Tales of the Coffee God

And it came to pass that the Coffee God came to a strange foreign land and this land was known to those who dwelt there as the Hazelnut Valley. And in this land the people did walk and sing beneath strange trees, called the tree of the hazelnut. And the nut of this tree they did pick and verily place the nectar from this nut in the mugs of their coffee. And they mixed the nut nectar with the coffee and would quaff this beverage on a regular basis in great quantities and were very satisfied and pleased with themselves thereby, and they did have a great amount of pleased talk about this ‘hazelnut coffee.’

But one day, among the many on his travels, the Coffee God Javonka came to the valley and smelled the strange coffee smells that rose from all of the valley’s mugs. And he grew tongue-tied and irate. And so Javonka stopped an older woman, with a very self-satisfied smile on her face, walking in a zombie-like contented manner, across a pleasant wooded area even as she did take very measured and apparently enjoyable sips from her giant mug, painted in white and decorated with something that looked vaguely like a happy gingerbread man.

“Hear me woman and answer my words,” said the Coffee God, squeaking in an accusatory voice with beads of dark coffee perspiration running from his creased forehead, “What is that ill-smelling concoction in your mug?”

The woman, being of that maddeningly self-satisfied and complacent sort of those who lived in the Hazelnut Valley, smiled her unconcerned, grandmotherly smile, unalarmed at the aggressive, unusual figure of the short Coffee God. “Why, coffee, of course.”

“You call that foul-smelling excrescence coffee? Baugh!” The Coffee God spat a ball of gloppy grounds-infused brown goo on the stubbly ground. “The smell bears a nauseating sweetness, a sycophantic scent that insults my highly attuned god-like senses!”

“Ooh, that’s the hazelnut nectar,” cooed the woman, with the pride of a true hazelnut fanatic. “We’re blessed in the valley with these beautiful trees…”

“Paugh!” screamed the Coffee God. “Spare me the repulsive excuses for your sinfulness! Have you no shame? No sense of propriety?”

“Oh, you want a little sip do you?” The woman knelt down, since the Coffee God was far shorter than she was, in her ample, self-satisfied stature, and held out her steaming mug, with its hazelnut wisps of scent wafting from it. “We know our forms of hospitality here.”

“Fie! Fie!” the Coffee God drew back, closing his bean-shaped nostrils at the horrific insult the adulterated brew was giving them and instinctively struck out in reaction to the disgust, knocking the giant mug from the woman’s hand and drenching her grey workmanlike skirt with warm, richly scented coffee. “I would not sip your horror brew if I were stranded, gasping in thirst on the top of barren Mount Filter! Your beverage is an abomination before the pure demands of the Coffee God!”

But the woman had large would-be tears welling in her eyes, gazing down helplessly at her now near-empty mug where it lay on the pebbly ground and the massive sopping stains of coffee all over her humble clothing. Never before had her morning mug been unceremoniously struck from her hand, or her mug of any other time of day either, for that matter, since, like all of the men and women of the valley, she quaffed their characteristic hazelnut brew at all waking hours. “What have you done,” she whined, her voice suddenly taking on the low, plaintive howl of some wild and unexpectedly mournful animal. “What have you done to my . . . coffee?!”

“Have you no ears to hear, foul one? No eyes to see?” The Coffee God did a nimble, quick dance of six steps and spouted a small splash of pure, premium bean coffee from the pores of his forehead. “The Coffee God Javonka stands before you, and he is merciless in his coffee preparation demands. Tell me that you are not so ignorant that you have not heard the name of Javonka?”

“Huh?” the woman answered, befuddled by the god’s circuitous speech and still dumbfounded at the lack of coffee in her hand. “Sounds kind of Eastern.”

The Coffee God ignored her remark. “Yes, it is I. Javonka, the one true god of dark, bitter coffee. And I will have not have my coffee’s sacred purity tainted by a grotesque nut!”

“It’s really tasty. You should try it!” said the woman, through her confusion.

The Coffee God fumed, his mind seizing up with its own whistling insistence of anger. “Tasty! Tasty! We are discussing coffee, not some irrelevant puff snack. It should seer and astonish the mouth with the boldness of its dark singularity, not be some frivolous tasty treat like a sugary over-iced cake.”

“Well, I like it,” maintained the woman stubbornly.

“Is this runt giving you any trouble, Murth?” A large, muscular man in a workman’s garb had suddenly appeared at the woman’s side and glowered at Javonka. Two similar companions stood behind him, all holding large, steaming, reeking mugs of hazelnut coffee.

“I am not a runt, I am a god!” Javonka ranted. “Take those grotesque concoctions away from me,” he shrieked, gesturing at the giant mugs. “If I must smell more of this rancid nut brew, I will lose all self-control and banish coffee from this benighted land forevermore!”

“Don’t like our coffee?” grumbled the large man. “Maybe you just need a new way of looking at it.” The man grinned and signaled to his two companions. Before the fuming Coffee God could react, they had grabbed him by his stubby legs and turned him upside down, and were preparing to dunk him headfirst in one of the massive coffee mugs they’d placed on the ground.

Hanging upside down the Coffee God released angry drips of his own bitter coffee innards into the mug.

“Looks like maybe he is a Coffee God!” cried one of the men. “He’s sweating coffee like a broken brew machine!”

“Banished… bllll… banished be thy coffee!” blubbered Javonka, spluttering even as he was dipped in the toasty liquid.

Suddenly the mugs, with a whisking, reverse-brewing sound, were magically emptied and drained of all sign of coffee. In their astonishment, the men loosened their hold on the Coffee God, who fell with a bump into the innards of the giant mug.

“Hey!” they cried, clueless. “Where’s our coffee?”

The Coffee God drew himself upright, assuming a standing pose in the somewhat undignified position of the mug interior. “I told you this abomination must cease! I banish thy coffee for the sin of adulterating your brews with a repugnant non-coffee ingredient!”

The Coffee God made to clamber out of the mug even as the valley denizens gaped on in astonishment, but Javonka had barely succeeded in clearing the mug’s rim when he was startled and fell off as a huge thunderclap sounded in the sky and a dark, heavy rain fell upon the group.

For reasons she would be unable to articulate, the ample woman called Murth stuck out her ample tongue into the stream of rain and was amazed as the brown raindrops cascaded onto it. “It’s raining hazelnut coffee!”

The Coffee God stood and raised his fists to the sky, where suddenly the angry face of Beverago, the king of all the beverage gods, had appeared in a cloud.

“Bothersome Jovanko, you dared to meddle with a beverage without my knowledge!” boomed Beverago. “For punishment you will carry with you a rain of hazelnut coffee for sixteen days and sixteen nights wherever your hapless feet ramble.”

“They ruined my fine dark, pure coffee flavor!” Jovanko hissed.

“You do not have final domain over beverages,” declaimed Beverago. “Stay in your lane.” The apparition of the giant god head dissolved in the dark clouds and Jovanko cursed as the hazelnut coffee rain continued to drench him.

“At least I’m leaving this valley! And taking my clouds with me!” And Jovanko stomped off angrily, followed by the streaming clouds, as decreed by Beverago, even as the happy people of Hazelnut Valley sipped from their freshly refilled massive mugs.

“Good riddance!” said the ample woman, as she raised her mug with a righteous smile. And she raised her mug in what passed for an ironic toast to the retreating form of the Coffee God.