warning are found on the sidewalk turned to stone. The type of stone depends upon the character of the individual: most of the Southern Methodist University fratbros looking for a new venue to despoil were usually transformed to chalk, bentonite, or various coprolites, but one minor deity from the distant future remained for years as a perfect statue of augmented-structure alexandrite until a delivery truck backed into it and caused it to shatter. The peace was held by angelic and diabolical forces, Law and Chaos, and as many of the Further Realms as could recognize humans as individuals, and with the fear that if things got too far out of hand, Lord Adremelech wasn’t the only one who would be taking out frustrations on needing a perfect Saint Missy (an americano made with beans grown in dragon sweat and a shot of holy water blessed at the Pope’s bat mitzvah, or so Siouzi said) on a Sunday morning.
For all of her dedication to the shop, Siouzi looked at her family as much important, and both of her daughters were just as necessary to the coffeehouse’s operation and desirability as she was. Coatlique, the elder, was a leading light at St. Remedius in phytomancy, as she demonstrated both with the plants in the front window and with the monstrous pecan tree out front that shaded the house during the summer and supplied the essential ingredients for shop-made pecan pies in the autumn noted for their preternatural ability to fend off winter chill. (The real trick was keeping squirrels out of the tree during nut season, as the bright green glow in their fur attracted all sorts of cryptids: they left customers alone, but cockatrice dung usually required hazmat gear, especially after it burned holes through the tables under the tree.) Her younger sister Cymoril was responsible for the “Books” in the shop’s title: Coatlique may have known what she was given when a guest gave her a rare etherwood seed, but Cymoril was the one who tracked down the arborsculpture books that allowed Coatlique to shape and train the first etherwood racer, capable of traveling on land, sea, and air, seen on Earth in centuries. Although drastically different in temperaments and interests (an old childhood nickname for the two was “Snow and Flame,” although few were foolish enough to say it out loud when they became adults), the sisters were incredibly dedicated to each other and to their mother, and when St. Remedius Medical College disappeared, the two were the only people alive who could rescue Siouzi from one of the side effects and bring her back safely.
The college may be gone, but Siouzi’s Coffee & Books continues on 808 Park Lane in Dallas to this day, mostly thanks to a charity benefit to build new greenhouses for coffee plants and essential mystic herbs after the St. Remedius herbariums followed the rest of the school into oblivion or destiny. Hours are from 5:00 am to midnight every night, with special dispensations for private gatherings available by request.
Want to get caught up on the St. Remedius story so far? Check out the main archive. Want more hints as to the history of St. Remedius Medical College? Check out Backstories and Fragments. Want to forget all of that and look at cat pictures from a beast who dreams of his own OnlyFans for his birthday? Check out Mandatory Parker. Questions, concerns, and disgust over generative AI? Check out Contact, Privacy Policy, and AI Policy. And feel free to visit the St. Remedius Medical College Redbubble shop for all of your Mandatory Parker needs.
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