Supplies:

Here’s a list of the items you will need for this quick craft:

• Round vinegar bottle (Find in your local grocery store)
• Wine cork
• Food colouring
• Craft knife or similar
• Hot glue gun
• Twine, leather strip or other decoration of your choosing

Prep work:

The first step is to remove the lid, nozzle and thoroughly clean off the label (including the leftover glue!)

Now, unless you get lucky in the cork that you picked, it probably won’t fit in the narrow neck of the vinegar bottle. Break out your sharp knife, we need to shave this down to fit!

It doesn’t have to look pretty, we’ll be covering this up later.

Filling it up:

Once you’re comfortable you have a nice fit with the cork, fill the bottle up with water to just below where the bottom of the cork will sit. We don’t want a big gap because it will slosh around, but if the water level is too high then we may get some leakage later.

Choose your colour! You may have to experiment with how many drops of food colouring you use, but I found that blue needed about 20, whereas red needed 40 or so to look vivid enough.

Let the colouring settle, then gently swirl it around to mix it. Try not to spill!

Sealing it off:

This is where we take our glue gun and put a nice thick line of glue just inside the opening.

It doesn’t have to look great, just try to keep it inside the neck, rather than out on the rim.

Gently wiggle that cork in the neck, wiping off any excess glue that squeezes its way out of there.

Finishing it off:

Get whatever item you picked to finish the bottle off with. I chose a thin leather thread I had laying around from a previous project.

Wrap it around the neck carefully, then tie it off and trim the ends if needed.

The final product:

Evan Broussard

Age: 27

Physical Appearance: Broad and muscular with deep brown skin, mirthful dark eyes, and short, black hair.

Personality: Easy-going and quick to smile, Evan is a joker at heart, always throwing in a quip or two, regardless of the situation.

Interests: An avid gamer, Evan enjoys playing the latest and greatest in action holo-games with Ryder, and their work colleague, Ellie. When he’s not working or gaming, Evan can be found relaxing at their local bar, the Thirsty Turtle.

Background:
Evan grew up in Wallace, Idaho and attended high school and college with his best friend Ryder Wells. He moved to Seattle with Ryder after college to join the booming pyrrhasite technology industry, both being hired by the same company.

Always adventurous himself, Evan encourages Ryder to take chances and shake up his life a little, inadvertently setting his best friend down a dangerous path. When Ryder disappears without a word, Evan can’t help but worry he’s made a horrible mistake. But when his friend returns, Evan realizes there’s no turning back from the events unfolding before their eyes.

Mya Malinsky

Age: 25

Physical Appearance: Tall and slender with long, sleek raven hair and green eyes.

Personality: Mya prides herself on her independence, preferring to handle stressful situations on her own. Forming close personal bonds with only a select few, she keeps everyone else at arm’s length.

Interests: When not engrossed with work, Mya enjoys reading and collecting rare volumes of classic literature.

Background:
After a troubling home life, Mya ran away from home as a teen and spent a brief time living on the streets of Seattle. With some help, she turned her life around and now works at VistaTech – the same leading pyrrhasite technology company as Ryder – as personal assistant to a department head.

Aware of Ryder’s awkward and distant admiration of her, when he one day takes a chance and follows her outside, she faces a difficult choice – leave him at the mercy of powerful forces, or risk exposing the dangerous secret she harbors.

Ryder Wells

Age: 27

Physical Appearance: Average height and build with unruly brown hair and gold-flecked brown eyes.

Personality: Uncomfortable in social settings and prone to babbling – especially around the opposite sex. Ryder can be goofy, particularly when placed under the pressure of unexpected or stressful situations.

Interests: A space and science fiction geek, he spends his spare time gaming with a small group of friends.

Background:
Growing up as a Boy Scout in the small mining town of Wallace, Idaho, Ryder Wells was always fascinated with space. At age 12, when the meteor storm of 2019 hit, his first instinct was to gaze in wonder at the fiery skies rather than rush for cover.

When the lack of necessary grades to become an astronaut forced him to abandon his childhood dream, Ryder fell naturally into the technology industry. Now working in Seattle for the leading company in research on pyrrhasite energy and progress, he has become disillusioned with the career path he ended up in.

But when his best friend prompts him to make a move to add some excitement to his life, he stumbles upon a secret organization called the Parnassus Initiative – forcing Ryder to call into question everything he thinks he knows about his comfortable life, and the technological advances that are the foundation of the modern world.