Essentia Animus

69-Combined Family

While Sryine was undergoing the complexities of her lunchtime scenario, Vwyx had yet to make it that far along her own day. Her parents were actually out collecting wood, leaving her sister alone to deal with everything in the workshop over lunch.

"Oh, I guess it would be about lunch time now, maybe I should see what I could put together for you and your friend. I noticed she didn't take my invitation for her to come inside, nor for a place to hang that backpack she's still wearing.. actually, so I worry she might not be interested in a meal as well." "Knowing Riyxia, she probably just didn't want to get in the way. She never really did have much of an interest in any sort of crafting, not even most instruments. However, she made a killer breakfast this morning, so I don't think she would feel out of place if we started talking about food." "Really? Wow.. I remember she was supposed to be associated with a lot of doctor stuff.. and I'm pretty sure she was the real doctor of her family. Did you know that after you left, her family got denounced from actually being real doctors, even considering the sort of stuff they had done. The village leaders though stood up for them regardless, mostly the young master of their family. He insisted that the only problem was that their family had run out of the supplies needed to keep up with such a feat, that they would have to wait for stock to arrive from the city.. but it never did. However, I'm pretty sure he was talking about you three. Everyone else though sorta forgot about it since then, though no one is really holding that family in a grudge anymore, they are just.. there. Thinking about it though, the lady of the family has done a lot of things since to help out with our food preparation, so hearing that their daughter is good with food isn't actually that surprising either. Thinking about it like that though, I'm not even certain how much of a lunch I could make for our family's guest." "Well, if we're so worried, maybe I should step up and give things a try myself. That way you can see what your big sister is capable of, and I can see if I can return any quality to the breakfast Riyxia prepared. Go and let her know what's going on, I'll be in the kitchen getting started." Vwyx's sister ran off as instructed, leaving Vwyx to confront the kitchen and figure out what she was going to do. The first step was to go to the kitchen and figure out what she might have to work with, from there she could figure out everything else as she worked.

For being a woodcrafting family, you would have thought she would have had more things to actually work with. Vwyx wasn't so concerned about the supply of food as she was concerned about the supply of things for food preparation. Sure, her family was rustic, much like the rest of the village, instrumentation wasn't a big thing, but they had hardly any helpful equipment beyond that. It wasn't wooden stuff she was worried about, from tables to spoons, the kitchen was full of useful wooden things to prepare food with. What it really lacked was many useful things made from metals or stone. Wooden fire pits instead of stone or metal stoves, the worst selection imaginable of pots and pans, even the camping equipment they had packed was better than what she had on hand. Right, some of it was being carried right now by Sryine, she didn't have everything.. but if no one was watching, no one else had to know that. Making use of some of the spare firewood in the kitchen, she crafted up some metal and stone cooking equipment with which she could work from. Most of the designs were emulated from the stuff they had purchased, though she knew that honestly this did devalue some of the purpose for buying some of it in the first place.. when she could simply make it for herself. It was still a smart move, she hadn't been in a good position at the time to create such stuff. It was smart they simply had it handy and ready for their needs when they did, and it wasn't as if making the Qeld back would be very difficult.

Now, from what she could remember of the state and expectations of her family food stocks, it was looking like they had a lot of unfortunate shortages. However, a selection of vegetables was doing very well, possibly due to the autumn harvest.. but in an amount that showed such harvests were actually doing plentifully well. It presented such an opportunity to make a really nice vegetable stew. Such really might not be much, but after some of the normal from the hunters they had endured in the past, this would still be a major improvement. More so, this would actually be similar, so she had a good idea how to make everything work. The first step was properly preparing the vegetables for cooking, which would require some dicing and often peeling. Rather than do anything by hand, she simply figured out what would be required and made something that would instantly do it for her, to decrease the chances of her making any dicing errors. She knew such a stew would also need a sauce base, that's what gave such a thing its body, made it more than a plate of diced things. That's also where such a thing got complicated, just how would she make this work? Some of the vegetables though had an assortment of creamy juices, there just wasn't enough of it, and it wasn't thick enough. She could use the vegetables to complete it, but she would have to dice them really really.. really tiny. She pondered one of the vegetables to that end, wondering how exactly she could make this work. Cooking was obviously complicated, this wasn't exactly her area of crafting.