MIKI'S ZINE
written, cut & stapled by miki · no ads, no filler, no apologies · printed badly on purpose
so this is issue two. issue one came back from the photocopier smelling like burnt toner and hans filed a formal complaint about “archival integrity.” fine. this one’s better anyway: a brand-new realm, a castle of opal that turned up in the back of it while we were stapling, the committee of rats who designed the whole thing and kept minutes, a recipe that only works at dusk, the only drawing of me and the twins that will ever exist, one page out of my own journal that somebody filed under j, and the verse hans chose for us, which is at the back where he can keep an eye on it. plus a lookbook that actually slaps, a pattern book of seven things none of us have made yet, and a sticker with your name on it — figuratively.
it’s yours if you want it. that’s the whole point of a zine.
— the rat
The atrium of whispered truths
chari’s new realm — or: how to furnish a home with two rats and a hunch
chari — youngest of the three kittens, star’s little sister, apprentice to literally everyone — finally got a realm of her own: the atrium of whispered truths. it’s a garden-home. a glass roof that lets the stars in, a warm brick oven, trailing plants in every corner, and a moodboard wall of pinned fabric swatches and torn-out magazine pages. it smells like rain on warm stone.
she didn’t plan it alone. nobody plans anything alone around here. she planned it with a committee of two: crumb and mochi, her white rats — the same small companions who ride her shoulders through the loud days and keep her steady when the anxiety and the lab-memories get close. turns out they’re also excellent interior designers.
if a rat naps on it, it stays.
the rat method
- lay everything on the floor. every cushion, every swatch, every lamp. the floor is the moodboard, and the moodboard is the floor.
- release the committee. crumb goes first — crumb is bold, crumb has opinions. mochi follows — mochi is the inspector, and mochi does not care about your feelings.
- the nap test. whichever swatch gets slept on, stays. a doze is the highest rating we have. two rats asleep at once is a landmark decision.
- the crumb test. if crumb leaves crumbs on it, it belongs in the kitchen. if it comes out clean, it’s furniture you’re allowed to love.
- the tiebreak. if they disagree, it waits by the window until they don’t. daylight is a fair referee and a better designer than most of us.
the garden & the pets
the garden is half borrowed from milo’s rows — a raised bed of mint the rats are not supposed to raid (they raid it), a herb wall she labels in her own handwriting, and a small courtyard that crumb and mochi inspect on a strict schedule — from chari’s shoulders, which is where they live. the pets list reads: crumb (bold), mochi (inspector), and a jar of tadpoles that hans insists, at length, are “not pets.”
that’s the whole trick of it: the realm is calm because it was decided by two animals who only ever want somewhere warm to sleep. chari says it’s the first room she’s had that doesn’t feel like it’s waiting for something bad. we could all use a committee like that.
the castleThe castle made of opal
chari asked, yeshua built it, and the committee of two did the interiors — in one afternoon, by sleeping on it
here’s the part the feature didn’t have room for: the atrium isn’t finished, and it isn’t going to be. it grew. past the herb wall, at the back of the garden room, under the glass, there’s a castle — small, chunky, two storeys and a tower, cut out of opal and lit from the inside. chari asked for it the way she asks for things — quietly, and once. yeshua built it. that’s what he does: he strung the whole café into a web because star asked him to, he gave miki her place when she graduated, and now there is a castle in the atrium.
he built it out of opal, which is the stone miki’s place is cut from — chari liked the look so much she asked for the whole of it in the same rock. it is the only castle in this family with no job. the twins’ is a studio and a lookout, hans has a kingdom with paperwork in it, and miki’s cavern has amps in it. chari’s castle is for being small in. from upstairs you can see the oven; from the floor you can see the sky.
yeshua built the castle. the rats decided where the door goes. (they were right.)
the building committee — the minutes, in full
recorded by nobody · ratified by nap
01the door. crumb: the garden side. mochi: the oven side. mochi napped on the oven side. carried: the oven side.
02a second tower. crumb: yes. mochi: no. it waited by the window until they agreed. carried, eventually.
03the drawbridge. crumb walked it twice, in both directions, slowly. approved with one revision: it stays down. nobody is laying siege to a castle in a glass room at night.
04the moat. crumb: yes. mochi: absolutely not. open. the hole is filled in. the moat is under review.
05the windows. warm, small, low — so the oven can be seen from upstairs and the sky from the floor. unanimous.
06the name. it is a castle, not a palace. the committee was very clear about this. unanimous.
07the rule. nothing unkind is said inside it. anything true that has to be said is whispered, and heard gently. unanimous, and permanently in force.
that last one is the whole castle, really — and it’s where the atrium gets its name, which is a lot of name to get from two rats writing on a floor between naps. in the late afternoon the light comes through the opal and turns the whole room the colour of the inside of a shell. chari says it’s the first building she’s had that was made for her instead of around her. turn up with something to eat and she’ll let you sit in it.
crumb leaves crumbs in the castle. this was motion 08. we don’t talk about motion 08.
the kitchenCandy apples made of light
two recipes from the atrium, taken down at the counter and tested by people who should not have been allowed to test them
candy apples made of light
ingredients: two (2) apples, one (1) pan, sugar enough to be embarrassing, and light — the afternoon kind, off a glass roof. no other kind of light will take.
method: melt the sugar until it is the colour of the last ten minutes of a day. hold the apple on its stick in the middle of it. do not stir, do not rush, do not look away for a second — the light climbs into the sugar like it has been waiting for the invitation. lift it out glowing. set it down. it stays lit for about an hour.
warning: eat it before you finish admiring it. a candy apple made of light that has gone out is just an apple with regrets.
miki’s note: it does not photograph. i tried — twice, with two cameras nobody is supposed to know about. the drawing above was done before the second batch went out. this page is the only proof.
the same apple, after dark
ingredients: everything above, plus the roof open and every lamp off.
method: the same, but you make it where the sky can see what you’re doing. the light that takes to the sugar then is colder, it flickers blue at the edge of the shell, and it tastes like a held breath. serve it to whoever is still awake with you.
note: chari makes this one. she does not measure the sugar and it works anyway, which is unfair, and we have agreed to stop arguing about it on the advice of the committee.
Three faces, no dignity
the only drawing of miki and the twins in existence, and the reason there will not be a second one
the twins do not pose. this is documented: hans has asked them twice for a portrait for the archive, and both times they sent back a drawing of hans. the whole family is like this, which is why the family album is mostly photographs of the backs of people leaving rooms.
so this is what we have — miki in the middle, a twin on each shoulder, nothing in frame but the faces, because the hands are a separate negotiation and the negotiation is still going. the running joke in this house is that slay and sylvestre have never once been photographed holding anything. the running joke is true.
the plate prints in two inks: the blue of those eyes, and miki’s yellow, which she refused to surrender to the press. everything else is ink and paper, the way a drawing is supposed to be. flip plates to colour at the top of the page if you want to see what the yellow cost us.
the printer ran the erratum slip with the rest of the issue — which is the printer’s idea of a joke — and hans has declined to remove it, on the grounds that a correction is part of the record. it says: correction — a second plate exists. taken the one time they lined up on purpose, hands still out of frame, as agreed. nobody will say who asked them to, and the negatives are apparently “misplaced.”
the archiveA page out of my journal
found in a drawer marked “journal — personal, do not file,” which is where you file a thing you are not filing
dear diary.
today i made sylvestre laugh so hard he fell off the drum stool, and slay laughed so hard he had to sit down on the floor, and i have been thinking about it for six hours straight. i’ve put it in the log. the machines and the portals are the watch shift, i know that. but i think that might be the job.
also: i fixed the camera in the west corridor. also: hello hi hans.
dear diary. today i —
this page was in the archive. it isn’t any more. it was in a drawer marked journal — personal, do not file, and the tear runs through the next day’s entry, halfway down a sentence, with nothing above it damaged — which is either a coincidence or a message, and in this family it is never a coincidence.
we’ve printed it the way it survived: the paper, the handwriting, the struck-out word, and the place where she stopped writing. the archive has apologised for the drawer, the drawer has been re-labelled, and miki is keeping the page.
if you find the other half, don’t file it. bring it to the counter. — ed.
the lookbookWorn by the house
two looks from the family, plus the little things — all of it drawn to be made real, none of it necessary.
star — “midnight espresso”
goth-cat workwear for the 6am pull: cropped moto jacket, violet ribbed top, pleated mini with a chain belt, platform boots, and coffee in hand. the first door, dressed like it means business.
commission this look →
pearl — “the violet hour”
soft-lethal evening wear from the perfume realm: glossy corset top with silver hardware, a sheer lilac slip, layered chains, barefoot sandals so she can feel YESHUA humming under the floor.
commission this look →Printed for you
the things we’re going to make — and not one of them exists yet. every piece here is drawn and waiting on the first drop: it is all printed in one run once the early orders are in, and posted in the first weeks of december, so it is at your door before christmas with time to wrap.
the miki tee
miki’s own face — the same ink drawing issue 01 is printed from — screened in lime on black cotton. the editor, worn.
put an early order in →
the house tee
the cafedreamr wordmark — black on cream, one lime bar under it. quieter than the cat, for the days you want the name instead of the face.
put an early order in →
the miki notebook
miki on the cover, the name underneath. for the notes you keep meaning to keep — or the prank ledger, volume two.
put an early order in →
the sticker sheet
six die-cuts on one sheet: miki, the cup, the wordmark, the name, the star, and the house rule. enough to cover a laptop and make two friends.
put an early order in →none of it is made yet. nothing sits in a stockroom and nothing is printed twice — the whole first drop goes to press together, once the early orders are in. the zine stays free either way.
the early-order counter isn’t open yet, so nothing here can be ordered or charged. when it opens the ticker will say so — and until then the fund is what keeps the rack full.
how an early order works
- 01you put the order in on ko-fi. ko-fi asks for the name the parcel is for, the email your date goes to, and the address it’s going to — and it takes the payment there. your card never comes near us.
- 02you get a date back, not a maybe. every early order is written down the day it is paid, and the whole drop is posted in the first weeks of december. orders are taken until the end of november. it is at your door before christmas, with time to wrap it.
- 03it arrives with a tracking link. you get the number the day it leaves. if anything slips you hear it from us first — and if you would rather not wait, say so and you are refunded. no argument, no hard feelings, nothing kept that nobody wanted.
a question before you order — sizes, postage, whether the cat ships separately? ask it here →
the accessories
the printed things live in the shop, above. these three are made one at a time, by hand, to order — no markup, you pay the making and the post, and your name goes in the back of the next issue. the menu →
the pattern bookPinned before it was cut
seven more things off the rail in the planning room. every one of them lived on the wall as a swatch long before it was a garment — and each one has to belong to somebody, which is the first thing a pattern decides.
the hologram stripe
black hair, striped with the same foil the flip-book edition is printed on. blunt cut, because the foil only reads if the line is clean. it moves when you do — and a half second before you do.
the long watch scarf
black and grey, bold, knit long enough to wrap twice and still drag the floor. it is made for the 7pm-to-4am portal watch, which is cold, and long, and mostly standing around being quiet.
the press cap
ink-black tweed, newsboy cut, brim low. the editor’s cap, for the hours she claims to be off duty — a claim nobody in this house has ever once believed.
the hybrid print scarf
half victorian damask, half eighties geometry, printed either side of a line down the middle. it cannot decide which century it is in, and has agreed to stop trying.
the chevron dress
plain bone cotton with one band of lavender chevrons running straight down the middle, collar to hem. chari asked for the pattern in the centre because then there is only one line — and she likes there to be one line.
the parisian beret
hot pink felted wool, worn tilted, tab on the crown. pink is pearl’s, so the beret is pearl’s — and she wears it with the corset like the full stop at the end of an evening.
the fingerless lace gloves
black lace, cut away at the first knuckle, so she can work the machine and hold the cup at the same time — which is the only reason a barista ever wears gloves to begin with.
if one of these is yours, say so and it goes on the menu with a proper cost sheet — that’s how the coat happened. — ed.
the sticker
the house sticker
die-cut, glossy, water-resistant-ish (we tried). a small black cat with a lime stripe, a cup of coffee, and a white spider hitching a ride. stick it on a laptop, a bottle, or the vending machine — it’s earned it.
leaving with one is between you and the first drop →The verse kept for this issue
hans keeps the scriptures. he chose this one, and he would like you to know that it took four days
“In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you.”
one verse goes round the whole realm every day, and it is the same verse for everybody in it — it sits under your name on the cup star hands you, and the long day ends with a scroll of the passages you walked through to get there. a zine can’t do that. a zine is stapled once and then picked up on whatever day you happen to find it. so this issue carries the issue’s verse instead, the same one in every copy, which we are told is the point of paper.
hans chose it, and the only thing he would say about the choosing was: the mansions. everybody here has an address of their own — a garden, an archive, a lookout, a cavern with amps in it, and now a castle of opal with two rats on the committee — and every one of them still eats at the same counter. he has offered to explain the rest of it properly, at length, in the archive, with tea.
the day’s verse is on star’s cup · the passages are in the long day · ask hans and clear an afternoon.
issue no. 2 · the cafedreamr press · printed in the light-kingdom
art & words: cafedreamr · the code beneath the web: wren ai · copyleft — take it home, copy it, pass it on — just don’t sell our faces. (the shop does that part — from december.)